This book is a discussion of 75 of the most popular films in America from 1921 through 1999 and the changes that have taken place in how masculinity is portrayed in the movies over that period of time. Traditionally in popular films, men have met challenging tasks, but what they accomplish and how successful they are have been drastically changed since the early 1920s. Prior to World War II, men were most often presented within the context of a family. After the war, men were presented as concerned with issues beyond their immediate families, and after 1970, they were portrayed as being overwhelmed by their situations. Recently, popular films have tended to focus on the relationships between men. This work documents these changes over eight decades, using the movies as vehicles to illustrate the major transformations.

This book analyses the romantic drama and the way that passionate love is presented as the central storyline in popular cinema, drawing upon genre studies and sociology. Exploring the passionate love story as a cinematic form, it also contributes, through comparison, to research on the romantic comedy.

What was a hero in Classical Antiquity? Why is it that their characteristics have transcended chronological and cultural barriers while they are still role models in our days? How have their features changed to be embodied by comic superheroes and film? How is their essence vulgarized and turned into a mass consumption product? What has happened with their literary and artistic representation along centuries of elitist Western culture? This book aims at posing these and other questions about heroes, allowing us to open a cultural reflection over the role of the classical world in the present, its meaning in mass media, and the capacity of the Greek and Roman civilizations to dialogue with the modern world. This dialogue offers a glimpse into modern cultural necessities and tendencies which can be seen in several aspects, such as the hero’s vulnerability, the archetype’s banalization, the possibility to extend the heroic essence to individuals in search of identities – vital as well as gender or class identities. In some products (videogames, heavy metal music) our research enables a deeper understanding of the hero’s more obvious characteristics, such as their physical and moral strength. All these tendencies – contemporary and consumable, contradictory with one another, yet vigorous above all – acquire visibility by means of a polyhedral vehicle which is rich in possibilities of rereading and reworking: the Greco-Roman hero. In such a virtual and postmodern world as the one we inhabit, it comes not without surprise that we still resort to an idea like the hero, which is as old as the West.

This book traces the effects of the feminist and civil rights movements in the construction of Hollywood action heroes. Starting in the late 1980s, action blockbusters regularly have featured masculine figures who choose love and community over the path of the stoic loner committed solely to duty. The American heroic quest of the past 25 years increasingly has involved a reclamation of home, creating a place for the Hero at the hearth, part of a more intimate community with less restrictive gender and racial boundaries. The author presents pieces of contemporary popular culture that create the complex mosaic of the present-day American heroic ideal. Hollywood popular films are examined that best represent the often painful shift from traditional heroic masculinity to a masculinity that is less "exceptional" and more vulnerable. There are also chapters on how issues of race and gender intersect with the new masculinity and on subgenres of 1990s films that also developed this postfeminist masculinity.

Sex and Violence examines the history and social dynamics of film censorship in the United States. It examines censorship controversies throughout film history, from the beginning of cinema in the 1890s to the present. The book focuses both on formal censorship systems, including state and local censorship boards and industry self-regulation efforts, to unofficial censorship rendered by pressure groups and powerful social movements. It probes beneath the official rhetoric and explanations, revealing sensitive, festering controversies. The book critically examines dozens of Hollywood's most controversial (and interesting) movies, focusing on recurring issues and censorship themes. The book reveals the social and political processes of vetting films and their effect on film form and content. In addition, it examines the use of sexuality and violence in movies and the effects of movie censorship on those issues. Finally, it analyzes and makes recommendations for dramatic changes in motion picture ratings.

Imagining the Arctic explores the culture and politics of polar exploration and the making of its heroes. Leading explorers, the celebrity figures of their day, went to great lengths to convince their contemporaries of the merits of polar voyages. Much of exploration was in fact theatre: a series of performances to capture public attention and persuade governments to finance ambitious proposals. The achievements of explorers were promoted, celebrated, and manipulated, whilst explorers themselves became the subject of huge attention. Huw Lewis-Jones draws upon recovered texts and striking images, many reproduced for the first time since the nineteenth century, to show how exploration was projected through a series of spectacular visuals, helping us to reconstruct the ways that heroes and the wilderness were imagined. Elegantly written and richly illustrated, Imagining the Arctic offers original insights into our understanding of exploration and its pull on the public imagination.

This volume reinvigorates the field of Classical Reception by investigating present-day culture, society, and politics, particularly gender, gender roles, and filmic constructions of masculinity and femininity which shape and are shaped by interacting economic, political, and ideological practices.