Race in the action film
Race in the action film
This chapter argues that the contemporary action film evidences the persistence of traditional racial hierarchies and racial stereotypes, with the ethnicity of the action hero still frequently ‘defaulting’ to Anglo-American while non-white and non-Anglo characters remain on the sidelines, only permitted to be active and heroic in the context of a larger group. The chapter then investigates the representational negotiations that take place when a nonwhite person takes on the role of action hero, using I, Robot and Avatar to analyse how notions of otherness become redirected, before considering how whiteness operates as a structuring concept in the action movie's representational hierarchy, both as a dominant category and as a locus of fear, using xXx as an example.
Keywords: Whiteness, Race, Ethnicity, Racial hierarchy, Representation, Anglo-American, Latino, African-American
Edinburgh Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
