Masculinity In Action Film Analysis

Action movie takes a great part of Chinese cinema, and masculinity is the major issue of this genre which reflected traditional Chinese culture and values. According to Yu's idea of Chinese masculinity in cinema, it mainly represent male-dominated action genres. However, masculinity tradition has been changed since the founding of new wave wuxia films from 1960s to 1970s. Yanggang opposites to the traditional view of 'weak male', which means masculinity and macho in modern Chinese society that indicated by Zhang Che, Ideology of Zhang's yanggang aesthetics includes the determination to sacrificed for friendships righteous, bravery to confront with violence and death, persistence and indefatigability. Indeed, Hong Kong cinema tends to represent

In my opinion, The Killer indicated that a true man should remain righteousness and goodness, be able to act like a hero if their friends or family need him, have the ability to save and take care the women he loved, always be loyal to good friends and keep morality and justice. However, a real man is also lonely because his moral principles are not understood by the majority, and suffer the following consequences of his action. This essay will first focus on how The Killer represents masculinity in a melodrama way of 'doing' through Sydney keep his promise to his friend to show his loyalty, collaboration of Jeff and Lee and conversation about they exchange their moral principle and become good friends to show brotherhood. Secondly, I will introduce how the male shows his masculinity by weak women's power through Jeff takes care of Jennie after she blinded. And then, I will analyse 'suffer' genre of The Killer that melodramatic demonstrate sad, painful, lonely and incomprehension male masculinity via the scene of Lee obeys to his moral principles that killed a criminal in an emergency but not understand by others. Finally, I will explain how emotional suffering of Sydney's dead stimulated Jeff's superhuman acts of heroism and violence to complete his masculinity

Hong Kong has been colonized by Britain for one century, so it accepted western values and combined with traditional Chinese features of macho in order to produce the contemporary idea of masculinity. Indeed, John Woo produced masculinity in a contradictory way, which performance as gloomy and even anti-heroic male (Yu, 2012, p.18). And there are two characteristics of John Woo's idea of masculinity, Stringer concludes as 'doing' and 'suffering'. 'Doing' means ego-ideal hero, which includes positive traits that people eager to have. 'Suffering' genre original refers to female melodrama in woman's film, but John Woo gives a new explanation and use of it, which is to weaken male hero's mythic potency in order to produce masculinity that cater to society's value and environment at that era (1997,