Corporeality and embodiment in the female boxing film

This article engages with questions of corporeality in the boxing film. Within the context of debates that understand the genre as a space in which the tensions and contradictions around masculinity can be worked out (Baker; Woodward; Grindon), it explores the troubling, and potentially queer, implications of the female boxer in two contemporary boxing films: Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004) and Die Boxerin (About a Girl, Catharina Deus, 2004). It does so with a particular emphasis on the significance of the corporeality of the boxing body and boxing performance, as well as the embodied spectatorial engagements made possible by the films’ incorporation of the female boxer’s queer orientations.