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It's All Coming Back to You: 1980s Retro Film Culture and the Masculinity of Cult

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1011874
Date08 1900
CreatorsCollins, Ryan William
ContributorsBenshoff, Harry, Martin, James, Heffernan, Kevin
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatiii, 130 pages, Text
RightsPublic, Collins, Ryan William, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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