With Violence if Necessary: Rearticulating the Family in the Contemporary Action-Thriller

Abstract

Hollywood's enormously popular action-thrillers have recently received much critical attention as a key site for the expression of shifting configurations of gendered identity in contemporary American culture. Much of the analysis has focused on the individual body–spectacular, tortured, and ultimately triumphant. In the 1980s these films featured an abundance of “hard body” masculinity embodied by actors such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mel Gibson (Jeffords). Comparable roles for women–Sigourney Weaver in the Alien series (1979, 1986, 1992, 1997) and Linda Hamilton in The Terminator (1984) and especially Terminator 2 (1991)–soon emerged, provocatively expanding the dimensions of the action-thriller formula.