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"Action and adventure films United States"
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Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas
This lively study unpacks the intersecting racial, sexual, and gender politics underlying the representations of racialized bodies, masculinities, and femininities in early 1970s black action films, with particular focus on the representation of black femininity. Stephane Dunn explores the typical, sexualized, subordinate positioning of women in low-budget blaxploitation action narratives as well as more seriously radical films like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and The Spook Who Sat by the Door, in which black women are typically portrayed as trifling \"bitches\" compared to the supermacho black male heroes. The terms \"baad bitches\" and \"sassy supermamas\" signal the reversal of this positioning with the emergence of supermama heroines in the few black action films in the early 1970s that featured self-assured, empowered, and tough (or \"baad\") black women as protagonists: Cleopatra Jones, Coffy, and Foxy Brown._x000B__x000B_Dunn offers close examination of a distinct moment in the history of African American representation in popular cinema, tracing its emergence out of a radical political era, influenced especially by the Black Power movement and feminism. \"Baad Bitches\" and Sassy Supermamas also engages blaxploitation's impact and lingering aura in contemporary hip-hop culture as suggested by its disturbing gender politics and the \"baad bitch daughters\" of Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones, rappers Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim.
eBook
The Hollywood action and adventure film
\"Provides a timely and richly revealing portrait of a powerful cinematic genre that has increasingly come to dominate the American cinematic landscape\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Imperial Affects
Imperial Affectsis the first sustained account of American action-based cinema as melodrama. From the earliest war films through the Hollywood Western and the late-century action cinema, imperialist violence and mobility have been produced as sites of both visceral pleasure and moral virtue. Suffering and omnipotence operate as twinned affects in this context, inviting identification with an American national subject constituted as both victimized and invincible-a powerful and persistent conjunction traced here across a century of cinema.
eBook
The hollywood action and adventure film
The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film presents a comprehensive overview and analysis of the history, myriad themes, and critical approaches to the action and adventure genre in American cinema. -Draws on a wide range of examples, spanning the silent spectacles of early cinema to the iconic superheroes of 21st-century action films -Features case studies revealing the genre’s diverse roots – from westerns and war films, to crime and espionage movies -Explores a rich variety of aesthetic and thematic concerns that have come to define the genre, touching on themes such as the outsider hero, violence and redemption, and adventure as escape from the mundane -Integrates discussion of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality alongside genre history -Provides a timely and richly revealing portrait of a powerful cinematic genre that has increasingly come to dominate the American cinematic landscape
eBook
Action figures : men, action films, and contemporary adventure narratives
What accounts for the massive global popularity of action films and adventure literature? How do men and women respond to iconic screen stars such as Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve McQueen, and Charlton Heston? Action genres have been Hollywood's most profitable global exports for most of its history, their male heroes the subject of much fascination and derision. Bestselling literary thrillers, from The Hunt for Red October to Into Thin Air, have also contributed markedly to popular understandings of male activity. Action Figures takes stock of action narratives' many appeals and recognizes how contemporary crises of gender identity manifest themselves in popular commercial texts.
eBook
Spectacular Bodies
While films such as Rambo, Thelma and Louise and Basic Instinct have operated as major points of cultural reference in recent years, popular action cinema remains neglected within contemporary film criticism.Spectacular Bodies unravels the complexities and pleasures of a genre often dismissed as `obvious' in both its pleasure and its politics, arguing that these controversial films should be analysed and understood within a cinematic as well as a political context.Yvonne Tasker argues that today's action cinema not only responds to the shifts in gendered, sexual and racial identities which took place during the 1980s, but reflects the influences of other media such as the new video culture. Her detailed discussion of the homoeroticism surrounding the muscleman hero, the symbolic centrality of blackness within the crime narrative, and the changing status of women within the genre, addresses the constitution of these identities through the shifting categories of gender, class, race, sex, sexuality and nation. Spectacular Bodies also examines the ambivalence of supposedly secure categories of popular cinema, questioning the existing terms of film criticism in this area and addressing the complex pleasures of this neglected form.
eBook
Home/land/security
As the American government uses the threat of terrorist violence to justify stringent domestic and exploitative foreign policies, Arab communities in the United States face the injustice of racial profiling and harrassment. The reaction of Americans to the genre of action-adventure film and its increasing use of Arabs as villians shows how our perceptions of Arab communities and individuals has been skewed. Using focus groups composed of a diverse cross-section of Americans, Karin Gwinn Wilkins analyzes how participants differ in their perception of specific action-adventure films and their Arab villains. More specifically, Wilkins interviews participants and asks them questions directly related to three topics: villains as threats to national security, film settings in relation to fear within global space and the Middle East, and heroes conquering evil. This book addresses the neglected empirical link between documented media stereotypes of Arab communities and the lived consequences of these portrayals, in terms of discriminatory practices and generalizations.
eBook
Contemporary Action Cinema
Action cinema is a popular and familiar form which reflects the cultural, industrial and historical landscape from which it emerges. Lisa Purse analyses the genre's pleasures and complexities in the light of both its cinematic history and the latest critical debates. Focussing on action cinema of the 2000s, this book explores issues of visual style, narrative, representation and the various contexts of production through a diverse series of case studies including Avatar (2009), Casino Royale (2006), The Hurt Locker (2008) and Banlieue 13 (2004).Providing a groundbreaking account of the way that the spectator engages with the action body and the action narrative, and including analyses of areas of representation that have seldom received sustained attention in the past, this comprehensive study is the perfect companion to modern action cinema.Key Features* Provides wide-ranging analyses and interpretation of action cinema* Discusses representations of heroism, gender and ethnicity* Explores the spectator's embodied engagement with the action film* Examines the effect of 9/11 and changes in US foreign policy
eBook
Swashbucklers
\"The book explores the history of swashbuckling television from its origins in the 1950s to the present day. It maps the major production cycles of the Anglophone swashbuckler both in Britain and in the United States and places the genre in its historical, cultural and institutional contexts. It shows how the success of The Adventures of Robin Hood in the 1950s established a template for a genre that has been one of the most successful of British television exports, and considers how America responded to this 'British invasion' with its own swashbuckling heroes such as Zorro.\"
eBook