Prelims

Half Title Page

Gender and Action Films 1980–2000

Series Title Page

Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender

Series Editor: Samantha Holland, Leeds Beckett University, UK

As we re-imagine and re-boot at an ever faster pace, this series explores the different strands of contemporary culture and gender. Looking across cinema, television, graphic novels, fashion studies and reality TV, the series asks: what has changed for gender? And, perhaps more seriously, what has not? Have representations of genders changed? How much does the concept of ‘gender’ in popular culture define and limit us?

We not only consume cultural texts but share them more than ever before; meanings and messages reach more people and perpetuate more understandings (and misunderstandings) than at any time in history. This new series interrogates whether feminism has challenged or changed misogynist attitudes in popular culture.

Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender provides a focus for writers and researchers interested in sociological and cultural research that expands our understanding of the ontological status of gender, popular culture and related discourses, objects and practices.

Title Page

Gender and Action Films 1980–2000: Beauty in Motion

Edited by

Steven Gerrard

Leeds Beckett University, UK

And

Renée Middlemost

University of Wollongong, Australia

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2023

Editorial matter and selection © 2023 Steven Gerrard and Renée Middlemost.

Chapter 3 © Steven Gerrard.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Individual chapters © 2023 by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80117-507-4 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-506-7 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-508-1 (Epub)

Dedications

Steven Gerrrard

I love Action Movies. I saw First Blood when my gran hired a VHS player from our local electrical store. The film was a pirated copy, and through the haze and grit of the print I saw the underdog Rambo for the first time: I still love that movie. Since then, I have watched countless action films: some bad, some good, some brilliant. I therefore dedicate this book to three groups: the stars and production personnel of Action Cinema who have entertained me; my friends Griff, Klause, Doctor M, and Rob Shail for supplying me with cheap, fizzy lager for many a year; and, finally to my folks Viv and Ann, the John J. Rambo and Ellen Ripley of the South Wales Valleys.

Renée Middlemost

To Dad and Az, possibly the biggest action fans I've ever met. You inspired my work on this project, and my love of action escapism.

And Andrew and Sam, who are always willing to sit through another slightly mad movie choice. Big love to you all for your constant support.

About the Contributors

Eduardo Barros-Grela is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at A Coruña University (Spain), where he teaches American Studies, Film and Cultural Studies. He earned his PhD from Stony Brook University, New York, in 2003. He is interested in organic bodies and spaces, visual studies and the dialectics of gender representation and performance in film. Recent publications include studies of space in the areas of contemporary American film and literature: ‘Past Future Cityscapes: Narratives of the Post-human in Post-urban Environments’ in Cityscapes of the Future: Urban Spaces in Science Fiction (2018); ‘Living the Neo-Noir Autopia: Cultural Spaces of Los Angeles in Drive and Nightcrawler’ in Urban Noir: New York and Los Angeles in Shadow and Light (2017); ‘Cultural Writings of the Fairy Tale’ in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Magic: Subverting Gender and Genre (2020). His latest publications also discuss space in other audiovisual formats: ‘Spatial Power in Quentin Tarantino's Revenge Cinema’ (in Cultural Studies and Space in Contemporary Narratives, 2021); ‘Voices of Silenced Childhoods: Transience as Decentering Spatiality in Three Contemporary Films’ (in Digilec, Journal of Languages and Cultures, 2021); ‘Transpopular Spaces: Gypsy Imageries in the Work of Van Morrison’ (in Oceanide Journal, 2020).

Kate Bowen is a graduate of the University of Adelaide in South Australia. She was awarded her PhD in mid-2020 for her research on masculine identity performance in American action cinema of the 1990s. Kate's wider research interests include contemporary American cinema, particularly genre cinema such as horror, and theories of novel-to-film adaptation. Kate's most recent publication for the academic journal of Somatechnics explored the relationship between masculine masquerade and plastic surgery in John Woo's Face/Off. It is Kate's personal mission to obtain Keanu Reeves's autograph on one of her published works (could this chapter be the one?).

Lee Broughton is a Freelance Writer, Critic, Film Programmer and Lecturer in film and cultural studies. He is the author of The Euro-Western: Reframing Gender, Race and the ‘Other’ in Film (2016) and the editor of Critical Perspectives on the Western: From a Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained (2016) and Reframing Cult Westerns: From the Magnificent Seven to the Hateful Eight (2020). Lee edits the Current Thinking on the Western blog on-line and is the convenor of the International Scholars of the Western Network. His research interests include the Western, horror films, urban action films and cult movies more generally. A former Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, Lee is currently writing a monograph that critically interrogates the representations of North and South that are found in Italian Westerns and explores how and why they might differ to those that are typically found in American Westerns.

Rebecca Feasey is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Communications at Bath Spa University. She has published a range of work on the representations of gender in popular media culture in journals such as Feminist Media Studies, the Journal of Gender Studies, Men and Masculinities, Celebrity Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies and Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies.

Tim Butler Garrett is a Freelance Academic, Editor of the British UNIMA journal Puppet Notebook and a Visiting Lecturer at Wimbledon College of Art. His research interests include the connections between puppets, the cinematic and contemporary Visual Theatre; ‘Vienna 1900’ and 1960s counter-culture. Recent writing for books and journals includes chapters on the UK's Suffragist movement; Jim Henson's Labyrinth; the Modernist avant-garde's engagement with female simulacra as objects of arousal; the Mitteleuropean sensibility of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut; and the use of sound and image in The Walking Dead.

Steven Gerrard is Reader of Film at Northern Film School, Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University. He has written monographs about The Carry on Films (Palgrave-MacMillan) and The Modern British Horror Film (Rutgers University Press). He is co-editor for Emerald Publishing's Gender in Contemporary Horror series, and editor of From Blofeld to Moneypenny: Gender in James Bond. He was instigator and co-editor of Crank It Up: Jason Statham – Star! (Manchester University Press). Steve would love to be either Status Quo's rhythm guitarist or the new Doctor Who. He'll have a long wait.

Racheal Harris is a PhD candidate at Deakin University. She completed her Bachelor of Historical Inquiry and Practice, Bachelor of Arts (Hons) and Master of Arts at the University of New England (Australia). Racheal has contributed to several edited collections on popular culture, including chapters on theological concepts in James Cameron's Terminator franchise, resurrection motifs in the music of Prince and folklore in the CW series Supernatural.

Travis Holland is a Lecturer in Communication at Charles Sturt University, Australia. His writing, teaching and research include work on fan studies, politics, digital media, television, local government and space studies.

Susan Hopkins is an Associate Professor of Communications based in USQ College at the University of Southern Queensland, Springfield campus, Australia. Susan holds a PhD in Social Science and a Master's (Research) in Education. Her research interests include gender and media studies.

Rebecca Johinke is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, The University of Sydney, Australia. Her work is wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, but it has always included a strong focus on gender and popular culture. She has been writing about the Mad Max films for over 20 years. Her interests include writing and rhetoric (academic writing, creative nonfiction, print and digital magazines), Australian literature, film and popular culture (including popular music) and street narratives (from masculine car cultures to street cultures more generally), and she is interested in walking narratives and the flâneur. Her first book about Australian magazine editors and about disruption of the media and traditional magazine journalism, entitled Queens of Print, was published by Australian Scholarly Publishing in 2019. She also conducts research about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Chin-Pang Lei graduated from the Department of Journalism at the Chengchi University in Taiwan and earned his PhD in Media and Cultural Studies from the University of Sussex in England. He is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Macau, and a columnist for several media in Hong Kong and Taiwan. His research interests are Chinese films, popular culture, star studies and urban space. His articles have been published by academic journals such as Asian Journal of Communication and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. He is also the author of the monographs (in Chinese) 隱形澳門: 被忽視的城市與文化 [Invisible Macau: the Ignored City and Culture] and 夢伴此城: 梅艷芳與香港流行文化 [Dream and the City: Anita Mui and Hong Kong Pop Culture].

Renée Middlemost is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research focuses on fan participation, celebrity and popular culture, and has been featured in collections The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema; Crank It Up: Jason Statham – Star!; Aussie Fans: Uniquely Placed in Global Popular Culture; and Gender and Australian Celebrity Culture. Her recent work has been published in journals including Celebrity Studies, American Behavioural Scientist, M/C Journal and the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture. She is the co-founder of the Fan Studies Network Australasia and a co-editor of Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies.

John Quinn is a Lecturer in Screen and Performance at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. Working within the division of Arts & Media, Quinn's research explores the narratives and cultural politics of popular culture. Quinn's recent publications have explored the representation of masculinity, populism and nostalgia in popular film and television. Quinn's forthcoming publications focus on revisiting representations of masculinity in the film and television of the 1980s.

Brennan Thomas is an Associate Professor of English at Saint Francis University, where she directs the university's writing centre and teaches courses in composition, novel and short story writing, and Disney film studies. Her most recent scholarship is featured in the edited collections Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King (Lexington Books, 2020), Surveilling America on Screen: Discourses on the Nostalgic Lens (McFarland Publishers, 2021) and Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

Karol Valderrama-Burgos is an Associate Lecturer in Spanish, Literature and Culture (Education Focused) at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Her research interests comprise Colombian and Latin American cinemas, women filmmakers and writers, decolonial thought, and representations of gender. Her work has been published and disseminated in English and Spanish, including the journal Latin American Perspectives, Canaguaro. Revista de cine colombiano, and forthcoming work with University Exeter Press and the Journal of Romance Studies. Her first monograph, which is currently in preparation for publication, is based on the doctoral research held at University of Leicester, which was funded by Colciencias (now Minciencias, Colombia). The monograph focuses on representations of women’s silence and subordination, emancipated women in illegal armed structures, and women’s desire and sexuality in contemporary Colombian cinema. She is also a member of the SLAS Committee (Society of Latin American Studies) and co-coordinates Red Cu, an emerging network focused on queer studies applied to Colombia and Latin America.

Lisa Watt is a Design Historian who has taught undergraduate and post-graduate students in the creative arts, fashion and consumption and the cultural studies field in both the United Kingdom and in Australia.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the encouragement, help and patience from the entire team at Emerald Publishing, especially Katy Mathers, Lydia Cutmore, Abinaya Chinnasamy and Helen Beddow who have not only encouraged us but also made our work look like it's part of Action Cinema with this wonderful cover. Both Renée and I want to thank our terrific contributors, some stepping in at the last minute, in the way that they have not only produced excellent, cutting-edge and ground-breaking work in this field, but just as importantly embraced the project.