Soldiers' Stories

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 “gender problem.” From the 1940s through the 1970s, musicals, romances, and comedies exploited the humorous potential of the gender role reversal that the military woman was taken to represent. Since the 1970s, female soldiers have appeared most often in thrillers and legal and crime dramas, cast as isolated figures, sometimes victimized and sometimes heroic. Soldiers’ Stories is a comprehensive ..

Spectacular bodies: gender, genre and the action cinema

The dissertation presents an account of the contemporary American action cinema. The themes, stereotypes and iconography associated with the genre are explored through detailed discussion of film examples. Films are also situated in relation to the particular context of production and consumption associated with 'new Hollywood', including genre hybrids, the blockbuster as a form and the importance of new forms of distribution such as home video. Though framed as a genre study, the account is also centrally concerned with an exploration of gender. The dissertation presents an account of the articulation of masculinity within the genre and engages with developing debates in this field. It is suggested that contemporary images of men, widely discussed as new, can be usefully explored in relation to the generic history from which they emerge. The articulation of masculinity in the genre is explored through both genre codes and star images. Recent distinctive roles for women in the action cinema are further situated in a generic context. The research also explores the contention that representations of gender should be understood within an exploration of other discourses including race, class and sexuality. The place of black performers in the genre is discussed, and the extent to which recent films reiterate and/or develop existing stereotypes is addressed in this context. The limitations of ideological and narrative analysis in relation to a political exploration of the popular cinema is explored, with a consideration of cinematic spectacle and the place of fantasy identifications and symbolic configurations of power. The political ambivalence of popular imagery is emphasised in this context. It is argued that action films, which are often dismissed as simplistic in political terms articulate complex configurations of gendered and other identities

Culinary Entertainment, Creative Labor and the Re-Territorialization of White Masculinity

This article explores popular cultural themes of masculinity and mobility in the context of post-race and "end of men" discourses. Our attention is focused on sites of everyday culture, taking note of the tropes by which white male authority is fantastically recuperated through culinary entertainment. We read films such as Chef and television reality series such as Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives as sites of a re-terrorialization of white masculinity, exploring the nostalgic resonance of the road-trip and fantasies of mobility and plenty in a social/cultural context of privation and inequality

Mindful violence? Responses to the Rambo series' shifting aesthetic of aggression

Rambo (2008) marked the return of Sylvester Stallone's iconic action hero. What is most striking about the fourth film (as the response from reviewers testifies), is its graphic violence. My intention here is to critically engage with Rambo (2008) as rewriting the series' established aesthetic of violence. My overarching aim is to highlight how the popular press has sought to read the 2008 version of Rambo according to the discursive narratives surrounding Stallone's 1980s action films. The negative response to Rambo, I argue, stems from relying on critical patterns that do not fit the film itself

The Origin of Glucocorticoid Hormone Oscillations

Characterization of a peripheral hormonal system identifies the origin and mechanisms of regulation of glucocorticoid hormone oscillations in rats