No / As this collection makes abundantly clear, the concept of “World Cinema” can be hard to define. To further establish a sensible definition of what “cult world cinema” might be is to stretch, contort and confuse understanding even further. Scholars have made bold attempts at defining what “cult cinema” might be that range from the “informal” to the “intertextual” by way of the “subcultural”. For instance, Karl and Philip French’s notion of cult as an “intense personal interest and devotion to a person, idea or activity” sought to access the devotional, sacramental aspect of engagement with cinema (French and French 1999: 6). A study by Jancovich and colleagues argued that it is the reception of films and their distinction from, and opposition to, the “mainstream” that defines films as “cult” (Janovich et al. 2003: 2). Mathijs and Sexton (2011) later promoted a rich, intertextual sense of what cult cinema might be, while admitting that because the numerous attempts at defining cult cinema approach the subject from the perspective of the vernacular—“highlighting elements that cannot be caught in a description”—any definition of cult cinema must be tantalisingly “intangible” and “intersubjective” (Mathijs and Sexton 2011: 6).

The 1980s is a formative decade in American history. America sought to reestablish itself as a global power and to reassert the dominant ideology of white, patriarchal capitalism. Likewise, media producers in the 1980s sought to reassert the dominance of the white, male, muscled body in filmic representations. The identity politics of the 1980s and the depictions of the white, muscled body once prominent in the 1980s have been the site of conservative nostalgia for a young, male-dominated, cult audience that is a subset of a larger cultural trend known as retro film culture. This thesis provides historical context behind the populist 1980s B-action films from Cannon Group, Inc that celebrate violent masculinity in filmic representations with white, male action heroes. Equally important is the revival of VHS collecting and how this 1980s-inspired subculture reinforces white, patriarchal capitalism through the cult films they valorize and their capitalistic trading practices despite their claims of oppositionality against mainstream taste and Hollywood films. Lastly, this thesis reveals how a new cycle of contemporary films primarily produced outside of Hollywood reasserts and celebrates the dominance of the white, male, muscled body in filmic representations despite a postmodern and hyperconscious exterior. Overall, I argue how these areas of nostalgia are distinct, yet not unrelated, because they reassert white, patriarchal capitalism through the revival of conservative nostalgia for the 1980s.