Training the Body Politic: Networked Masculinity and the ‘War on Terror’ in Hollywood Film

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Knee
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Source Code ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Political Perspective

Adam Knee continues this discussion of the action/adventure genre in Chapter Seven, "Training the Body Politic: Networked Masculinity and the 'War on Terror' in Hollywood Film", offering a detailed analysis of the representation of masculinity and agency in two Hollywood films, Unstoppable (2010) and Source Code (2011), which exhibit striking similarities at a range of levels, from their narratives to deeper structures of gendered character function, theme, and geo-political perspective that, he contends, are a manifestation of distinctly post-9/11 American concerns. Like Vincent M. Gaine's chapter on James Bond, Knee analyses both the variations inherent in the genre in the wake of 9/11 and the consistencies of the parameters of American mainstream film, and, more specifically, a developing conceptualization of modes of disciplined masculinity necessitated by the nation’s 'War on Terror' narrative. Knee then concludes with a comparative analysis of a pre-9/11 film and its post-9/11 remake in which these parameters are brought to the fore: the original Paul Verhoeven RoboCop (1987) and RoboCop (2014) directed by José Padilha.

Decolonizing the Body Politic: Guillermo Gómez-Peña's Mapa/Corpo 2: Interactive Rituals for the New Millennium

2009 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-141
Author(s):  
Laurietz Seda
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Personal Account ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Millennium

Art—or at least the kind we most like to write about—is almost always political, whether it is inter/national or personal; and though TDR has already taken this up in its “War and Other Bad Shit” issue, the topic remains center stage. In his review of Dutch theatre troupe Dood Paard's medEia, Jacob Gallagher-Ross notes the emergence of “a new age of the chorus” in which spectatorship becomes inseparable from paralyzed witnessing and Medea's tragedy is reconceived as a metaphor for the West's tragic relations with the East. Laurietz Seda explores Guillermo Gómez-Peña's recent performance/installation Mapa/Corpo 2: Interactive Rituals for the New Millennium, a fluid piece that, like much of the artist's recent work, addresses the xenophobia and “war on difference” that underlies the US's ongoing War on Terror. The Burmese stand-up trio the Moustache Brothers is the subject of Xan Colman and Tamara Searle's personal account of how performance can be both art and resistance in a contradictory and charged political regime.

‘Masters of Our Own Security’: Redemption Through Violence in the Post-9/11 Action Genre

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence McSweeney
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
James Bond ◽  
Action Film

This chapter is an exploration of the defining trends of the action film in post-9/11 cinema. It situates the debate around the shifting parameters of masculinity in the War on Terror decade with a detailed analysis of the Bourne, Rambo, Taken and James Bond franchises.

Ideology, Emotion, and Aesthetic Pleasure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Berliner
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
The Body ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
The Third ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Last Temptation Of Christ

Chapter 7 examines the ways in which a film’s ideological properties contribute to aesthetic pleasure when they intensify, or when they complicate, viewers’ cognitive and affective responses. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which the ideology of a Hollywood film guides our beliefs, values, and emotional responses. In ideologically unified Hollywood films, such as Die Hard, Independence Day, Pickup on South Street, and Casablanca, narrative and stylistic devices concentrate our beliefs, values, and emotional responses, offering us a purer experience than we can find in most real-life situations. By contrast, ideologically complicated Hollywood films, such as Chinatown, The Third Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Dark Knight, advance their worldviews in a novel, ambiguous, or peculiar way, upsetting our appraisals of events and characters and complicating our intellectual and emotional experiences.

Performative Interventions in the Body Politic of Pakistan

2010 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
The Us ◽  
Insight Into

In light of the US-led “War on Terror” in which the Pakistani state has and continues to play a pivotal role as a frontline ally, this special section of TDR on Performing Pakistani Politics provides an urgent insight into the role of performance as artivist intervention for a citizenry confronting the tide of rising extremism as well as imperialism.

‘Good enough for a spot of lippy anyway’: Rape and the Body Politic in My Brother Tom

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-373
Author(s):  
Louise Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Violation ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Rape Narratives

The representation of rape continues to be one of the most highly charged issues in contemporary cinema, and whilst many discussions of this topic focus on Hollywood movies, sexual violation is also a pervasive topic in British cinema. This article examines the portrayal of a female's rape in the British feature My Brother Tom (2001), a powerful and often troubling text in which the sexual violation of the teenage female protagonist functions as a catalyst for the events that comprise the plot, as is often the case in rape narratives. The article provides an overview of some of the key feminist academic discussions and debates that cinematic depictions of rape have prompted, before closely analysing My Brother Tom's rape scene in relation to such discourses. The article argues that the rape scene is neither explicit nor sensationalised, and that by having the camera focus on Jessica's bewildered reactions, it positions the audience with her, and powerfully but discreetly portrays the grave nature of sexual abuse. The article then moves on to examine the portrayal of sexual violation in My Brother Tom as a whole, considering the cultural inscriptions etched on the female body within its account of rape, before concluding with a discussion of the film's depiction of Jessica's ensuing methods of bodily self-inscription as she attempts to disassociate her body from its sexual violation.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

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