In fond memory of Patrick Swayze

The power behind Film Studies For Free's e-throne is a 'person of a certain age', making her (chrono) logically susceptible to a good number of the many charms and talents of actor Patrick Swayze. She is, thus, saddened by the news of his untimely death.

Swayze was an actor of surprisingly slight physical stature, but one who loomed very large and very beautifully, not only in Hollywood and independent cinema, and, of course, in the estimation of his many fans and admirers, but also in the musings of quite a few Film Studies scholars. In particular relation to the latter, he helped to inspire -- FSFF is sure -- many worthwhile studies of (post-)modern gender and sexuality, 'looking relations', and acting in film.

In fond memory of his work for the screen, a few links to openly-accessible items of some of that scholarship are given below:

• Katherine Barscay, 'Kathryn Bigelow's Gen(d)re', Cinephile (Post Genre Issue), Vol. 4, Summer 2008
• Douglas Booth, 'Surfing Films and Videos: Adolescent Fun, Alternative Lifestyle, Adventure Industry, Journal of Sport History, Fall 1996
  
• Kathryn Kane, 'Passing as Queer and Racing Towards Whiteness: To Wong Foo, Thanks but No Thanks', Genders OnLine Journal, Issue 42, 2005
  
• Ahava Leibtag, '"The only thing you have to be is yourself": Ideology and Identity Politics in Dirty Dancing and The Last Dance', MA Thesis, Georgetown University, 2002
• Marianne Mulvey, 'Is there sincerity in hollow speech? Feeling the cliché in contemporary performance', Nowiswhere, Issue 3, 2009 (scroll down)
  
• Thomas Piontek, 'Kinging in the Heartland; or, The Power of Marginality', Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 43, No. 3/4, 2002, pp. 125-143
• Nicola Rehling, ''White Masculinity in Cross-Dressing Comedies', All or Nothing: White Heterosexual Masculinity in Contemporary Popular Cinema, PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2005 (pp. 228-233)
  
• Tracy Sutton and Gregory Fouts, 'Measuring and Contextualising "Chemistry" in the Movies', Journal of Media Psychology, Volume 10, No. 1, Winter 2005
• Brenda Wilson, 'Blurring the Boundaries: Auteurism & Kathryn Bigelow', Cinephile (Gender and Violence Issue), Vol. 1, April 2005

Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993)

Christina Lane, Feminist Hollwyood: From Born in Flames to Point Break (Wayne State University Press, 2000)


John Izod, Myth, Mind, and the Screen: Understanding the Heroes of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)