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 analyzed 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...

This text investigates the thematic concerns of contemporary Hollywood cinema, and its ambivalent articulation of women as both active, and defined by sexual performance, asking whether new Hollywood cinema has responded to feminism and contemporary sexual identities. Popular cinema has often assumed an equation between working women and sexuality or sexual performance, an association encapsulated in the phrase working girls. While feminist criticism has embraced the transgressive power of modern femmes fatale such as Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, the recurrent, class-bound figure...

This reader of key writing on action cinema from the silent period to the 21st centuryy is divided into thematic sections addressing major areas such as defining the genre, film history and style, action and spectacle, genres and meaning, stars and bodies, action auteurs and the film industry. The reader covers both Hollywood actions movies such as Terminator 1 and 2 and Die Hard and also European and Asian action cinema. It also includes a full bibliography and guide to other resources both in print and online.

This reader of key writing on action cinema from the silent period to the 21st centuryy is divided into thematic sections addressing major areas such as defining the genre, film history and style, action and spectacle, genres and meaning, stars and bodies, action auteurs and the film industry. The reader covers both Hollywood actions movies such as Terminator 1 and 2 and Die Hard and also European and Asian action cinema. It also includes a full bibliography and guide to other resources both in print and online.

This timely collection brings feminist critique to bear on contemporary postfeminist mass media culture, analyzing phenomena ranging from action films featuring violent heroines to the -girling- of aging women in productions such as the movie Something's Gotta Give and the British television series 10 Years Younger. Broadly defined, -postfeminism- encompasses a set of assumptions that feminism has accomplished its goals and is now a thing of the past. It presumes that women are unsatisfied with their (taken for granted) legal and social equality and can find fulfillment only...

A comprehensive feminist analysis of representations of military women in film and television in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, from World War II to the present.

From "Skirts Ahoy " to "M*A*S*H," "Private Benjamin," "G.I. Jane," and "JAG," films and television shows have grappled with the notion that military women are contradictory figures, unable to be both effective soldiers and appropriately feminine. In "Soldiers' Stories," Yvonne Tasker traces this perceived paradox across genres including musicals, screwball comedies, and action thrillers. She explains how, during the Second World War, women were portrayed as auxiliaries, temporary necessities of "total war." Later, nursing, with its connotations of feminine care, offered a solution to the...

Fifty Hollywood Directors introduces the most important, iconic and influential filmmakers who worked in Hollywood between the end of the silent period and the birth of the blockbuster. By exploring the historical, cultural and technological contexts in which each director was working, this book traces the formative period in commercial cinema when directors went from pioneers to industry heavyweights.

Each entry discusses a director's practices and body of work and features a brief biography and suggestions for further reading. Entries include:

...

Fifty Hollywood Directors introduces the most important, iconic and influential filmmakers who worked in Hollywood between the end of the silent period and the birth of the blockbuster. By exploring the historical, cultural and technological contexts in which each director was working, this book traces the formative period in commercial cinema when directors went from pioneers to industry heavyweights.

Each entry discusses a director's practices and body of work and features a brief biography and suggestions for further reading. Entries include:

...

This timely, necessary collection of essays provides feminist analyses of a recession-era media culture characterized by the reemergence and refashioning of familiar gender tropes, including crisis masculinity, coping women, and postfeminist self-renewal. Interpreting media forms as diverse as reality television, financial journalism, novels, lifestyle blogs, popular cinema, and advertising, the contributors reveal gendered narratives that recur across media forms too often considered in isolation from one another. They also show how, with a few notable exceptions, recession-era popular...