Action Bodies

Drew Ayers is a professor of film at Eastern Washington University. He is the author of Spectacular Posthumanism: The Digital Vernacular of Visual Effects, and his work has been published in animation, Configurations, Convergence, and Film Criticism.

List of Illustrations Introduction. Cultured Meat: VFX and Embodiment in the Action Film 1. Technology and the Action Body: "Invisible" VFX, Deepfakes, and Digital Style 2. Identity and the Action Body: Race, Gender, and The Woman King 3. Extra-Ordinary Action Bodies: Age, Disability, and Spectacular Embodiment 4. The Nonhuman Action Body: Animated Animals and Hybrid Humans Conclusion. Action Bodies of Tomorrow: Novocaine, AI, and Excessive Humanity Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

"Action Bodies takes action film theory in a much-needed new direction. With tight prose and both current and numerous examples, Ayers covers a wide range of all the important work done in this area and leads the discussion of Action genres into SFX territory while still focusing on the corporeality of performers." - Jeffrey A. Brown, author of Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture "Action Bodies represents a timely and essential intervention into the field of action film scholarship, as well as the broader fields of film and digital media studies, AI scholarship, and cultural studies. The clarity of Drew Ayers's prose, and the relevance of the treatment of its themes in light of the fast-evolving landscape of digital and AI-enabled images, position this book at the cutting edge of work on action film." - Lisa Purse, author of Contemporary Action Cinema