Masculine Tools: The Controlled Body of Jason Statham

Description

Jason Statham appears to have a very fixed and impenetrable star persona –he makes the same film over and over again, and his ‘acting’ range is limited at best. This is something that marks him out in the current climate of stars, even within the action genre, who are much more mutable (eg. There are various male action stars who are also recognised as ‘actors’–Daniel Craig, rising star Jeremy Renner, Ryan Gosling, even Tom Cruise, for his riskier projects), However, Statham as star contains more multiplicity than might be expected. One of Richard Dyer’s key contributions to Star Studies is the idea that star images have a ‘structured polysemy’ that enable multiple interpretations and pleasures. My analysis of Statham’s physicality in performance and persona, will seek to demonstrate the multiplicity of its meaningfulness, or more precisely, the ways in which the presentation of his body, especially in tensions between order and rupture, creates room for and thereby actively encourages a multiplicity of pleasures.


University of Hertfordshire research seminar series

Period	Apr 2013
Held at	University of Hertfordshire