The Lists Project

[Cold Bishop]

Who knows, maybe the idea of individual heroism as manifest in a solitary agent who restores a fallen world by combating error through violence could be argued to be fascist.

Perhaps I'm guilty of this, as well as using a fairly broad use of the term "fascism", but it's worth mentioning that, while the basic myth is certainly no innovation, that the modern Action brings an especially strong emphasis on to the "violence" portion of this, aestheticizing it, romanticizing it, eroticizing it, making it the focus of the film to an often distressing degree. There's also a major reactionary tinge to these films as a product of modern, democratic society: for a society whose basis is a shared system of law and order, these are films that go against it, emphasizing the ineffectuality of communal justice and focusing on the necessity of personal justice. For a society based in ideas of democratic equality, these are films that prescribe moral absolutism to selected individuals, and moral degeneracy to other, so that we don't blink when one violently suppresses the other. For a society that ideally thinks of itself as progressing towards increasing egalitarianism, resurrecting the old myths in such a violent and primitive can definitely seem regressive (And I definitely consider the "regressive" to be an element of fascism).

Of course, the up-above is the Action film at its worst case scenario. I do think people are misunderstanding me when I say the Action film is proto-whatever: I'm not saying that every Action film is ipso facto the above description, but that the very structural and thematic elements of the Action are stacked favorably to such a reactionary outcome more so than any other genre. Save maybe the War film, and its propensity for militarism and jingoism... but it is it coincidental that this is usually accomplished by making the War film an Action film? (And the War film is definitly an interesting "guilt-free" vehicle for the Action film, as combat allows for "trangressions" which democratic civilian life doesn't).

To be honest how he's defined the action genre seems more reminiscent of it's predecessor the adventure film.

The Action film grew out of and overlaps with the Adventure film, without a doubt. There's a reason why most systems of classification lump them together!

Is what makes them "action films" quantifiable, or is it just a variation on "I thought it was cool"?

I would say its as quantifiable as it is quantifiable to rule Hellzapoppin' out as a musical and rule It's Always Fair Weather in: like the Musical, the amount of time given over to the set-piece is definitely something that must be considered.

[knives]

Is what makes them "action films" quantifiable, or is it just a variation on "I thought it was cool"?

I would say its as quantifiable as it is quantifiable to rule Hellzapoppin' out as a musical and rule It's Always Fair Weather in: like the Musical, the amount of time given over to the set-piece is definitely something that must be considered.

I agree firmly with this (and now would be a good time to emphasize Dom's wing it philosophy) though there are a number of films where the number of action set pieces or even moments are limited. A good recent example is The American which insofar as I remember has only one action scene to speak of yet I would firmly place it in the genre (it's also a great example of an action film that goes against your argument of 'fascism' on account of the foggy morality).

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I would be in favour of a war films list if we de-emphasise the action/lost platoon/kinetic spectacle end of the licking stick and make war the context of the film. Of course we can have Errol Flynn winning WW2 single handed as well as candidates like Come and See, Human Condition and Battle of Algiers, which, taking up Cold Bishop's points, are all violent but not essentially action films and deal more with morality/colonialism/ethos of militarism/racism etc etc
By allowing a broader scope of context this also takes in potentially the immediate post war films of Rosselini, Kurosawa, Ozu, Wyler, Clouzot and so on and so on. The whole gamut of the demobbed and demoralised. This is of course deals with just WW2 which brings up the question of whose war when?
Essential Killing, Odd Man Out,War and Peace, Zulu just for starters.

War starts at Midnight!!

[domino harvey]

A War genre list shouldn't "deemphasize" war. I see what you're saying, but perhaps you should be encouraging inclusion of films that address the effects of war, not exclusion or reduced focus on films depicting war itself.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Domino,I thought I was saying just that, i.e. not seeking to exclude anything but to open it up. I didn't say de-emphasizing war itself only looking at it exclusively in action related terms .

[Mr Sausage]

There's also a major reactionary tinge to these films as a product of modern, democratic society: for a society whose basis is a shared system of law and order, these are films that go against it, emphasizing the ineffectuality of communal justice and focusing on the necessity of personal justice. For a society based in ideas of democratic equality, these are films that prescribe moral absolutism to selected individuals, and moral degeneracy to other, so that we don't blink when one violently suppresses the other. For a society that ideally thinks of itself as progressing towards increasing egalitarianism, resurrecting the old myths in such a violent and primitive can definitely seem regressive (And I definitely consider the "regressive" to be an element of fascism).

Your assumption is that this is a reaction against modern, democratic society, but it is more likely that it has nothing to do with it. These films, in general, aren't trying to resurrect myth (it has not been dead), but are continuing to enact a certain kind of storytelling very much alive in adventure films and westerns before them: that of a hero who must combat evil on his own, as a test of his individual, mythical heroism. How that tends to be manifested in the action film is that we see justice become ineffectual, and a hero stepping up to take that burden on himself. At first glance I agree that this might seem like an allegory about how modern justice has failed the sense of absolute justice that modern society ought to hold instead. But I don't think these movies are political allegories. Here's what I think is actually going on:

The evil forces in an action movie are so cartoonishly evil that they transcend the ability of modern conceptions of justice to deal with or contain them. Therefore, a hero who himself transcends modern standards of morality and justice is necessary to defeat them and restabilize the world. These are movies in which mythic fantasy grows out of what seems reality, and we instead witness a conflict between two types of absolutes play out on a scale elevated from reality. It's as if a knight and a dragon suddenly appeared in modern day Los Angeles or wherever and must battle amongst cars (and indeed you could make a very symbolic and reflexive action movie in which the landscape around the good guys and bad guys increasingly comes to resemble an ancient or a spiritual battlefield). Modern society and its justice is obviously only built for humans, and wasn't invented to deal with larger and more cosmic conceptions of evil and error that are symbolized in dragons, wyrms, and all sorts of figures. If one of them did arise, the only thing to defeat it is someone who represents a larger, more cosmic conception of justice.

This is why I don't see a political allegory in most of these films, because neither the good side nor the evil side are really of the world. The conflict they enact is clearly the product of a tradition of fantasy reaching back to our oldest narratives, and these movies almost invariably insist that such a conflict does not play any part of regular reality (hence the lead is always in conflict with modern institutions, and the baddies always fail to be contained by them). They are not us. They're knights and dragons that have happened to spring up in a realistic setting and play out a larger conflict within it. Action movies are a kind of fantasy swarming through an ostensible reality.

The problem of course is when people actually want to become a Schwarzenegger or a Seagal as represented in an action movie, or think the real world should act like this. But I think most action movies portray their heroes as being so beyond regular people as to be impossible (eg. can take a bullet most anywhere and keep going). Certainly Schwanzenegger's Conan, an obviously mythical character, is no different from his characters in Commando or Predator or The Running Man. Conan just happens to inhabit a context that represents his own unreality.

[Gregory]

That seems to take action films out of the social and political contexts in which they were written, produced, and viewed, and place them into a timeless mythical context, unless I've misunderstood. The action film genre as a whole does not have a specific social and political context, which makes it difficult to convincingly link it to fascism, but specific films and subgenre trends within the broader genre certainly do. Dirty Harry (and Kael's criticism of it) is a good example, and this old post that I remembered sums up the context better than I could, making a convincing case for why a vigilante film like Dirty Harry shouldn't be abstracted from the social/political context that in many ways impact the way viewers and critics experience and understand the film. The vigilante film is a subgenre that I think would not fit the thesis of an action hero filling a need for a "more cosmic conception of justice," just a more primal and lawless conception of "justice."

[matrixschmatrix]

If we're dealing with proto-fascism, which is to say the elemental stuff from which a fascist mythos can be formed, I absolutely do think both that adventurous tradition of a great man imposing his will on the cosmos through force (certainly, Siegfried was so appropriated by the Nazis) and the modern incarnation of Schwartzeneggars and Stallones gunning down all the bad guys are swimming in it- and I also think people unfortunately do take that stuff seriously, as with the extremely depressing stories of people emulating Jack Bauer's methodology from 24 in torturing enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's true that stories of that shape can be used for other purposes as well, but generally only by complicating or problematizing them- heightening the unreality until its farcical (Shoot 'Em Up, Crank), making textual the distance between the action/adventure view of reality and how the world actually works (Don Quixote, Observe and Report), undercutting the heroism of the protagonist or the nobility of their goals (Yojimbo, The Naked Spur), etc. The monsters faced in action movies are generally meant to be reflections of things we really fear, terrorists or kidnappers or evil outsiders (or, you know, all three, as in Taken) and we're often meant to think that there really are such men out there, protecting us without our knowledge. The fact the narratives are totally unreal doesn't necessarily occur to one unless one has a reasonable knowledge of what the realistic counterpoint would be, and the situations presented are generally deliberately exotic enough that one wouldn't have personal experience with them.

edit: Gregory, I agree that Dirty Harry is particularly fascist, but I don't think it's either accidental nor incidental- it's a fairly standard, entertaining cop movie pushed in that direction specifically by Milius' rewrites, and you can see the seams. I don't think the material is more inherently fascist than, say, Dragnet or The Lineup.

[Mr Sausage]

That seems to take action films out of the social and political contexts in which they were written, produced, and viewed, and place them into a timeless mythical context, unless I've misunderstood.

More like certain figures within the narrative seem to leap outside their social and political contexts and inhabit a larger and more timeless one.

The vigilante film is a subgenre that I think would not fit the thesis of an action hero filling a need for a "more cosmic conception of justice," just a more primal and lawless conception of "justice."

A good point. I tend against this view generally because actions films tend to imbue their heroic characters with a kind of grandeur that seems against primal and lawless conceptions of justice, but I'm sure there are plenty of examples that do the latter. Making an actual list of the two would show which trend is more prevalent.

I have to leave so maybe I'll post more later.

[ArchCarrier]

I didn't really follow the theoretical discussion, but it just seems strange to vote for a genre that covers the majority of all films ever made:



Which is why I would rather choose war movies, biblical epics or science fiction for the next List Project.

[zedz]

This is an interesting discussion.

A large part of my skepticism about the genre is that it seems to me like it's really a marketing invention that grew legs, not an organic genre (or a careful critical construct such as film noir). Nobody was making 'action films' in the 50s and 60s (and maybe not even the 70s), they were making westerns, or spy movies, or thrillers, or comedies, or science-fiction films. To a large extent, that's still true today. The blockbuster cookie-cutter is applied to all sorts of different material, from classic novels, to old TV shows, to original genre scripts originally written with completely different goals in mind. And though a few films from those earlier era have been retrospectively anointed as 'action films' (Seven Samurai being the most prestigious example), very few earlier movies would actually make the grade, if you're considering an 'action film' as a movie structured around a large number of violent set pieces. Hitchcock aside, hardly any earlier movies were structured that way. (Even Seven Samurai would probably have to lose most of its first half to play as an 'action film' in the modern sense.)

Is everybody here actually envisaging a project that would be 99% Hollywood and Hong Kong movies from the last 40 years? I was hoping we could find something with a little more depth and breadth.

[YnEoS]

Even though action is inclusive of many other genres, there are quite a few films I'm interested in that wouldn't necessarily fall into those subdivisions. And also I think it's interesting to compare the idea of action in films across genres.

[Gropius]

Is everybody here actually envisaging a project that would be 99% Hollywood and Hong Kong movies from the last 40 years? I was hoping we could find something with a little more depth and breadth.

That would still be a broader range of films than a definition of 'noir' which restricts itself - excessively, in my opinion - to Hollywood titles from a roughly 20-year period. (Not that I have a horse in this race.)

[knives]

If we're dealing with proto-fascism, which is to say the elemental stuff from which a fascist mythos can be formed, I absolutely do think both that adventurous tradition of a great man imposing his will on the cosmos through force (certainly, Siegfried was so appropriated by the Nazis) and the modern incarnation of Schwartzeneggars and Stallones gunning down all the bad guys are swimming in it-

Actually I don't think this applies to most of Stallone's work. His most notable character while overcoming adversity doesn't kill anyone and if it's political it's not fascist while at least the first outing of his other major character is an anti-war tract in which only one character dies and the horror of war is presented in as grim of terms as is possible. In recent years he's certainly taken up the Schwarzenegger mantle (and to be clear to a point that Sausage was making Conan is a very political movie), but he was always that way and only a minority of his characters could really be considered to fit that mold. Also as the recent Batman films prove just because somebody heralds a version of a character does not mean that that version or even that interpretation of that version is the only one possible.

[zedz]

EDIT: in reply to Gropius' post, now stranded on the previous page!

Oh definitely, but the advantage of the noir project (if you took it on those terms) is that it really was very sharply defined, and people were getting to grips with a large part of the entire corpus. Here we have a genre that's either excessively narrow or excessively broad, depending on how you hold your mouth. But maybe somebody here does have something to offer in the way of clarity.

[knives]

How is action more narrow than noir which I still have trouble differentiating from an ordinary crime film? I think Dom's if it quacks like a duck philosophy is the best to work with here though (and also nearly every country has it's action cinema even if it would bend toward the last 60 years).

[YnEoS]

Is everybody here actually envisaging a project that would be 99% Hollywood and Hong Kong movies from the last 40 years? I was hoping we could find something with a little more depth and breadth.

In my mind the closest example to action films early on in silent films is mainly rooted in Douglas Fairbanks films and Silent Samurai films.

Plenty of countries have action film industries outside Hollywood and Hong Kong, my personal interests are also in action films from Japan, France, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and Indonesia, and I'm quite sure with some research thriving action industries could be discovered in quite a few other countries as well. Though my personal interest is in the aesthetics and technique of the action scene and the way different countries handle them.

[matrixschmatrix]

Actually I don't think this applies to most of Stallone's work. His most notable character while overcoming adversity doesn't kill anyone and if it's political it's not fascist while at least the first outing of his other major character is an anti-war tract in which only one character dies and the horror of war is presented in as grim of terms as is possible.

I hadn't actually thought of Rocky as an action movie at all, though the sequels veer back and forth towards that mold. The first Rambo has a number of different mythologies competing in it- you could just as easily read it as an extremely fascist tract about faith in the moral instinct of a warrior trumping faith in any kind of organization or system as you could an indictment of Vietnam- but broadly speaking I was thinking more of the Death Wish style of movie.

Also as the recent Batman films prove just because somebody heralds a version of a character does not mean that that version or even that interpretation of that version is the only one possible.

Well, and likewise I don't think the fact that action movies often admit of fascist interpretations necessarily makes them inherently fascist- but I do think a lot of fascist mythology comes from very much a similar mythos. I mean, the Nazis loved Lang's Nibelungen, and while that surely doesn't make it an inherently fascist work I think it's worth examining what aspects of that style of storytelling made them admire it so- and it's broadly the same framework as that of action movies.

[knives]

Of course they also highly admired The Blue Angel and I have no clue what sort of message could be taken from that.

[Cold Bishop]

That Marlene Dietrich is an Aryan überbabe.

[TMDaines]

Of course they also highly admired The Blue Angel and I have no clue what sort of message could be taken from that.

Eh? The film was banned in Nazi Germany. Of course what was banned in different dictatorships and what dictators chose to watch in private never seems to correlate though.

[knives]

Was that before or after Dietrich had her Jane Fonda moment?

[TMDaines]

Was that before or after Dietrich had her Jane Fonda moment?

It had absolutely nothing to do with that. Heinrich Mann became person non grata in Nazi Germany and all his works were banned.

[knives]

I see. Misheard history on that one I guess.

[Cold Bishop]

Actually I don't think this applies to most of Stallone's work. His most notable character while overcoming adversity doesn't kill anyone and if it's political it's not fascist

Some people definitely consider Rocky fascist... I'm almost certain I've seen both Robin Wood and Jonathan Rosenbaum describe the film as such on separate occasions. Probably something to do with the way Stallone drapes his character in the American flag, both literally and metaphorically.

Your assumption is that this is a reaction against modern, democratic society, but it is more likely that it has nothing to do with it. These films, in general, aren't trying to resurrect myth (it has not been dead), but are continuing to enact a certain kind of storytelling very much alive in adventure films and westerns before them: that of a hero who must combat evil on his own, as a test of his individual, mythical heroism... The evil forces in an action movie are so cartoonishly evil that they transcend the ability of modern conceptions of justice to deal with or contain them. Therefore, a hero who himself transcends modern standards of morality and justice is necessary to defeat them and restabilize... Modern society and its justice is obviously only built for humans, and wasn't invented to deal with larger and more cosmic conceptions of evil... This is why I don't see a political allegory in most of these films, because neither the good side nor the evil side are really of the world.

But there's the rub: isn't this of one major reasons why real dyed-in-the-wool Fascists are so fond and obsessed with Myth? Which is to say: does the ideal egalitarian and rational society, that we seem to be striving for, have room for "cosmic" good and evil? Does it allow for individuals to "transcend" the rest of society and attain a higher cosmic moral position? Or condemn certain individuals of possessing a cosmic evil? Of course, it would be wrong to describe this particular brand of Myth as being inherently fascist, but certainly fascism is the one form of modern thought that is consistently mobilizing these mythic ideals, and trying to institute them into modern life (a modern life they find decadent and diseased).

A large part of my skepticism about the genre is that it seems to me like it's really a marketing invention that grew legs, not an organic genre (or a careful critical construct such as film noir). Nobody was making 'action films' in the 50s and 60s (and maybe not even the 70s), they were making westerns, or spy movies, or thrillers, or comedies, or science-fiction films.

Well, I hardly think it's fair to call it simply a "marketing invention." It's definitely true that Action films, with a capital-A, as a genre, emerges out of the breakdown of the studio systems, and more importantly, out of the breakdown of genres that they supported. In fact, the term "Melodrama", now used largely for women's pictures and domestic dramas, was the industry term for much of what we consider studio Action films now (which is why I believe no serious discussion of Action films can ignore the critical study of Melodrama). I have no doubt a list will largely emphasize post-sixties cinema, but it has its roots in b-westerns, in war films, in swashbuckler, in the more gung-ho war films, in the more rapid-fire gangster films and crime pictures, in all kinds of b-films and serials. It may include lot of the films that don't make the lists of world masterpieces... but good! This genre project could use more projects that tackle the films that will be ignored in the Decades lists.

Honestly, if we take Actions films off the table for the next Genre Project, it's only because we're lacking a dominoharvey-like guru to marshall it all into cohesion. I'm certainly not taking up the mantle!