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Experts in Action Lauren Steimer

Experts in Action By Lauren Steimer

Experts in Action by Lauren Steimer


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Summary

Lauren Steimer examines how Hong Kong-influenced action movie aesthetics and stunt techniques have been taken up, imitated, and reinvented in other locations and production contexts around the globe.

Experts in Action Summary

Experts in Action: Transnational Hong Kong-Style Stunt Work and Performance by Lauren Steimer

Action movie stars ranging from Jackie Chan to lesser-known stunt women and men like Zoe Bell and Chad Stahelski stun their audiences with virtuosic martial arts displays, physical prowess, and complex fight sequences. Their performance styles originate from action movies that emerged in the industrial environment of 1980s Hong Kong. In Experts in Action Lauren Steimer examines how Hong Kong--influenced cinema aesthetics and stunt techniques have been taken up, imitated, and reinvented in other locations and production contexts in Hollywood, New Zealand, and Thailand. Foregrounding the transnational circulation of Hong Kong--influenced films, television shows, stars, choreographers, and stunt workers, she shows how stunt workers like Chan, Bell, and others combine techniques from martial arts, dance, Peking opera, and the history of movie and television stunting practices to create embodied performances that are both spectacular and, sometimes, rendered invisible. By describing the training, skills, and labor involved in stunt work as well as the location-dependent material conditions and regulations that impact it, Steimer illuminates the expertise of the workers whose labor is indispensable to some of the world's most popular movies.

Experts in Action Reviews

Experts in Action is a rich, painstakingly researched work on the evolutions of global stunt acting as a mode of performance. It beautifully shifts conversations about expertise into the realms of fandom, without relinquishing the rigor of its mixed methods engaging production history, performance studies, and transnational media theory. There's nothing at all like it in other accounts of Hong Kong cinema, and its consideration of the craft of stunt techniques is matched by the craft and meticulousness of Lauren Steimer's prose. -- Karen Tongson, author of * Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries *
With high ambition and conceptual creativity, Experts in Action is the first book on stunt work that takes its topic from the specialist margins of cinema and media studies and lobs it right at the heart of broad critical debate about transnationalism in culture. A breakthrough achievement. -- Meaghan Morris, author of * Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture *

About Lauren Steimer

Lauren Steimer is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and Media Arts at the University of South Carolina.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Experts in Action 1
1. Risky Business: Financial and Physical Risk in the Action Stardom of Jackie Chan 23
2. Hong Kong Action Cinema as a Mode in Thai Action Stardom: Tony Jaa and the New Stunting Star Model 56
3. A Hong Kong Reservoir for Xena: Communicative Translation and the Bodily Disposition of Stunting Star Zoe Bell 86
4. Hong Kong Action in Transit: The Postmillennial Stunt Craftwork of Chad Stahelski and Dayna Grant 121
Conclusion. Novice and Expert Performance-a Call to Action 162
Notes 175
Bibliography 199
Index 215

Additional information

NGR9781478011705
9781478011705
147801170X
Experts in Action: Transnational Hong Kong-Style Stunt Work and Performance by Lauren Steimer
New
Paperback
Duke University Press
20210226
240
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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