Glen Donnar | RMIT University (original) (raw)

Books by Glen Donnar

Across a broad range of subgenres-including disaster melodrama, monster movies, postapocalyptic s... more Across a broad range of subgenres-including disaster melodrama, monster movies, postapocalyptic science fiction, discovered footage and home invasion horror, action-thrillers, and frontier westerns-author Glen Donnar examines the impact of "terror-others," from Arab terrorists to giant monsters, especially in relation to cinematic representations in earlier periods of national turmoil. Donnar demonstrates that the reassertion of masculinity and American national identity in post-9/11 cinema repeatedly unravels across genres. Taking up critical arguments about Hollywood's attempts to resolve male crisis through orientalizing figures of terror, he shows how this failure reflects an inability to effectively extinguish the threat or frightening difference of terror. The heroes in these movies are unable to heal themselves or restore order, often becoming as destructive as the threats they are supposed to be fighting. Donnar concludes that interrelated anxieties about masculinity and nationhood continue to affect contemporary American cinema and politics. By showing how persistent these cultural fears are, the volume offers an important counternarrative to this supposedly unprecedented moment in American history.

Journal Articles by Glen Donnar

Celebrity Studies, 2021

Jian Xu, Glen Donnar & Vikrant Kishore (2021) Internationalising Celebrity Studies: turning towar... more Jian Xu, Glen Donnar & Vikrant Kishore (2021) Internationalising
Celebrity Studies: turning towards Asia, Celebrity Studies, 12:2, 175-185, DOI:10.1080/19392397.2021.1912069

The Journal of Popular Culture, 2018

Centennial commemorations of WWI in 2014-15 triggered a slew of Australian film and television mi... more Centennial commemorations of WWI in 2014-15 triggered a slew of Australian film and television mini-series depicting the nation’s early experiences in the Gallipoli campaign. This article maps how these recent productions’ deployment of adventure as an explicit narrative frame reveals complex continuities, transformations and subversions of adventure tropes and themes that have long structured Australian screen representations. Adventure-war remains a masculinist mode and Australian soldier masculinity idealized as forging the young nation. Yet recent productions also unsettle the customary “coming of age” chronology, indict the influence of adventure fiction, render adventure-war more inclusive and undermine traditional constructions of racial superiority.

Celebrity Studies, Jan 17, 2017

From Special issue introduction (Neil Ewen): In this first essay, Donnar examines Meokbang, a... more From Special issue introduction (Neil Ewen):

In this first essay, Donnar examines Meokbang, a phenomenon
which features ‘broadcasting jockeys’ who gain celebrity status by sitting in front of webcams, ‘live-streaming their consumption of vast quantities of food’. Donnar argues that while ‘Moekbang certainly facilitates a sexualised, voyeuristic gaze’, his subtle reading gestures towards how these broadcasts of DIY celebrity ‘navigate cultural
and economic tensions, anxieties and passions specific to Korean society and culture’ and how it 'engenders divergent audience affects and ambivalent modes of viewing, including pleasure, desire, longing, horror, disgust and shame’. Donnar’s careful exploration therefore places the phenomenon within a national, cultural, and historical specificity that serves to problematise hegemonic representational stereotypes of, and assumptions about, Asian culture that are repeatedly elaborated in English language media.

Focusing on The Expendables films, I identify the importance of discourses of professional and cu... more Focusing on The Expendables films, I identify the importance of discourses of professional and cultural redundancy in ‘geri-action’, an emergent subgenre of Hollywood action film that has revitalised the careers of ageing action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. These redundancies, which hold long-standing significance in 1980s action film, are compounded in geri-action by advanced age and diminished physical capacity. In geri-action, the spectacle of once idealised, muscled bodies is concealed and displaced onto oversized guns, fetishised vehicles and younger action bodies. However much geri-action resists 1980s action stars’ use-by dates, it ultimately admits physical and generic exhaustion.

Despite the Gothic’s much-discussed resurgence in mainstream American culture, the role the late ... more Despite the Gothic’s much-discussed resurgence in mainstream American culture, the role the late 2000s financial crisis played in sustaining this renaissance has garnered insufficient critical attention. This article finds the Gothic tradition deployed in contemporary American narrative film to explore the impact of economic crisis and threat, and especially masculine anxieties about a perceived incapacity of men and fathers to protect vulnerable families and homes. Variously invoking the American and Southern Gothics, Take Shelter (2011) and Winter’s Bone (2010) represent how the domestic-everyday was made unfamiliar, unsettling and threatening in the face of metaphorical and real (socio-)economic crisis and disorder. The films’ explicit engagement with contemporary American economic malaise and instability thus illustrates the Gothic’s continued capacity to lay bare historical and cultural moments of national crisis. Illuminating culturally persistent anxieties about the American male condition, Take Shelter and Winter’s Bone materially evoke the Gothic tradition’s ability to scrutinize otherwise unspeakable national anxieties about male capacity to protect home and family, including through a focus on economic-cultural “white Otherness.” The article further asserts the significance of prominent female assumption of the protective role, yet finds that, rather than individuating the experience of financial crisis on failed men, both films deftly declare its systemic, whole-of-society basis. In so doing, the Gothic sensibility of pervasive anxiety and dread in Take Shelter and Winter’s Bone disrupts dominant national discursive tendencies to revivify American institutions of traditional masculinity, family and home in the wakes of 9/11 and the recession.

This article examines white heterosexual men in five recent Norwegian films that expose them as a... more This article examines white heterosexual men in five recent Norwegian films that expose them as anxious and immature. These films mirror wider trends in the evaluation of white male failure and inadequacy across western cinemas since the mid-2000s. Extending critical discourses on ‘crises of masculinity’, especially in American film, this article finds in these films the ambivalent legacy of enforced gender politics in Norway over the last four decades. More specifically, they focus on Norwegian male complaints and ambivalence towards societal developments in favour of gender equality. Male characters exploit the opportunities of sexual liberation. They simultaneously objectify and neurotically fear women. A multitude of mental and physical ‘ailments’ establishes the men as victims. In an attempt to reclaim destabilized masculinities, parents and sexualized women are demonized. Ultimately, however, the desire to contain female sexuality and the transition into (hetero)sexual maturity is frustrated, and male anxieties remain unrelieved and unresolved.

The viewer of the televisual image often looks away from the mediated suffering of (distant) bodi... more The viewer of the televisual image often looks away from the mediated suffering of (distant) bodies, victims of terrorism, overwhelmed, helpless, seemingly consigned to a despairing passivity. But to not look is to refuse recognition of these suffering bodies and to accept their effacement (in death and mediation) as subjects. This paper adopts a 'Levinasian' approach to ‘the face’ to discern a way for the viewer to bear witness and establish a social connection with mediated bodies in suffering. Ultimately, for the viewer, it is not agency but responsiveness that matters, a passive engagement; an openness and a readiness to respond to the Other's call upon us, which makes possible a meaningful engagement. The effacement of mediated bodies in suffering cannot be reversed, but in the viewer's recognition and respons(ibility) it can be exceeded, transcended and they, finally, re-covered as subjects.

This study represents an attempt to redress the neglect of academic research into coverage of the... more This study represents an attempt to redress the neglect of academic research into coverage of the Madrid train bombings through a content analysis of major Australian newspapers in the immediate aftermath (12–21 March 2004). It quantifies a sudden and significant shift in representation from a ‘support for Spain’ news frame following the bombings to a ‘criticism of Spain’ frame following the Spanish national election result only three days later. Australian newspapers made support for a terrorised Spain conditional on a politics of representation marked by the ‘war on terror’ as a master frame, and served to reflect the political interests and sponsored interpretation of government sources. The moral implications of this withdrawal of support for the Spanish cannot be under-estimated, for it suggests that Australian newspapers were prepared to contribute to an ‘erosion’ of compassion for recent victims of terrorism.

The PIM project specifically deals with media education in the tertiary sector. Post Industrial M... more The PIM project specifically deals with media education in the tertiary sector. Post Industrial Media is a term we have adopted to refer to the changes in media production, use, consumption, distribution and design that are the consequence of distributed networks, digitisation, and 'soft' social systems - our Manifesto for a Networked Pedagogy outlines how we believe these changes impact on pedagogy.

The project describes teaching and learning experiments undertaken within the RMIT media program to develop appropriate curriculum content and methods for teaching graduates who intend to enter the post industrial media landscape. We term this 'media literacy 2.0'.

Media literacy 2.0 is how we describe the set of complementary literacies that we teach and rely upon in the media curriculum; media literacy, 'network literacy', social literacies & literacies of learning. These imply a move from students merely being content consumers to active knowledge producers across a variety of media platforms and disciplines, and to them acting as peers within contemporary networked media and knowledge ecologies.

Book Chapters by Glen Donnar

Social Marketing: Principles and Practice for Delivering Global Change, 2023

Young men often align with outdated rigid gender norms that can be harmful to them and those arou... more Young men often align with outdated rigid gender norms that can be harmful to them and those around them. This social marketing project integrates insights from students who identify as male with a student-led co-design process to develop a campaign to define and foster healthy masculinities. The aim was to confront these unhealthy forms of masculinity, and then respond to these challenges through a co-design process. Students worked with The Man Cave, an organisation that empowers boys using impactful programs, role models and resources. Through this co-design process, students of all genders challenged their preconceived notions and stereotypes of what it is to be a man, considered more healthy ways to interact and promote healthier masculinities, and then developed their own ‘solutions’ to the wicked problem: ‘What could masculinity be?’

Gender and Action Films: 2000 and Beyond, 2022

Since the mid-2000s there has been a marked resurgence in Hollywood action films featuring older ... more 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 from the 80s and 90s, 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 (Michael, 2019), 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 (2008-14, 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, the greater reliance on stunt coordination and choreography, editing and sound design for ageing and less experienced action performers makes them 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.

Starring Tom Cruise, S Redmond (ed.), Apr 1, 2021

Tom Cruise’s most recent films prominently feature him performing ever-more outlandish stunts and... more Tom Cruise’s most recent films prominently feature him performing ever-more outlandish stunts and ever-greater physical exertions. In a period of star decline, Cruise’s stuntwork remains a marker of undiminished authenticity and star performance in Hollywood. This chapter uses on-set news, gossip and publicity, and promotional materials from a number of recent films, including three Mission: Impossible films—Ghost Protocol (Bird 2011), Rogue Nation (McQuarrie 2015) and Fallout (McQuarrie 2019)—and The Mummy (Kurtzman 2017), to interrogate enduring narratives about Cruise’s very particular “spectacular” stardom. It argues that these narratives invoke competing discourses about stuntwork, generating a steady impression not only of the action spectacle each film will deliver, but Cruise’s professional intensity, commitment and ‘crazy’, ‘death-defying’ feats. In so doing, both Cruise’s conspicuous physical-star labor and the on-set injuries he has laudably overcome now evidence anxieties about undeniable aging rather than its undaunted defiance.

Cityscapes of the Future: Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, Feb 27, 2018

This chapter examines the horrific experiences of a ‘final man’ – the fabled last man on Earth – ... more This chapter examines the horrific experiences of a ‘final man’ – the fabled last man on Earth – in a dystopic near-future science-fiction cityscape through a comparative analysis of three related post-apocalyptic films, ranging from the late ‘classical’ Hollywood period to a contemporary blockbuster. The films variously expose American (male) racial anxieties and preoccupations in keeping with each film’s respective period. Each ‘final man’ initially enacts a masculinist desire to control urban space. However, the city is also a fearful space; and one irrevocably not his. This horrific loss of control is associated with historical racial fears of perceived urban destruction – and expressed through the arrival of ‘monstrous’ Others varyingly identified with terror, counter-culture and white patriarchy. Ultimately, an idealised post-racial future may mandate abandoning the ‘monstrous’ city for a non-urban future that precludes the ‘final man’.

Social Marketing: Rebels with a cause (3rd edn), Oct 25, 2017

Drowning is an all too frequent occurrence in Australia where the climate is conducive to outdoor... more Drowning is an all too frequent occurrence in Australia where the climate is conducive to outdoor activities, and lifestyle and leisure choices often revolve around water. Males represent more than 80 per cent of all drowning deaths, and a third of all such incidents (34%) concern people aged 55 and over (Royal Life Saving Society – Australia 2016). Alcohol and illicit drugs are a contributing factor in many drownings, but the relaxation of inhibitions, lowered perception of risk and masculine dynamics of competence and autonomy also increase the risk. Even more tellingly, experience on the water does not lower the risk, with aquatic leisure activities not considered a risk by either experienced or inexperienced water users because potential negative consequences are not conceived as tangible, present or realistic. This is a key reason why social marketing campaigns targeting middle-aged or older men commonly fail to change behaviours or attitudes about water safety. This case study of the Royal Life Saving Society – Australia’s 2014 campaign, ‘The Talk’ – Reducing Drowning in People over 55, provides recommendations on how to design social marketing strategies that are applied across the social system, rather than just targeting the individual.

Lasting Screen Stars: Personas that Endure and Images that Fade, 2016

Reflecting 9/11: New Narratives of Crisis, Disaster and Change, 2016

War Gothic in Literature and Culture, pp.136-153, 2015

Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door, Aug 2015

Suggesting that bathrooms in film are primarily theorized as transgressive spaces of violence, vu... more Suggesting that bathrooms in film are primarily theorized as transgressive spaces of violence, vulnerability, disorder and disturbing acts, Glen Donnar’s work adopts a different stance, focusing on encounters with the self and/as other in bathroom mirrors, whereby the bathroom arguably becomes a space of revelation albeit one which discloses inadequacy, difference and transformation. His chapter explores the many contradictory significances of domestic bathrooms and mirrors for younger men across key depictions from and of the 1980s in American film. The simultaneously physical and metaphorical, real and unreal characteristics of the mirror disturb bathroom and male protagonist alike, in large part because of its ambivalent capacity to both reveal and distort. Donnar considers the filmic bathroom finally a revelatory, heterotopic space that can neither conceal nor contain male inadequacy, shame or monstrosity confirmed through the mirrored encounter of the self .

Celebrity Studies, 2021

The Journal of Popular Culture, 2018

Celebrity Studies, Jan 17, 2017

From Special issue introduction (Neil Ewen): In this first essay, Donnar examines Meokbang, a... more From Special issue introduction (Neil Ewen):

Social Marketing: Principles and Practice for Delivering Global Change, 2023

Gender and Action Films: 2000 and Beyond, 2022

Starring Tom Cruise, S Redmond (ed.), Apr 1, 2021

Cityscapes of the Future: Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, Feb 27, 2018

Social Marketing: Rebels with a cause (3rd edn), Oct 25, 2017

Lasting Screen Stars: Personas that Endure and Images that Fade, 2016

Reflecting 9/11: New Narratives of Crisis, Disaster and Change, 2016

War Gothic in Literature and Culture, pp.136-153, 2015

Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door, Aug 2015

The Child in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema, Mar 2015

Apocalypse: Imagining the End, 2013

Challenges in International Communication, 2012

Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives, 2010

Post Industrial Media Education?, 2012

This chapter reflects briefly on the experience, pedagogical benefits and challenges of rethinkin... more This chapter reflects briefly on the experience, pedagogical benefits and challenges of rethinking student participation in the post-industrial classroom, using multiple networked learning tools with a postgraduate Media & Communication cohort of diverse age, cultural and professional experience to deconstruct 'broadcast' communication models, decentre knowledge and encourage student involvement and responsibility for learning, assessment and collaborative knowledge production.

2SER - Real Radio 107.3 FM, 2018

With the release of Spielberg’s new adventure flick Ready Player One, the story of a world obsess... more With the release of Spielberg’s new adventure flick Ready Player One, the story of a world obsessed with nostalgia the lines between reality and fantasy have begun to blur. Have we reached peak saturation of nostalgia?

2SER - Real Radio 107.3 FM, 2017

The science-fiction action film Ghost in the Shell comes out at the end of this month, based orig... more The science-fiction action film Ghost in the Shell comes out at the end of this month, based originally on Japanese manga and anime. But over the course of its production there has been a lot of discussion around the the film’s casting choices, especially around the lead casting of Scarlett Johansson. There’s been a lot of critique in the public around the casting of a white woman into the role of an Asian character, with many wondering why she was cast ahead of a Japanese actress. Recently this discussion has escalated, with a viral media campaign that encourages people to make their own memes about the film having seemingly backfired, and many taking the chance to callout the issue of Johansson’s casting. This morning The Daily spoke to Dr Glen Donnar Lecturer in Popular Culture, Asia Media and Culture at the RMIT University about this issue.

Cosmopolitan magazine (Australia), Sep 2017

Cosmopolitan magazine (Australia), May 2017

2SER - Real Radio 107.3 FM, 2016

Although, there has been a call for diversity in Hollywood film for recent years, we have constan... more Although, there has been a call for diversity in Hollywood film for recent years, we have constantly been seeing whitewashing on screens whether it’s Scarlett Johansson’s casting in Japanese franchise, ‘Ghost in the shell’ and Tilda Swinton’s ‘Ancient One’ in ‘Doctor Strange’. This issue has made news again after the trailer was released ‘The Great Wall’ starring Matt Damon was released, with controversy striking again for the white actor playing an Asian character.

So why do Hollywood continue to whitewash when there are many culturally diverse actors out there looking for work?

2SER - Real Radio 107.3 FM

RMIT News, Oct 6, 2016

Dr Donnar's recent research focuses on overeating celebrities- through the South Korean new media... more Dr Donnar's recent research focuses on overeating celebrities- through the South Korean new media phenomenon of 'mukbang' and American 'dude food TV'.

The Conversation, Jul 25, 2016

Advertising and sex are two of the oldest professions in the world. Indeed, one of the earliest u... more Advertising and sex are two of the oldest professions in the world. Indeed, one of the earliest uses of advertising was to advertise sexual services; prostitutes in Ancient Greece carved ads into the soles of their sandals so that their footprints...

In Media Res, Apr 18, 2016

2SER - Real Radio 107.3 FM

The 88th Academy Awards happened yesterday and was one of the most interesting Oscar shows in the... more The 88th Academy Awards happened yesterday and was one of the most interesting Oscar shows in the past few years. With all the controversy of the #OscarsSoWhite and the fact that there was no clear front runner for best picture, the show brought the incredible films and incredible talent from 2015 to light.

We were joined by Dr Glen Donnar, Lecturer in the school of Media and communications at RMIT University to get all the info on the event!”

More than just the latest in a series of resurrected nostalgia properties, the paranormal series ... more More than just the latest in a series of resurrected nostalgia properties, the paranormal series is a natural fit for a changed technological, cultural and political landscape. TV Club breaks out the tinfoil to find out why.

2SER - Real Radio 107.3 FM, 2016

The announcement of the 88th Academy Award nominations last week has indicated a whitewashing of ... more The announcement of the 88th Academy Award nominations last week has indicated a whitewashing of the artists the Academy has voted for. From Leonardo Dicaprio to Cate Blanchett, there seems to be no artists of colour in the race for the Oscar this year. This has caused much distress to many, with some people even boycotting the event as a whole. We are now joined by Dr Glen Donnar from RMIT University to discuss more about this issue.

The List, Dec 4, 2015

Rebecca Sheehan (University of Sydney) and I take a look at the trend in cinema of the geri-actio... more Rebecca Sheehan (University of Sydney) and I take a look at the trend in cinema of the geri-action hero, and the strategy used by ageing stars like Sylvester Stallone to try to tap into new markets.

We also trace the historical context of boxing films and discuss what they can tell us about contemporary ideas of race, class and culture.

The World, The Flesh, and The Devil (MacDougall, 1959) depicts the experiences of its black ‘fina... more The World, The Flesh, and The Devil (MacDougall, 1959) depicts the experiences of its black ‘final man’, played by civil rights activist, Hollywood star and producer Harry Belafonte, in a world radically depopulated by radioactive conflict. The under-appreciated film also explores contemporary American (male) racial anxieties and preoccupations, particularly about the survival of the ‘monstrous’ racialised Other. The possibility of a post-apocalyptic interracial coupling with a white female survivor is violently resisted not only by white male anxieties about miscegenation, but the black survivor’s preservation of societal norms of race and sexuality. Ultimately, the film – and its producer-star – raises significant questions about the ongoing ambivalence towards representations of race and sexuality and the prospect of an interracial or post-racial future in American cinema.

"While much recent scholarly work has demonstrated how Hollywood genre films routinely construct ... more "While much recent scholarly work has demonstrated how Hollywood genre films routinely construct victimized or masochistic masculinities, there remains a scholarly tendency to assume they ‘characteristically conclude with an almost magical restitution of male power’ (Savran, 1998: 37). Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (2006), a post-9/11 disaster film – akin to classical Hollywood narrative – seemingly meets this critical assumption: it formally and narratively facilitates the wounded passive and trapped officers' reimagining of a dominant masculinity earlier associated with the uniform through a restoration of agency and return to the home. It subsequently, and paradoxically, reasserts this same destabilized masculinity through rescuers who return to the uniform in response to the attacks.

However, this paper will argue that formal and narrational efforts in World Trade Center ultimately fail to convincingly restore male power. First, conventional masculinity is only restored via heteronormative masquerade. This masquerade both reveals the earlier insufficiency of uniformed masculinity and undermines the trapped men’s reimagining. Second, the film incoherently, even hysterically, attempts to articulate conflicting 'rhetorics of crisis' (Robinson, 2000: 11); that is, to both reimagine an alternative masculinity and remasculinize by healing the wound. Finally, accepting masculinity as relational, World Trade Center is unable to reimagine or reassert masculinity in a void; it cannot be redefined against the film’s absent Other, the attacks’ perpetrators. Masculinities in World Trade Center are marked by ambivalence, instability and insecurity and frustrate classical narrative restorative/redemptive efforts to redeem male power."

This paper will focus on the significance and consequences of a shift in character focus in recen... more This paper will focus on the significance and consequences of a shift in character focus in recent Hollywood disaster movies, focusing on the ‘bad’ studio monster flicks Godzilla (Roland Emmerich, 1998) and Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008). While Godzilla is representative of 1990s disaster movies, I argue that the shift in focus from professional-heroes (scientists, military personnel, journalists) in Godzilla to (doomed) ‘emergent’-heroes in Cloverfield is symptomatic of cultural, cinematic and political developments in post-9/11 America. This is particularly apparent in the way both films represent distinctions between public and personal experiences of disaster. Thus, although this shift in protagonist focus is noteworthy in Cloverfield’s representation of the (in)capacity of authorities to understand and effectively respond to ‘the threat’, it is most significant in the consequent necessity, yet inevitable inability, of citizen-characters – and the audience – to understand and respond to their situation – characters unwittingly caught up in a ‘threat’ or attack which is unexpected and of an unknown, and unexamined, cause. This inability is further evident in each film’s aesthetics, with Cloverfield filmed ‘badly’ by its characters, unable to fully ‘capture’ the monster on camera.

The attacks of 9/11 seem to have reanimated or concretised prevailing cinematic concerns about ho... more The attacks of 9/11 seem to have reanimated or concretised prevailing cinematic concerns about home(land) invasion and male shame, evident in recent horror films such as Last House On The Left, The Hills Have Eyes, I Am Legend and the early Saw films. Indeed, the (re-)configuration of 9/11 as attacks on the American home may have compelled this renewed cinematic exploration of male shame. This paper will examine how the critically underestimated 'home invasion' horror, The Strangers (Bertino 2008), re-presents these persistent cultural anxieties in a post-9/11 context. A seeming conservative allegory on the empowered female's (Liv Tyler) emasculation of the male and weakening of the family/home, I will contend that the film is more interestingly both an uncovering and re-covering of male shame, specifically that of protective failure. One feels shame not only for what one has (or has not) done but for who one is; while it may begin with a specific failure, it never ends with that failure (Morgan 2008). Thus, since “exposure is the great evil” in shame (Jacobs 2008), The Strangers' male protagonist's futile attempt to eradicate his pervasive sense of failure through his response to the home invasion merely serves to call attention to the very shame he wishes to conceal. Yet the film's exposure of this shame of protective failure appears to be refigured in the post-9/11 context, given shame also brings with it the desire to obliterate or negate the shame of witnessing (Morgan 2008). In a contemporary reworking of the 'final girl' scenario, The Strangers highlights this shame of witnessing in its narrative desire to re-cover rather than redeem the male's shame – albeit after the couple's re-union is afforded by the 'home invaders' – to annihilate that which is shameful, its failed male protagonist.

"Commentators and filmgoers were sceptical of Hollywood’s first forays into directly representing... more "Commentators and filmgoers were sceptical of Hollywood’s first forays into directly representing 9/11 – World Trade Center (Stone 2006) and United 93 (Greengrass 2006) – sceptical of Hollywood’s capacity to commemorate 9/11 and represent it accurately and authentically, to transcend 'type' and avoid hyperbole, distortion and exploitation. This paper will argue that 'World Trade Center' seeks to memorialise 9/11 by using strategies in relation to narration and spectacle to contain the disaster and contain its horror, strategies that both reflect
characters’ limited perspectives but also seek to gain a measure of control over the tragedy. However, I will contend that it is World Trade Center’s formal and generic conventionality, its embrace of ‘Hollywood’ style rather than its transcendence, that most opens a space for it to mediate 9/11 on the big screen. Ultimately, World Trade Center’s conventional story remains inconsistent, ambivalent, resistant to closure, and haunted by loss and absence, yet this may nonetheless be the most authentic way for Hollywood to memorialise the experience of 9/11 and demonstrates its continued relevance in helping to define and mediate contemporary experience."

The capacity to work effectively in a team is a key transferable skill. However, research indicat... more The capacity to work effectively in a team is a key transferable skill. However, research indicates that many students find group work frustrating and unfair, and do not perceive it to be a valuable learning activity. Such perceptions are compounded by the increasing cultural diversity common in classrooms in the contemporary Australian tertiary context. This paper explores how Michaelsen’s team-based learning (TBL) approach was integrated into a postgraduate course with a predominantly international student cohort in order to improve the integration of international students, increase engagement and produce greater team accountability. Given concrete goals and incentives, the culturally diverse teams functioned effectively and immediately, without the need for scaffolding of teamwork. This approach resulted in more robust and focused debate and an increased capacity to address disagreements and coherently merge course theory with class practice. This case study is part of a larger pilot study of TBL in a metropolitan university, and demonstrates how it is possible to harness the potential of culturally rich teams to enhance learning and teaching outcomes and improve the quality and effectiveness of teamwork in today’s diverse Australian tertiary classrooms.

Routledge eBooks, Jul 24, 2015

Suggesting that bathrooms in film are primarily theorized as transgressive spaces of violence, vu... more Suggesting that bathrooms in film are primarily theorized as transgressive spaces of violence, vulnerability, disorder and disturbing acts, Glen Donnar's work adopts a different stance, focusing on encounters with the self and/as other in bathroom mirrors, whereby the bathroom arguably becomes a space of revelation albeit one which discloses inadequacy, difference and transformation. His chapter explores the many contradictory significances of domestic bathrooms and mirrors for younger men across key depictions from and of the 1980s in American film. The simultaneously physical and metaphorical, real and unreal characteristics of the mirror disturb bathroom and male protagonist alike, in large part because of its ambivalent capacity to both reveal and distort. Donnar considers the filmic bathroom finally a revelatory, heterotopic space that can neither conceal nor contain male inadequacy, shame or monstrosity confirmed through the mirrored encounter of the self.

Routledge eBooks, Feb 23, 2023

Emerald Publishing Limited eBooks, Nov 24, 2022

Cityscapes of the Future

Apocalypse: Imagining the End, 2013

Troubling Masculinities, 2020

This chapter examines allegorical representations of living with terror, following large-scale ca... more This chapter examines allegorical representations of living with terror, following large-scale catastrophe. It primarily analyzes a post-apocalyptic science fiction film, I Am Legend (2007), alongside an earlier film adaptation, The Omega Man (1971), and a touchstone film, The World, The Flesh, and The Devil (1959). Released in periods of national crisis, each deploys an iconic male star and a post-apocalypse to study American (and male) anxieties about race, class and gender. The chapter identifies how, in I Am Legend, paternal failure is entwined with the breakdown of society and the “final man” feminized in the succeeding post-apocalypse. The film outwardly assuages “protective” guilt through redemptive male sacrifice that reinvigorates a militarized masculinity. However, the chapter concludes that not only are females ultimately figured as redeemers, but also sacrificial paternal remasculinization irretrievably undermined by the hybrid indeterminacy of the vampire-zombie “terror-Other” and the hero’s becoming America’s most monstrous “terror-Other,” the suicide bomber.

Troubling Masculinities, 2020

This chapter recounts the immediate and pervasive association of the 9/11 attacks with American f... more This chapter recounts the immediate and pervasive association of the 9/11 attacks with American film, genre spectacle, and gender. American national identity, notions of manhood, and expressions of hegemonic masculinity are often linked, especially in periods of crisis or turmoil. Hollywood cinema, key genres, and iconic “male action” masculinities were prominently mobilized in understanding the attacks and proposing the national response. The chapter discusses how America fell back on reassuring Hollywood narratives to displace the overwhelming impact of 9/11 and cope with its attendant traumas. The attacks were insistently figured in gendered terms to diagnose perceived national deficiencies, and valorize “heroic” and professional masculinities. The chapter finally identifies how political, military, and cultural responses were equally gendered. Additionally, the terror threat was rhetorically domesticated and terrorists were discursively constructed as monstrous Others to promote...

Text Matters, 2016

Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 2015

This article examines white heterosexual men in five recent Norwegian films that expose them as a... more This article examines white heterosexual men in five recent Norwegian films that expose them as anxious and immature. These films mirror wider trends in the evaluation of white male failure and inadequacy across western cinemas since the mid-2000s. Extending critical discourses on 'crises of masculinity', especially in US film, this article finds in these films the ambivalent legacy of enforced gender politics in Norway over the last four decades. More specifically, they focus on Norwegian male complaints and ambivalence towards societal developments in favour of gender equality. Male characters exploit the opportunities of sexual liberation. They simultaneously objectify and neurotically fear women. A multitude of mental and physical 'ailments' establishes the men as victims. In an attempt to reclaim destabilized masculinities, parents and sexualized women are demonized. Ultimately, however, the desire to contain female sexuality and the transition into (hetero)sexual maturity is frustrated, and male anxieties remain unrelieved and unresolved.

academia.edu

The association of the attacks of 9/11 with Hollywood science fiction and disaster spectacle was ... more The association of the attacks of 9/11 with Hollywood science fiction and disaster spectacle was immediate and pervasive. Succeeding calls in media and politics for the reassuring return of ‘strong’ masculine types—predominantly drawn from Hollywood westerns, action and war films—were widespread, revealing renewed cultural fears of threats to America from both within and without.Troubling Masculinities is the first dedicated multi-genre study of representations of masculinity in encounters with terror in post-9/11 American cinema. The book examines the impact of “terror-Others”, from Arab terrorists to giant monsters, across a broad range of sub-genres—including disaster melodrama, monster movies, post-apocalyptic science fiction, discovered footage and ‘home invasion’ horror, action-thrillers and ‘frontier’ westerns—especially in relation to cinematic representations of masculinity in previous periods of national turmoil. The book demonstrates that the supposed reassertion of masculinity and American national identity in post-9/11 cinema repeatedly unravels across genres. Engaging critical arguments about how Hollywood cinema attempts to resolve male crisis in part through Orientalizing figures of terror, he shows how this unraveling reflects an inability to effectively extinguish the threat or frightening difference of terror. The heroes in these movies are unable to heal themselves or restore order, often becoming as destructive as the threats they encounter. The book concludes by showing how interrelated anxieties about masculinity and nation continue to affect contemporary American cinema and politics. By showing how persistent these cultural fears are, Troubling Masculinities offers an important counternarrative in this supposedly unprecedented moment in American history.

Lasting Screen Stars, 2016

Donnar explores the action star image of Sylvester Stallone across five decades. Scholarly focus ... more Donnar explores the action star image of Sylvester Stallone across five decades. Scholarly focus on Stallone’s ‘hard-bodied’ ‘muscularity’ underestimate the persistent importance of redundancy and ageing throughout his career, particularly since his breakthrough role in Rocky. Stallone’s action star persona is chiefly defined by his characters’ perceived cultural, economic, and professional redundancy, and its longevity lies in his repeated identification with downtrodden white masculinities. Ageing is a similarly under-theorised feature of Stallone’s star image, from the first Rocky to recent franchise revivals of Rocky and Rambo and The Expendables series. Donnar concludes Stallone’s comeback is again associated with vulnerable, ageing white masculinities and nostalgia for American cultural, economic, and political certitude and ascendance following the ‘war on terror’ and the global financial crisis.