%0 Journal Article
%T Hard bodies and sidelong looks: Spectacle and fetish in 1980s action cinema
%A Nicky Falkof
%J Excursions
%D 2010
%I University of Sussex
%X From Stallone and Schwarzenegger to Gibson and Willis, the Hollywood action star of the 1980s was a hard-bodied hero with an attitude to match. But more than this, the action hero was an ideological construct; referenced by the president, ubiquitous in popular cultural production and reception of the time, his excessive muscularity forms a complex and problematic textual canvas for reading the hegemonic desires of Reaganite America. I this paper I consider cinematic relations to the heroic body through the dual prism of Freud¡¯s conception of fetishism and De Bord¡¯s formulation of the spectacle. Using the work of film theorists like Metz and Mulvey, cultural historians Susan Jeffords and Yvonne Tasker and psychoanalyst Kaja Silverman, I illustrate that the hero¡¯s spectacular body operates as a fetish for the viewer, and thus that spectacle is fetish. Films to be considered include Rambo, Terminator and the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard series.
%U http://www.excursions-journal.org.uk/index.php/excursions/article/view/6