Search results

Since the mid-2000s, there has been a marked resurgence in Hollywood action films featuring older male heroes, predominantly showcasing stars ranging from their mid-fifties into their seventies. This ‘geri-action’ cycle – a less-than-kind label that combines geriatric and action – has revitalised the careers of aged action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A core element of the cycle, beyond action franchise revivals and all-star ensembles featuring stars from the 1980s and 1990s, has been the emergence of late-career action turns by ageing Hollywood actors in globally successful French-produced, Hollywood-style action films. Part of a larger trend in French cinema towards the production of films in a distinctly commercial register, the ‘globalised’ aesthetic of French action film cannily mimics Hollywood action film style and aesthetics. These French-produced geri-action films are the roots of the cycle, represent some of its biggest box office successes and have transformed the career of several acclaimed recent-to-action Hollywood stars, exemplified by the prolific late action career of Oscar-nominated actor, Liam Neeson, most notably across three Taken films (2008–2014, EuropaCorp). Despite this, these French-produced geri-action films have predominantly been examined as a Hollywood and American phenomenon.

Geri-action quickly became synonymous with 1980s Hollywood action cinema's white male ‘hard bodies’, who are still widely understood to diagnose national anxieties and social ills – and violently embody their so-called “cures”. These French geri-action films similarly feature protagonists who forcefully struggle against perceived threats to the cultural position of traditional (white) masculinities and professional and paternal redundancy. Yet they also showcase deep-seated European anxieties about the threat of porous borders, immigration and social change, presaging a later shift in the cycle in Hollywood. Focusing on films that have received comparatively less scholarly attention, Taken 2 (2012), 3 Days to Kill (2014) and The Commuter (2018), this chapter examines the productive confluence of lower budget French-produced geri-action films and their ageing recent-to-action stars. These films depend on their stars to fortify their globalised Hollywood aesthetic and the stars' personae permit efficiencies such as clipped pacing. At the same time, budget constraints enhance the action performance of recent-to-action stars as unadorned, visceral and authentic-feeling. The films often stage fight sequences in confined, everyday spaces of work and tourism with ageing heroes who must creatively ‘make do’ with objects available to them. Equally, stunt coordination and choreography, editing and sound design make ageing and less experienced action performers appear to move faster and hit harder. Taken together, French-produced geri-action and its recent-to-action stars have transformed not only who stars in ‘Hollywood’ action cinema but who produces it.

Previous studies have shown that stock returns bear a premium for downside risk versus upside potential. We develop a new risk measure which scales the traditional CAPM beta by the ratio of the upside beta to the downside beta, thereby incorporating the effects of both upside potential and downside risk. This “modified” beta has substantial explanatory power in standard asset pricing tests, outperforming existing measures, and it is robust to various alternative modeling and estimation techniques.

Today, there is no academic or sociocultural context in which Austrian Economics (AE) is described as being dominant. AE is and remains, for better or for worse, a heterodox current. In the United States, however, but probably nowhere else in the world, AE is heterodox without being invisible or inconsequential. American scholars for whom AE is their preferred paradigm have been able to participate actively in the sort of “discussions” that Arjo Klamer (2007, p. 4) wishes to encourage. They are taken seriously by fellow economists. The vitality of American AE has no equivalent in the rest of the world.¹ Obvious constraints of time and space prevent us from offering supporting evidence for this sweeping statement, but in this paper we propose to take a close look at the French case. AE has made few inroads in France. There was a brief period in the 1980s when it was the object of some short-lived enthusiasm; since then interest has waned, although there are indications that the tide might yet again be turning, and in fact, as compared to many other western European countries, France may turn out to be, all things being relative, a less infertile ground than might a priori be thought.

The horror genre is and always has been populated by women, who can be seen to be at once both objectified and empowered. Building off the preexisting gender hierarchies and dynamics embedded in the history of horror cinema, this chapter looks at a number of New French Extremity films that assault audiences with unrelenting scenes of violence, torture and self-mutilation, which are performed almost exclusively upon or by women. Although the films of the New French Extremity have been dismissed as exploitative in their representations of wounded and suffering female bodies, their narratives also offer internal criticisms of the misogynistic portals of victimhood that are prevalent in the genre. Through a close analysis of the films Inside (Bustillo & Maury, 2007) (French title: À L’intérieur) and Martyrs (Laugier, 2008), this chapter will examine how both films deviate from the male monster/female victim dichotomy. Although the women of these films may start off vulnerable, they take charge of their situations, while also compacting the nature of feminine identity.

Over the last three quarters of a century, the discourse on economic and social policy has oscillated between two polar opposites: an interventionist approach and a free market-oriented one. The former led to the establishment of the Keynesian welfare state and was dominant in the post-war years, but the latter gained much ground beginning in the 1980s, forcing defenders of the welfare state to retreat into a more defensive position. In the wake of the ‘Great Recession’, however, these two visions are once again sustaining vigorous debates in the global public arena. Economists in their role as policy advisers and public intellectuals, in other words as ‘experts’, have participated actively in such debates; the gains made by (what its critics call) ‘neo-liberalism’ were due, in no small measure, to the growing prestige and influence of Austrian economics. The experts’ discourse tends to be a historical and arguments are often phrased in terms of supposedly ‘cutting edge’ theoretical and empirical advances.¹ Yesterday's theories are judged obsolete and irrelevant. I argue that a more historically informed perspective can actually be more rewarding.

Happiness in teaching, termed Eudemonia, comes from a perception of a relationship with students. Such a perception is vital to sustaining teachers in their work in both on- and offline contexts. While the importance of these relationships has been acknowledged, there have not been attempts to account for how teachers pursue relationships and the accompanying sense of happiness. It is in this frame that we discuss findings from a larger study of online teachers working to support students with disabilities in a part-time program at a large virtual school.

The chapter considers expectations for online teachers and sets up a dialogue between same and different as they relate to on- and offline pedagogy. It then asks more questions about these responsibilities in the context of efforts by teachers to feel legitimate in their claims to relationships with students.

Stories that both elicited and threatened Eudemonia are shared and discussed. In particular, the authors learned that online teachers desired relationships with students to such a great extent that they were willing to narrate relationality into most interactions with the students.

These findings suggest the difficult emotional work that online teachers must do in order to consider their work with students as beneficial. More work is needed to think about how relationships between teachers and students online can be leveraged for greater learning and to sustain both teachers and students in their work.

This chapter offers in-depth insight into the teacher work that online learning requires. It also offers a unique theoretical approach in the juxtaposition of stories of relationships with students online and offline.

Grave (English title: Raw), the 2016 feature film debut from French writer/director Julia Ducournau, is a body horror that explores cannibalism in a contemporary setting. A vegetarian student, Justine, develops cannibalistic desires after she is forced to eat rabbit kidneys in a hazing ritual at a veterinarian school.

This film portrays the female cannibal as having lost control of her bodily impulses. Justine displays a loss of cognition that results in involuntary actions when confronted with raw flesh. One can observe parallels in this portrayal and that featured in earlier films Dans ma peau (In my Skin, 2002, dir. Marina de Van) and Trouble Every Day (2001, dir. Claire Denis). These two films are identified with the early twenty-first-century French ‘cinema of the body’ trend, which involves disturbing and horrific portrayals of alienated protagonists, sexual debasement and transgressive urges.

In my exploration of the mind/body divide featured in Grave, I’ll argue that the film moves away from portrayals of the cannibal in the two earlier films, as we now observe a female protagonist who is actively engaged in meaningful relationships with others. As such, Justine seeks connection rather than disconnection from those around her, with varying levels of success.

So-called classical sociology took shape during perhaps the high point of a world dominated by imperial states. In the “west” the British, French, and German empires, along with a surging America, claimed political and sometimes territorial control over wide stretches of the globe. Beyond Europe and the United States, while the Ottoman and Qing empires were in there last days, new states were staking out their imperial claims such as Japan and Russia. The tension between a reality of empire and an ideal of sovereign nation-states eventually exploded in WWI. Curiously, much of this dynamic, especially the global power of empire, went theoretically unnoticed by the makers of modern sociology. This chapter explores this theme through a sketch of the failure of this theoretical reckoning in Marx, Weber, and Durkheim.