Decomposition and recomposition of the body of the female aviator An analysis of (de)gendered bodies in French newsreels from the 1930s

In the interwar period, several female aviators attracted attention from the French media as exceptional figures who had freed themselves from gender conventions. This article examines the production of gendered discourse in the Pathé and Gaumont newsreels of the 1930s. The objective is to understand the cinematographic techniques used to construct and deconstruct these pilots’ gender. It is therefore a question of observing how these female aviators’ bodies became a space in which gender was performed, represented, and recomposed in order to (re)create a modern image of the female pilot.