Starring Tom Cruise

Description

Starring Tom Cruise examines how Tom Cruise's star image moves across genres and forms as a type of commercial product that offers viewers certain pleasures and expectations. Cruise reads as an action hero and romantic lead yet finds himself in homoerotic and homosocial relationships that unsettle and undermine these heterosexual scripts. In this volume, editor Sean Redmond shows how important star studies is not just to understanding the ideological, commercial, and cultural significance of one star but to seeing how masculinity, ethnicity, sexuality, and commodity relations function in contemporary society. The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the ways that Cruise's star image and performances are built on a desiring gaze, nearly always complicated by perverse narrative arcs and liminal character relationships. This section also explores the complex and contradictory ways he embodies masculinity and heterosexuality. Part 2 places Cruise within the codes and conventions of genre filmmaking and the way they intersect with the star vehicle. Cruise becomes monomythical, heroic, authentic, and romantic, and at the same time, he struggles to hold these formulas and ideologies together. Part 3 views Cruise as both an ageless totemic figure of masculinity who does his own stunts, as well as an aging star-his body both the conduit for eternally youthful masculinity and a signifier of that which must ultimately fail. These readings are connected to wider discursive issues concerning his private and public life, including the familial/patriarchal roles he takes on. Scholars writing for this collection approach the Cruise star image through various vectors and frames, which are revelatory in nature. As such, they not only demonstrate the very best traditions of close "star" textual analysis but also move the approach to the star forward. Students, scholars, and readers of film, media, and celebrity studies will enjoy this deep dive into a complex Hollywood figure. Cover Page Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Desiring Tom Cruise Chapter 1. Adolescence and Its Psychological Phases in Tom Cruise’s 1980s Teen Films Chapter 2. Gazing at Tom Cruise Chapter 3. Losing Cruise Control: Disenchantment of Tom Cruise’s Star Image in Eyes Wide Shut Chapter 4. “Nothing Is ‘Impossible’ if You’re Tom Cruise”: Scientology, Spiritual Neoliberalism, and the Tom Cruise Closet Chapter 5. Searching for the “Desert of the Real” in the Films of Tom Cruise Part II: Genre Cruise Chapter 6. The American Everyman Goes Irish: Gender, Genre, and Ethnicity in Far and Away Chapter 7. Cruising the Vampire: Hollywood Gothic, Star Branding, and Interview with the Vampire (1994) Chapter 8. Cruising into the Future: The Redemption of “Authentic” Masculinity in the Science Fiction Films of Tom Cruise Chapter 9. Cruising the Closed World: The Cold War and the Cyborg in Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, and Minority Report Chapter 10. Cruising Stardom in Hollywood Franchising: Tom Cruise as Franchise Star in the Mission: Impossible and Dark Universe Storyworlds Part III: Aging Cruise Chapter 11. Tom Cruise as Father and Son Chapter 12. “How am I supposed to do this?”: The Impossibility of Tom Cruise’s Masculine Performance in the Face of His Aging Star Body Chapter 13. Starring Tom Cruise as (Desperately Defying) Aging Action Star Chapter 14. The Authentically Bruised Cruise: Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible, and Extreme Performative Labor Chapter 15. Aging for Life: Tom Cruise in the Era of Functional Fitness Filmography Contributors Index