Heroic Girls looks at the recent proliferation of young girl heroes in many recent mainstream films and books. These contemporary final girls do not just survive but rather suggest that in doing so they have fundamentally changed something about themselves and or the world around them, seeing them become the First Girls of this altered reality. The collection brings together a wide range of perspectives and cultural viewpoints that describe many recent narratives that explore the idea of a Final Girl and her after-story. The essays are divided into four sections, beginning with more theoretical approaches; cross-cultural examples; the ways in which fictional narratives bear strong relation to real-world circumstances; examples that more strongly depict themes of resistance, survival, and individual agency; and, finally, those that describe something more fundamental and transformative. Films and television shows covered in the collection include The Girl with All the Gifts, The Witcher, The Hunger Games, Star Wars, The Fear Street and Pans Labyrinth. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of film studies, gender studies, and media studies.
Heroic Girls as Figures of Resistance and Futurity in Popular Culture looks at the recent proliferation of the final girl young heroines who have entered popular consciousness as symbolising the potential and power as one that might change the future rather than repeat the mistakes of the past, thereby becoming the first girl.
Part I: Theoretical Approaches;
1. The Narratives of Survival: Final
Girls in Videogames;
2. Fighting Fate: Representations of a New Order in
Beautiful Creatures;
3. The Shadow Self and the New Girl: Breaking Down the
Old Worlds in Ursula Le Guins The Tombs of Atuan and N.K. Jemisins The
Stone Sky;
4. She would never fall, because her friend was flying with her:
Gothic Hybridity, Queer Girls and Exceptional States in Helen Oyeyemis The
Icarus Girl (2005) and M. R. Careys The Girl with all the Gifts (2014);
5.
Cheerleaders, Orphans, School Girls: The Persistent Sounding Riot(Grrrl) in
the (Televisual) Apocalypse; Part II: Cross-Cultural Heroes;
6. Tranquilas:
Monstrous Resistance and Feminist Storytelling;
7. Sister-matic Cannibalism
in the Dying Breed: Heterotopic Representations of Australias Lingering
Colonial Connectivity;
8. Seeking Resistance in Tropes: a Reading of the
Final Girl Tropes Used in NH10 and Stree and its Socio-Cultural
Significance;
9. Gothic Agent of Revolt: The Rebel Female Hero in Pans
Labyrinth;
10. From Vancouver Island to the City of Troy: Prophecy, Heroism,
and Indigenous Classical Reception in Catherine Knutssons Shadows Cast by
Stars; Part III: Resistance, Revenge, Reimagining;
11. Coralie Fargeats
Revenge (2017) and the Rape-Revenge Action Hero;
12. What about you, Maxine?
Whats your American Dream?: X and Pearl Radically Refit the Final Girl with
an Axe and Hack Apart the American Pastoral;
13. After The Credits Roll: Jade
Daniels, Trauma and the Postmodern Final Girl;
14. Killer Girls: Red Riding
Hood, Girlhood and the Final Girl;
15. The Witcher and Ciri of Cintra as the
Heroic Final Girl; Part IV: Into the Future;
16. Persephone Distorted: From
Teen Witch to Queen of Hell The Evolution of Sabrina;
17. The Witch
Forever Lives: Redefining the Path for Empowered Final Girls in the Trilogy
Fear Street;
18. First Girl, Last Jedi, Final Girl: Rey, Resistance, and the
Future of Star Wars;
19. The Environmental Context of Hope in Suzanne
Collinss The Hunger Games trilogy and M. R. Careys The Girl with All the
Gifts
Simon Bacon is a writer and film critic based in Pozna, Poland. He has written and edited 30+ books on various subjects including Gothic: A Reader (2018), Horror: A Companion (2019), Eco-Vampires (2020), Nosferatu in the 21st Century (2023), 1000 Vampires on Screen (2023), The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (2024), and The Palgrave Handbook of the Zombie (forthcoming). He is Kasi the editor of the book series Vampire Studies: New Perspectives on the Undead at https://www.peterlang.com/series/vsu.
