Up until the turn of the millennium, there had been very little positive representation of women and women in action characters in the action film genre. Two notable exceptions…
Abstract
Up until the turn of the millennium, there had been very little positive representation of women and women in action characters in the action film genre. Two notable exceptions were Ellen Ripley in the Alien movies and Sarah Connor in the Terminator franchise. Whilst this has certainly changed over the last 20 years, one action/horror/science fiction heroine remains neglected: Project Alice in the six Resident Evil films. Portrayed by Milla Jovovich, and loosely based on the platform game character, Project Alice is strong, driven, motivated and tough. This chapter will, through detailed analysis of character, her physical presence through the clothing she wears, psychogeographical aspects, her use of weapons and narrative arc, clearly demonstrate the importance of Project Alice to the horror genre.
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The iconic vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returned to cinema screens via Death Wish 2 (Michael Winner) in 1982 and vigilantism would remain a key theme in American urban…
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The iconic vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returned to cinema screens via Death Wish 2 (Michael Winner) in 1982 and vigilantism would remain a key theme in American urban action films throughout the 1980s. Susan Jeffords subsequently argued that Hollywood's ‘hard bodied’ male action heroes of the period were reflective of the social and political thematics that distinguished Ronald Reagan's tenure as America's President (1994, p. 22). But while Jeffords' arguments are convincing, they overlook contemporaneous films featuring female and ‘soft’ bodied urban action heroes.
The Angel trilogy (Angel, 1984; Avenging Angel, 1985; and Angel III: The Final Chapter, 1988) features three such understudied examples. Indeed, the films' diverse and atypical range of action heroes demand that they are interrogated in terms of their protagonists' gender, sexual orientation, lifestyle choices and age. Featuring narratives about the prostitutes and street folk who frequent Los Angeles' Hollywood Boulevard, the films' key characters are a teenage prostitute and her guardians: a transvestite prostitute, a lesbian hotelier and an elderly cowboy. All three films feature narratives that revolve around acts of vengeance and vigilantism.
This chapter will critically discuss the striking ways in which the films' ‘soft’ bodied and atypical protagonists are presented as convincing action heroes who subvert contemporaneous ‘hard’ bodied norms. It will also consider to what extent their subversive rewriting of typical urban action film narratives and character relations might be understood to critique and deconstruct the themes and concerns that usually characterized such films during the Reagan era.
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When Rambo Last Blood hit the screens in 2019 to an almost unanimous thumbs down from the critics, it seemed as if Sylvester Stallone's ‘last outing’ as his iconic action hero…
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When Rambo Last Blood hit the screens in 2019 to an almost unanimous thumbs down from the critics, it seemed as if Sylvester Stallone's ‘last outing’ as his iconic action hero, John Rambo was to bow out with more of a violent whimper than a spectacular bang. But action heroes never really do know when to quit. There is always one last mission to undertake. In an online interview in September 2019, Stallone indicated that Rambo 6 could well be on the cards. This chapter will discuss not only ideas about ‘Rambo’ as a character and his character arc, but posit the idea that Stallone, through the process of gerontology, has moved through the decades to become not a simplification or distillation of a cinematic action hero, but rather a much more complex one that asks questions about the politics of the era, masculinity, fragility and ageing.
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Action in the 1980s to a large extent belonged to the hard, hyper-masculine physiques of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, who seemed to embody the aggressive…
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Action in the 1980s to a large extent belonged to the hard, hyper-masculine physiques of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, who seemed to embody the aggressive, go-getting, testosterone-fuelled spirit of the age. Except, as this chapter argues, it would be a mistake to take these representations of masculinity at face value.
Susan Jeffords has noted the evolution of Schwarzenegger's Terminator character from hard-bodied killer to nurturing father figure, linking this to the change in perceptions of masculinity between the Reagan and Bush eras. Indeed, as Schwarzenegger moved into the 90s his films increasingly played with notions of ‘the feminine’ – from the nurturing Schwarzenegger of Kindergarten Cop (1990) to the ‘maternal’ Schwarzenegger of Junior (1994).
This chapter focuses on Schwarzenegger's Commando (1985), the first film in which he plays a contemporary, ‘normal’ (though still unusually muscular) man: a widowed ex-special forces commando and now full-time father, named John Matrix. The act of naming this supposed he-man ‘Womb’ is only the beginning of the film's surprising and subversive disquisitions on gender. In between (and sometimes during) the expertly staged fist fights, gun battles and explosions, homoeroticism, the male gaze and gender stereotyping all bubble away under the surface. Schwarzenegger's body is presented for scrutiny in a way previously reserved for female Hollywood stars, and the film's antagonist, an embittered former colleague who is obsessed with Matrix in a way that verges on the erotic, transcends butch and enters the realms of macho camp. The film questions and subverts presumptions about the masculine and the feminine, while still delivering an ostensibly macho, quintessentially 1980s action film.
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Marie Claire Van Hout, Reda Madroumi, Wendy Hoey, Sylvester Uhaa, Peter Severin and Ivan Calder
The study aimed to identify and define core components of Throughcare. The global prison population has reached its highest level to date (11.5 million), with comparative data on…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aimed to identify and define core components of Throughcare. The global prison population has reached its highest level to date (11.5 million), with comparative data on recidivism unavailable. Despite the global shift away from punitive and towards rehabilitative approaches, reintegration programming (Throughcare) is limited, ill-resourced or non-existent in many countries.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted a global e-Delphi consensus study of professionals working in prison and correctional services to define critical components of effective rehabilitation and reintegration programming. Consensus was defined a priori as 70% or more participants scoring an outcome from 7 to 9 and fewer than 15% scoring it 1 to 3.
Findings
Following a call for expression of interest circulated to the International Corrections and Prisons Association member list (n = 7282), 175 members agreed to partake in the e-Delphi rounds. In Round One, 130 individuals completed an online survey where 35 statements were scored by importance, each with opportunity to provide written feedback. A total of 33 statements exceeded the set threshold of consensus. Written feedback supported refinement and further development of statements in Round Two. A total of 108 individuals completed Round Two. A total of 39 out of the 40 statements exceeded the set threshold of consensus.
Practical implications
Consensus statements are useful to provide a shared understanding for inter-agency Throughcare partnerships, to inform national prison policies and to expand prison and support staff capacity building and programmes all over the world.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, to date, this is the first known attempt to elicit consensus from a broad range of professionals working in the field of prison and correctional services on core components of effective rehabilitation and reintegration programming.
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Steven Gerrard and Renée Middlemost
The world of the Action Film is a complex one. Whilst explosions may go off around the hero or heroine, skyscrapers crash into rubble, cars smash into one another, or the villain…
Abstract
The world of the Action Film is a complex one. Whilst explosions may go off around the hero or heroine, skyscrapers crash into rubble, cars smash into one another, or the villain lives to fight on in another sequel, one thing is certain: the action film, loved and loathed in equal measures, remains a staple genre in cinema.
Sylvester Stallone's first appearance as John Rambo in First Blood was in 1982. It seems only logical, then, that this first edited collection in a three-volume publication is dedicated to the first 20 years in which action cinema began in earnest and grew to what it is today. By focusing on the 1980s to 2000, it becomes apparent that the action film is not simply gung-ho heroics played out to an expectant audience. Rather, it is a complex one, and one that demands further investigation.
This cutting-edge collection focuses on such areas of study include new, exciting and bold work on gender linked to vehicles, an LGBTQ+ case study of the Angel trilogy, star studies of Keanu Reeves and Arnold Schwarzenegger, sword and sorcery films, buddy-buddy cop movies, international examinations of action in both the films of Wong Kar-Wei and Colombian national cinema, and much more. Each chapter is housed within an academic framework and in-depth analysis is throughout.
This is the first volume in Emerald Publishing's bold examination of gender in action cinema. The following volumes will look at post-2000 work, focusing on Stars, Warriors, Bombshells and Atomic Blondes, and Transformations in action cinema. Much work has been written on action cinema, but in this collection you will time travel back to two decades in which one of the most spectacular genres erupted onto cinema screens. Whilst the action movie may still have its detractors, this book has been written for you to explore the complexities of gender portrayals in this genre. Above all else, it has been written for you to enjoy.
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Rebecca Gasior Altman is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Her focus is on medical sociology, environmental sociology, organizational theory…
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Rebecca Gasior Altman is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. Her focus is on medical sociology, environmental sociology, organizational theory, and social movement theory. Her current research projects analyze narratives about community toxics activism, environmental advocacy support organizations, and medical waste.Phil Brown is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Brown University. He is currently examining disputes over environmental factors in asthma, breast cancer, and Gulf War-related illnesses, as well as toxics reduction and precautionary principle approaches that can help avoid toxic exposures. He is the author of No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action (Phil Brown & Edwin Mikkelsen), co-editor of a collection, Illness and the Environment: A Reader in Contested Medicine, and editor of Perspectives in Medical Sociology.Daniel M. Cress is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Western State College of Colorado. His research and teaching interests include social movements – particularly among poor and marginalized groups, environmental sociology, and globalization. His published work has focused on protest activity by homeless people.Jennifer Earl is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research areas include social movements and the sociology of law, with research emphases on the social control of protest, social movement outcomes, Internet contention, and legal change. Her published work has appeared in a number of journals, including the American Sociological Review, Sociological Theory, and the Journal of Historical Sociology.Myra Marx Ferree is professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work on social movements has focused on women’s mobilizations and organizations in Germany, the U.S., and transnationally, most recently looking at interactions between American and Russian feminists (Signs, 2001), German and American abortion discourses and the definition of radicalism (AJS, 2003), and the European Women’s Lobby in relation to transnational women’s organizations on the web (Social Politics, 2004).Joshua Gamson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. He is author of Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago, 1998), Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (California, 1994), and numerous articles on social movements, gay and lesbian politics, popular culture and media. He is currently working on a biography of the disco star Sylvester.Teresa Ghilarducci is Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Higgins Labor Research Center at the University of Notre Dame. She is author of Labor’s Capital: The Economics and Politics of Private Pensions (MIT Press) and Portable Pension Plans for Casual Labor Markets: Lessons from the Operating Engineers Central Pension Fund (with Garth Mangum, Jeffrey S. Petersen & Peter Philips). She is a former Board of Trustees member of the Indiana Public Employees Retirement Fund, a former advisory board member for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Social Insurance.Brian Mayer is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department at Brown University. His interests include environmental and medical sociology, as well as science and technology studies. His recent projects include an investigation of the growth of the precautionary principle as a new paradigm among environmental organizations and a study of social movements addressing environmental health issues.Sabrina McCormick is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Brown University. She is a Henry Luce Foundation Fellow through the Watson Institute of International Studies. Her main interests are environmental sociology, medical sociology, and the politics of development. As a Luce Fellow, she is engaged in comparing environmentally-based movements in the U.S. and Brazil. Additional special interests include the social contestation of environmental illness, the insertion of lay knowledge into expert systems, and the role of social movements in these struggles. She has recent publications by Ms. Magazine and The National Women’s Health Network related to these areas.Rachel Morello-Frosch is an assistant professor at the Center for Environmental Studies and the Department of Community Health, School of Medicine at Brown University. As an environmental health scientist and epidemiologist, her research examines race and class determinants of the distribution of health risks associated with air pollution among diverse communities in the United States. Her current work focuses on: comparative risk assessment and environmental justice, developing models for community-based environmental health research, children’s environmental health, and the intersection between economic restructuring and environmental health. Her work has appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives, Risk Analysis, International Journal of Health Services, Urban Affairs Review, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and Environment and Planning C. She also sits on the scientific advisory board of Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco.Daniel J. Myers is Associate Professor, Chair of Sociology, and Fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has published work on collective violence, racial conflict, formal models of collective action, urban poverty, and the diffusion of social behavior in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Mobilization. He is also author of Toward a More Perfect Union: The Governance of Metropolitan America and The Future of Urban Poverty (both with Ralph Conant), and Social Psychology (5th edition) with Andy Michener and John Delamater. He is currently conducting a National Science Foundation-funded project examining the structural conditions, diffusion patterns, and media coverage related to U.S. racial rioting in the 1960s.Sharon Erickson Nepstad is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duquesne University and the author of Convictions of the Soul: Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement (Oxford University Press, 2004).Francesca Polletta is Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. She is the author of Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (University of Chicago, 2002) and editor, with Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, of Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (University of Chicago, 2001). She has published articles on culture, collective identity, emotions, law, and narrative in social movements, and on the civil rights, women’s liberation, new left, and contemporary anti-corporate globalization movements.Nicole C. Raeburn is Assistant Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of the book, Changing Corporate America from Inside Out: Lesbian and Gay Workplace Rights (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Her new research project compares the adoption of gay-inclusive workplace policies in the corporate, educational, and government sectors.Leila J. Rupp is Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A historian by training, her teaching and research focus on sexuality and women’s movements. She is coauthor with Verta Taylor of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (2003) and Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (1987) and author of A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Sexuality in America (1999), Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (1997), and Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945 (1978). She is also editor of the Journal of Women’s History.David A. Snow is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. He taught previously at the universities of Arizona and Texas. He has authored numerous articles and chapters on homelessness, collective action and social movements, religious conversion, self and identity, framing processes, symbolic interactionism, and qualitative field methods; and has authored a number of books as well, including Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People (with Leon Anderson), Shakubuku: A Study of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist Movement in America, 1960–1975, and The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (edited with Sarah Soule & Hanspeter Kriesi). His most current research project involves an NSF-funded interdisciplinary, comparative study of homelessness in four global cities (Los Angeles, Paris, São Paulo, and Tokyo).Sarah A. Soule is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona. Her research examines U.S. state policy change and diffusion and the role social movements have on these processes. Current projects include the NSF-funded “Dynamics and Diffusion of Collective Protest in the U.S.” from which data for this paper come; an analysis of state-level contraception and abortion laws; an analysis of state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment; and an analysis of state-level same-sex marriage bans. She has recently completed an edited volume, The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, with David Snow and Hanspeter Kreisi.Verta A. Taylor is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is coauthor with Leila J. Rupp of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (University of Chicago Press) and Survival in the Doldrums : The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (Oxford University Press); co-editor with Laurel Richardson and Nancy Whittier of Feminist Frontiers VI (McGraw-Hill); and author of Rock-a-by Baby: Feminism, Self-Help and Postpartum Depression (Routledge). Her articles on the women’s movement, the gay and lesbian movement, and social movement theory have appeared in journals, such as The American Sociological Review, Signs, Social Problems, Mobilization, Gender & Society, Qualitative Sociology, Journal of Women’s History, and Journal of Homosexuality.Nella Van Dyke is currently an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department at Washington State University. Her research focuses on the dynamics of student protest, social movement coalitions, hate crimes, and the factors influencing right-wing mobilization. Her recent publications include articles in Social Problems and Research in Political Sociology. She is currently conducting research on the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer student internship program and its influence on student protest, how the tactics of protest change over time, and how movement opponents influence the collective identity of gay and lesbian movement organizations.Stephen Zavestoski is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. His current research examines the role of science in disputes over the environmental causes of unexplained illnesses, the use of the Internet as a tool for enhancing public participation in federal environmental rulemaking, and citizen responses to community contamination. His work appears in journals such as Science, Technology & Human Values, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Sociology of Health and Illness, and in the book Sustainable Consumption: Conceptual Issues and Policy Problems.
Since the mid-2000s, there has been a marked resurgence in Hollywood action films featuring older male heroes, predominantly showcasing stars ranging from their mid-fifties into…
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Since the mid-2000s, there has been a marked resurgence in Hollywood action films featuring older male heroes, predominantly showcasing stars ranging from their mid-fifties into their seventies. This ‘geri-action’ cycle – a less-than-kind label that combines geriatric and action – has revitalised the careers of aged action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A core element of the cycle, beyond action franchise revivals and all-star ensembles featuring stars from the 1980s and 1990s, has been the emergence of late-career action turns by ageing Hollywood actors in globally successful French-produced, Hollywood-style action films. Part of a larger trend in French cinema towards the production of films in a distinctly commercial register, the ‘globalised’ aesthetic of French action film cannily mimics Hollywood action film style and aesthetics. These French-produced geri-action films are the roots of the cycle, represent some of its biggest box office successes and have transformed the career of several acclaimed recent-to-action Hollywood stars, exemplified by the prolific late action career of Oscar-nominated actor, Liam Neeson, most notably across three Taken films (2008–2014, EuropaCorp). Despite this, these French-produced geri-action films have predominantly been examined as a Hollywood and American phenomenon.
Geri-action quickly became synonymous with 1980s Hollywood action cinema's white male ‘hard bodies’, who are still widely understood to diagnose national anxieties and social ills – and violently embody their so-called “cures”. These French geri-action films similarly feature protagonists who forcefully struggle against perceived threats to the cultural position of traditional (white) masculinities and professional and paternal redundancy. Yet they also showcase deep-seated European anxieties about the threat of porous borders, immigration and social change, presaging a later shift in the cycle in Hollywood. Focusing on films that have received comparatively less scholarly attention, Taken 2 (2012), 3 Days to Kill (2014) and The Commuter (2018), this chapter examines the productive confluence of lower budget French-produced geri-action films and their ageing recent-to-action stars. These films depend on their stars to fortify their globalised Hollywood aesthetic and the stars' personae permit efficiencies such as clipped pacing. At the same time, budget constraints enhance the action performance of recent-to-action stars as unadorned, visceral and authentic-feeling. The films often stage fight sequences in confined, everyday spaces of work and tourism with ageing heroes who must creatively ‘make do’ with objects available to them. Equally, stunt coordination and choreography, editing and sound design make ageing and less experienced action performers appear to move faster and hit harder. Taken together, French-produced geri-action and its recent-to-action stars have transformed not only who stars in ‘Hollywood’ action cinema but who produces it.