Eric Lichtenfeld, Excerpts & Conclusion: Sifting Through the Rubble

(In Action Speaks Louder)

I've more or less finished with Lichtenfeld's book (having spent more time than I intended with it, although I regret nothing), and so these are a few brief final notes before I move on to some other books on the Action genre.

Lichtenfeld points out the interesting process by which the 1970s style of disaster-spectacle films which co-existed with the earliest Action films becomes conflated with the Action genre in the 1990s, creating a cycle of transgeneric films which strip Action of much of its Western and film noir elements (not to mention its emphasis on direct conflict between characters, replacing the enemy with a force of nature).

If action films are constructed according to principles of acceleration and passion, as indicated in a previous post, then it's easy to see why John Woo's films and American descendants like The Matrix (and perhaps this week's Wanted?) are so effective at de- and re-constructing the genre; the use of slow motion draws out acceleration without robbing it of its velocity, which in turn intensifies the passion of an action sequence. It simultaneously draws the audience in and pushes them away, creating a sort of detached but highly focuses engagement with the scene.

Ultimately Lichtenfeld characterizes the Action genre - in the face of a wide cultural, structural, formal and narrative variations within the grouping - as films which privilege aestheticized violence, and I think that this, combined with the acceleration/passion concept and the notion of regularly-paced spectacles is a useful definition. Disaster movies and other similar genres and subgenres, in which there is not violence per se (in the sense of humans enacting violence on each other, which is key to the genre) must be treated somewhat differently. (Although, as indicated above, the transgeneric nature of all films creates a great deal of overlap.)