Redundancy and ageing: Sylvester Stallone’s enduring action star image

Abstract

Donnar explores the action star image of Sylvester Stallone across five decades. Scholarly focus on Stallone’s ‘hard-bodied’ ‘muscularity’ underestimate the persistent importance of redundancy and ageing throughout his career, particularly since his breakthrough role in Rocky. Stallone’s action star persona is chiefly defined by his characters’ perceived cultural, economic, and professional redundancy, and its longevity lies in his repeated identification with downtrodden white masculinities. Ageing is a similarly under-theorised feature of Stallone’s star image, from the first Rocky to recent franchise revivals of Rocky and Rambo and The Expendables series. Donnar concludes Stallone’s comeback is again associated with vulnerable, ageing white masculinities and nostalgia for American cultural, economic, and political certitude and ascendance following the ‘war on terror’ and the global financial crisis.