Starring Tom Cruise examines how Tom Cruise's star image moves across genres and forms as a type of commercial product that offers viewers certain pleasures and expectations. Cruise reads as an action hero and romantic lead yet finds himself in homoerotic and homosocial relationships that unsettle and undermine these heterosexual scripts. In this volume, editor Sean Redmond shows how important star studies is not just to understanding the ideological, commercial, and cultural significance of one star but to seeing how masculinity, ethnicity, sexuality, and commodity relations function in contemporary society. The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the ways that Cruise's star image and performances are built on a desiring gaze, nearly always complicated by perverse narrative arcs and liminal character relationships. This section also explores the complex and contradictory ways he embodies masculinity and heterosexuality. Part 2 places Cruise within the codes and conventions of genre filmmaking and the way they intersect with the star vehicle. Cruise becomes monomythical, heroic, authentic, and romantic, and at the same time, he struggles to hold these formulas and ideologies together. Part 3 views Cruise as both an ageless totemic figure of masculinity who does his own stunts, as well as an aging star-his body both the conduit for eternally youthful masculinity and a signifier of that which must ultimately fail. These readings are connected to wider discursive issues concerning his private and public life, including the familial/patriarchal roles he takes on.Scholars writing for this collection approach the Cruise star image through various vectors and frames, which are revelatory in nature. As such, they not only demonstrate the very best traditions of close ""star"" textual analysis but also move the approach to the star forward. Students, scholars, and readers of film, media, and celebrity studies will enjoy this deep dive into a complex Hollywood figure.

Glass slippers, a fairy godmother, a ball, a prince, an evil stepfamily, and a poor girl known for sitting amongst the ashes: incarnations of the Cinderella fairy tale have resonated throughout the ages. Hidden between the lines of this fairy tale exists a history of fantasy about agency, power, and empowerment. This book examines twenty-first-century "Cinderella" adaptations that envision the classic tale in the twenty-first century through the lens of wokenesss by shifting rhetorical implications and self-reflexively granting different possibilities for protagonists. The contributors argue that the Cinderella archetype expands past traditional takes on the passive princess. From Sex and the City to Game of Thrones, from cyborg Cinderellas to Inglorious Basterds, contributors explore gender-bending and feminist adaptations, explorations of race and the body, and post-human and post-truth rewritings. The collection posits that contemporary "Cinderella" adaptations create a substantive cultural product that both inform and reflect a contemporary social zeitgeist.

This book explores many of the theological and religious themes inherent in the Game of Thrones HBO television series and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels. Written for academics yet accessible for the layperson, the chapters explore themes of power, religion, and sacred institutions in Westeros; Christian ecclesiology in the Night's Watch and the religion of the Iron Islands; Augustinian notions of evil in the Night King and anthropology in the Seven; Orientalism, Hinduism, and the many worldviews in the World of Ice and Fire, and the series more controversial and disturbing themes of rape and death. Theology and Game of Thrones will appeal to theology and religious studies scholars and fans alike as it explores these elements in Martin's complex fantasy epic.

Glass slippers, a fairy godmother, a ball, a prince, an evil stepfamily, and a poor girl known for sitting amongst the ashes: incarnations of the "Cinderella" fairy tale have resonated throughout the ages. Hidden between the lines of this fairy tale exists a history of fantasy about agency, power, and empowerment. This book examines twenty-first-century "Cinderella" adaptations that envision the classic tale in the twenty-first century through the lens of wokenesss by shifting rhetorical implications and self-reflexively granting different possibilities for protagonists. The contributors argue that the "Cinderella" archetype expands past traditional takes on the passive princess. From Sex and the City to Game of Thrones, from cyborg "Cinderellas" to Inglorious Basterds, contributors explore gender-bending and feminist adaptations, explorations of race and the body, and post-human and post-truth rewritings. The collection posits that contemporary "Cinderella" adaptations create a substantive cultural product that both inform and reflect a contemporary social zeitgeist.

Starring Tom Cruise examines how Tom Cruise's star image moves across genres and forms as a type of commercial product that offers viewers certain pleasures and expectations. Cruise reads as an action hero and romantic lead yet finds himself in homoerotic and homosocial relationships that unsettle and undermine these heterosexual scripts. In this volume, editor Sean Redmond shows how important star studies is not just to understanding the ideological, commercial, and cultural significance of one star but to seeing how masculinity, ethnicity, sexuality, and commodity relations function in contemporary society. The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the ways that Cruise's star image and performances are built on a desiring gaze, nearly always complicated by perverse narrative arcs and liminal character relationships. This section also explores the complex and contradictory ways he embodies masculinity and heterosexuality. Part 2 places Cruise within the codes and conventions of genre filmmaking and the way they intersect with the star vehicle. Cruise becomes monomythical, heroic, authentic, and romantic, and at the same time, he struggles to hold these formulas and ideologies together. Part 3 views Cruise as both an ageless totemic figure of masculinity who does his own stunts, as well as an aging star-his body both the conduit for eternally youthful masculinity and a signifier of that which must ultimately fail. These readings are connected to wider discursive issues concerning his private and public life, including the familial/patriarchal roles he takes on.Scholars writing for this collection approach the Cruise star image through various vectors and frames, which are revelatory in nature. As such, they not only demonstrate the very best traditions of close ""star"" textual analysis but also move the approach to the star forward. Students, scholars, and readers of film, media, and celebrity studies will enjoy this deep dive into a complex Hollywood figure.