AustLit logo
Keyword : Action single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Keyword : Action
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'My keyword today is action. No, it’s not about Meaghan Morris the action hero! But it is about Meaghan Morris as a woman of action. It is also about Meaghan’s work on action cinema and cultural research as engaged scholarship in action.

'I want to begin in the official genre of a keyword.

'Keyword: Action. Action refers to a genre of cinema, a culture industry and a cultural practice of ‘doing’. As a body genre derived from contact sports such as martial arts, its narrative is characterised by the rivalry and combat between two or more opposing individuals or groups (what she calls ‘a transnational mode of historical fiction’). Morris discusses the contact narrative of action cinema as a new transnational genre with an industrial history that precedes Hollywood-based beginnings in the 1970s (with films such as The Towering Inferno and Jaws). She highlights the formative role Hong Kong has played in this history since the 1950s, with the introduction of swordplay films by the Shaw Brothers studio, its co-productions with Japan, Thailand, Korea and Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s, and the expansion of its ‘direct to video’ industry in the 1980s and 1990s. This industry is characterised as a minor economy consisting of low budget, fly-by-night production using local cast and crew; shot in cheap locations such as slums, factories and disused buildings; erratic global distribution; and exhibited through informal spaces of consumption.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Cultural Studies Review Meaghan vol. 24 no. 1 March 2018 13796566 2018 periodical issue

    'It had to be ‘Meaghan’. The title of this edition of Cultural Studies Review is our salute to the work of Meaghan Morris and her lasting influence. That legacy is directly addressed in the collection of written works that emerged from the Meaghan Morris Festival held in 2016 (co-edited by Prudence Black, Stephen Muecke and Catherine Driscoll) but it is also echoed in the essays and reviews that are gathered within, that in their very mix speak to the particular tradition of cultural studies, Australian and otherwise, that Meaghan Morris helped so much to create.' (Introduction)

    2018
    pg. 65-68
Last amended 26 Apr 2018 09:26:45
65-68 Keyword : Actionsmall AustLit logo Cultural Studies Review
Informit * Subscription service. Check your library.
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X