One of the themes mentioned in the penultimate note that led me to return to blogging is undoubtedly Nick de Semlyen's book "The Heroes of the Last Action". I learned about it from Peter Goćek's review in “To Things” and immediately decided to read it. It paid off. For cognitive reasons, but most of all due to the fact that this book and respective of the revisions of the action cinema classics gave me a new, nomen omen, a kick to grasp the subject of their work, as well as to regain the sense of separating part of intellectual energy into blog activity.
To the top degree of this art he made – amazingly – a movie from which de Semlyen took the title. Who knew? "The hero of the last action" I had never seen before and, frankly, someway I was not attracted to it. In my memory, there was a lapel that followed him, a curiosity, a worthless west. This fact is confirmed by de Semlyen, describing in item the scenes of this intended as another cash success of Schwarzenegger of production, which after the premiere all creators decided to forget as shortly as possible. Paradoxically, that's what encouraged me.
So I watched and... okay, this isn't a good movie. I realize perfectly well why he didn't sell. Nevertheless, as I watched it through my circumstantial deep-water filter, it opened to me an amazing spectrum of meanings, of which no 1 working with it – from young writers, who, after spreading their fan fantasy in the modes of the Hollywood meat device barely managed to get to know it, until the iron Arnold himself – most likely never thought at all. On the another hand, I stated that it would be a pity to waste these observations; and in general, that all of this denunciation seems to make sense – that it may carry in itself a possible worth no little than the handling of plots.
The book itself helped me to refresh my inspirational roots. At the same time, it's not so much about the action cinema of stricto sense, due to the fact that in it I liked it so much – like anyone raised in the golden age of VHS cassettes, I scored a hard canon, of course, although my centre of gravity has always more oscillated on the side of horror – but alternatively about, let's call it so, the general cultural climate. It's actually kind of hard to explain in a fewer sentences. All right, back to shore.
Nick de Semlyen is simply a movie writer – he presently works for the magazine "Empire" – and his communicative about the phenomenon of action films from the 1980s and 1990s is, like a erstwhile publication devoted to comedy, a typical product that could come out of someone's fingers. quite a few storyteller-speaked details from behind the scenes – specified as a detailed description of the torment in which the "hero of the last action" was born – professional and life-style idol of mass imagination of those times, an effort to put the full phenomenon in a broader cultural and social context, etc. We follow the full communicative through the prism of 8 heroes: mentioned Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Chan, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude van Damme, Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris.
And now: everyone who knows me at least a small – even from what I put on Mastodon – knows that how much millions of dollars a hit earned, how the peculiar effects were made and why Arnold's knife in "Commando" is 2 centimeters longer than the 1 that Sly waved in "Rambo" I am curious in least, due to the fact that what truly turns me on is what can be read between the lines. Reaching for the book de Semlyen I knew what I was writing for, and in this sense I have no regrets about it – which does not change the fact that I missed this layer a bit.
Yes, there is, as I mentioned, an effort to show the full stream on a broader background. It is interesting, for example, for de Semlyen's constatations, that the key to the success of the Excisionians was in the present – not only in the over-the-top hippie revolution, Vietnam and the 1970s American recession – the request to make a affirmative story of a strong, male hero. I was besides very intrigued by the chapter on the penetration of this cinema with politics. Stallone as whistled by Danish lefts icon right and inspired for Reagan? Well, it's unthinkable today. However, in comparison with the content of curious- anecdote this aspect falls pale.
But there is no bad thing – as a player trained in the art of excavating what the artist did not say, I could read the remainder between letters. (By the way, the Polish edition has, unfortunately, a fatal correction, worse even than the prebooks before the final edition, which hit my hands respective times. I don't think he owns it at all. It's a small sad. besides due to the price.)
And breaking a thing into a fewer separate threads...
Of course, what draws attention at erstwhile is the destiny of 8 protagonists. In my first instinct, I was somewhat irritated by the typically American manner of writing about them in poesy “from a boot to a millionaire”. Yes, the communicative of how starving Sly bullied at the fresh York Zoo and was pissed on by lions, resulting in a scurry and yet reached the movie Olimp, may delight. Schwarzenegger's way from a violent home in a post-war Austrian village, through a dark gym he had to break into to practice in peace, until, first of all, the skirmishes with English, perfectly motivated. Chan’s determination to yet gain designation in the United States is perfect for a parable of the power of dreams. but it was kind of an insufferable coaching falset.
But then I realized that I think any of the contamination of the Polish position speaks through me. Our hard work for success has never been a value, and those who achieved it have surely done it illegally in general reception, plotting and stealing. That's our historical heritage. The fact that 1 can simply set a goal for himself, consistently prosecute it and inactive realise it, to the Polish ear inactive sounds like a fairy tale from moss and ferns.
And in this light, "The Heroes of the Last Action" can be interpreted as a communicative of the most authentic human admiration for transcending themselves, but on the another hand, and possibly even above all, of the crucial function that society plays in beginning specified prospects. I remember the first time that I was dazzled at Wikipedia with Cormac McCarthy's bio. It struck me, to what degree he could live like a lump, compose what he wanted, and spend it despite a long deficiency of interest, due to the fact that it enabled him to live a rich, multicultural and self-fulfilling America. It was no different for most de Semlyen storytellers. They climbed to the summit due to the fact that they wanted it, but also, not less, due to the fact that they were allowed to do so by the country in which they created.
The fact that half of them did not come from the United States appears to be significant. The Austrian, Belgian, Swede, and Hongfinite independently felt that their homeland was incapable to satisfy their exuberant ambitions—that they would full become who they saw themselves, and would light the bull cigars they deserved in their own sense, only Tam, in the land of infinite possibilities. In the second case, there is another origin – de Semlyen recalls that Chan, before deciding to win the hearts of the American audience, was already a mega star in Asia, yet he did not feel full appreciated and fulfilled until America authenticated his status.
There is so a de Semlyen book besides a communicative about the power of impressing the United States – a well-known 1 in our country – which today, stets or not, is just its own shadow. How American vitality, manifested in the mass culture produced there, shaped the awareness of both the 4 mentioned and millions of consumers of the narration exported from there, which became universal toposes in so far as it did not happen to the creators of any another culture. The exchangeable symbol of this is – besides recalled by de Semlyen – smuggled behind the iron curtain pirate copies of "Rambo", heating up for combat, among others, Romanian opponents.
And here we come to another, possibly most important, motive. De Semlyen writes – what he admits – about a planet that is no longer there and that is improbable to return. About a planet of clear division into good and evil, in which America was at the head of a camp of bright side of power, and its celluloid heroes embodyed strength, courage, freedom, democracy and—a thing beyond overestimable— humor.
The movie requiem for this planet grows under the keyboard de Semlyen "Man of Demolition" from 1993. To put in a freezer played by Stallone a hard cop from Los Angeles – a character so to the excise bone marrow that as much as a parody (and a parody, as you know, is an infallible sign of the exhaustion of the convention) – can indeed be read as a caesura. Indeed, times have changed, and the public in a new, not so clearly divided post-war planet was hungry for new, more nuanced heroes – for example, ordinary, awesome men in a T-shirt, specified as John McClane from the "Glass Trap" of Bruce Willis's most average physiology.
Let's add to that the unquestionable prophecy of this film. De Semlyen cites Elona Musk's tweet about this. Confused, disgusting with violence, obsessively caring for safety and perpetuating the incorrect words dystopian totalitarianism, in which Sly's hero is dehiberated, may not look like our reality 1 by one, but any analogies cannot be denied. Just as 1 cannot deny – and de Semlyen does so, of course, while maintaining politically correct caution – that most of the films from the era described by him present could not have been made in the form in which they were shot 4 decades ago. They would scan them (this is already a note from me) inquisitors of the Okoeist morality.
Yet, as he notes, millions of viewers around the planet proceed to return to them. They're looking for them whether on tv or on streaming platforms. I also, as I mentioned at the beginning, made a small cinematic journey to this museum. And indeed many of these films are being watched present a bit like treatises of forgotten virtues; specified postcards from a more normal, unchangeable world. besides the 1 in which we ourselves lived, watching them for the first time with a breath-retarded recording.
Anyway, the book de Semlyen shows how closely the action cinema was linked to the spirit of the era in which it was born, and how much its dusk besides marked its end. Which, of course, is nothing undiscovered in itself. It is simply a pity that this is not a more analytical thing – I would like to read something like this – but besides in the form in which we get it, it can besides give to thought – about human determination, about the price that sometimes should be paid for it, about the request for a story (both on the screen and realising in popularity of movie hero actors) and yet about unusual relations of fiction with reality. tiny to me, due to the fact that small, but inactive a lot.
The only thing that makes me feel assured is that if I always wanted to go out for a beer or light a cigar with 1 of the celebrities described by De Semlyen, that individual would be Chuck Norris. In all this inflated company, he fell out, actually without effort from the author, most favorably. And I think I like his movies the most.
