Ageing Masculinities and “Muscle work” in Hollywood Action Film

Introduction

In August 2010, the sixty-four-year-old Hollywood icon Sylvester Stallone premiered his latest project The Expendables, an action-adventure film starring a pantheon of “tough guys” from both past and present: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, and Bruce Willis. Directed, produced, and co-written by Stallone, the plot of the film is redolent of the hypermuscular action movies of the 1980s that helped launch the careers of most of The Expendables’cast. In this particular project, Barney Ross (Stallone) leads a “crack team” of ex-Special Forces, now private military contractors hired to remove a military dictator (part-Pinochet, part-Chavez) from the fictional Latin American island of Vilena. However, Ross and his team soon discover a “setup” in which their combat labor is needed to secure not a democratic society but rather the drug harvesting operations of a rogue Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative (played by B-list celebrity Eric Roberts). After witnessing the junta’s brutal regime and the systematic exploitation of the nation’s peasant class, the expendables reluctantly accept the job, teaming up with Sandra (Giselle Itiè), a working-class heroine of Vilena and estranged daughter of the dictator. On the surface, the film is unremarkable in that it reproduces many of the classic generic conventions of Hollywood action-adventure films: a thinly veiled colonial and “crisis-masculinity” narrative populated by chauvinistic and hypermuscular heroes. Indeed, The Expendables is a pastiche of various mercenary films from The Seven Samurai(1954), The Professionals (1966), and The Wild Geese (1978) to The Dogs of War (1980), Men of War (1994), and even Rambo (2008). What is compelling about the film, however, is its celebrity showcase of aging male bodies: a combination of “old guard” action heroes (Stallone, Willis, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, and Arnold Schwarzenegger), former professional athletes (Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin), and martial artists (Jet Li and Jason Statham). Indeed, the film’s assembly of military muscle resembles what Douglas Kellner might call a neoconservative “wet dream” (1995, 75).

Certainly, we are not the first ones to highlight this aspect of the film. Most commentators were fixated on the aging but hypermuscular bodies of Stallone and company, who seem to epitomize what film critic Armond White, called the “audacity of rejuvenation” (2010, 1). As A. O. Scott of the New York Times remarked, The Expendables contains “the most dry-aged beef . . . outside of a Chicago steakhouse” (2010, 1). While some critics noted the ironic overtones and homoerotic paradoxes of the dialogue, most were hung up on The Expendables’ flawed revival of 1980s action films (along with recent reboots of The A-Team and G. I. Joe) and the “HGH vascularity” of Stallone (White 2010, 1). For Richard Corliss of Time magazine, “the saga of a group of old soldiers . . . is a kind of Toy Story 3 on steroids” where aging mercenaries restore order to “Africa and Latin America by killing dark-skinned” villains (2010, 2). Clearly, critics found little originality in the story itself and were not particularly impressed by Stallone’s attempt to rejuvenate so many aging Hollywood icons. At best, The Expendables was described as a self-indulgent and histrionic reflection on mortality within Hollywood with one critic dubbing the film “Viagra: The Movie” (Singer 2010, 3).

While Stallone’s body, in particular, invited several comparisons to his younger self, it was usually removed from the working-class settings that define most of his films, from the Rockyand Rambo franchises to F.I.S.T. (1978), Over the Top (1987), and now The Expendables. In other words, film critics overlooked how the crisis of masculinity in The Expendables is articulated not simply through aging bodies but in and through physical labor, or what Michael Denning calls “muscle work” (1996, 98). Noting this oversight, we take up the title theme of “expendability” with the purpose of mapping out its relationship to masculinity, physical labor, and aging. From this angle, The Expendables is particularly ripe for analysis because, while it speaks directly to the vulnerability of working-class men as “cogs” in the military–industrial complex, it also inadvertently speaks to the vicissitudes of physical labor within various industries from which the actors themselves achieved stardom and where “muscle workers” are increasingly expendable: Hollywood cinema and professional sports.

In this essay, we treat The Expendables as essentially a labor text, one that reflects some of the masculine anxieties of the “Great Recession.” We begin with a sketch of how the recent economic collapse has been wedded to a “crisis” of masculinities in Hollywood films. We then provide a textual analysis of The Expendables, examining the film’s narrative in relation to the themes of expendability, labor, and aging masculinity. We also explore the intertextual meanings of the film and show how the theme of expendability is refracted through the stars occupations as “muscle workers” in Hollywood film and professional sports. We conclude by examining how the film and its aging cast reflect larger changes within the workplace and anxieties about masculinity more broadly.

A Note on Method: Textual Analysis

Film theorist Yvonne Tasker (2004) challenges the widespread dismissal of action films as “loud and dumb,” exemplary of low culture due to their popularity with mass audiences. Instead, Tasker argues for the perception of action films as important cultural artifacts worthy of analysis: “the supposed obviousness of the action movie is founded on what is a deceptive simplicity” (p. 3). Following Tasker and others who urge scholars to analyze the deeper layers of political commentary in action films, we apply a textual analysis to our study of The Expendables. While there are many approaches to textual analysis, we borrow broadly from a discursive approach that focuses not on deciphering the meanings of a text as if they were embedded in it and awaiting discovery, but rather on how meaning is produced throughthe relationships between readers and texts in specific historical and cultural configurations. Texts “are products of a system/culture within which they are defined and made meaningful” (Manning and Cullum-Swan 1996). This is to say that we view a text as a collection of signs (symbols, images, soundtracks, bodies) that combine in particular configurations to produce meaning in specific historical, cultural, and social settings (Shirato and Webb 2001). In keeping with a discursive approach, we “read” The Expendables in relation to the historical moment in which it was made and circulated—hence our attention to the themes of the expendability of male bodies regarding labor and aging in the context of economic recession. Our analysis, in other words, supports a particular stream of cultural studies that treats popular culture as a potent repository for the study of power relations. Hollywood film, in particular, has been examined as a rich site of ideology, discourse, and representation (Dyer 1997; Jeffords 1994; Boyle 2010). While we do not claim that our analysis of The Expendables provides insight into all levels of the film’s meanings, we do contend that it identifies important reflections on the contemporary discourse about masculinity and male bodies in relation to gender relations and the US labor market. Our perspective is that the film offers an unorthodox commentary on men at work even though it is not specifically concerned with the fallout of the “Great Recession.” Textual analysis is thus a way of revealing of how the film provides us with certain meanings of work and perceived obsolescence of men at a time when the relationship between masculinity and labor seems especially strained.

The “Great Recession” and the Crisis of Masculinity in the Hollywood Imaginary

While Hollywood has shown increasing attention to the recent economic meltdown, its interest in the “emasculating” attributes of corporate culture, downsizing, and “redundancies” is not new. As Hunter (2003) explains, in the early-1990s, a swath of “office movies” began to feature various white male protagonists trapped in the middle rungs of large corporations. Films like Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Falling Down (1993), In the Company of Men (1997), and Fight Club (1999) detail the disillusion and perceived displacement of middle-class white men in corporate America, a condition often symptomatic of “white male backlash.” The genre of “office movies,” however, has become increasingly somber in recent years, and for good reason. In 2008, the deregulation of financial institutions and predatory lending practices finally caught up with Wall Street, resulting in a “liquidity shortfall” in the US banking system, global economic uncertainty, and vast unemployment in both white- and blue-collar industries. Since the recession was declared in December 2008, more than 8 million jobs have been lost in the United States, 80 percent of which belonged to men (de Guerre 2010). In 2008, only 69 percent of American men had steady employment, the lowest percentage in US history (de Guerre 2010). Such a sea change led many cultural commentators to declare yet another crisis of masculinity, this time of epic proportions among (but not exclusive to) middle-class men (de Guerre 2010). The turmoil of this milieu is captured in documentary films like End of Men (2010) and “reality” television programs like Downsized (2011), which explore the effects of the “Great Recession” on aging and newly unemployed middle-class men. In both cases, viewers learn of the perceived catastrophe and bourgeois nightmare of seeking out “casual” unskilled employment and coming to terms with expendability and the evaporation of a “family income” once thought intrinsic to affluent American households.

It is perhaps not surprising that Hollywood has shown similar interest in the “end of men” during the “Great Recession,” focusing mostly on the real and perceived plight of the middle class. Up in the Air(2009), for instance, highlights not only the despair of unemployed office personnel but also the isolation of corporate “hatchet man” Ryan Bingham (George Clooney). With less pathos, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) couches the same economic debacle within a masculinity contest between venture capitalists and corporate raiders, displacing the working-class integrity of the original film. The connection between the plunging economy and “sagging” masculinities is perhaps most acute in The Company Men(2010). Described as a “pity party for the wealthy,” The Company Men makes passing references to deindustrialization and labor unions but is most concerned with teaching rich unemployed white men the value of family, which the film presents as intrinsic to the working class (White 2010). Collectively, these Hollywood films marginalize manual labor and the working class, despite the devastating effects of the “Great Recession” on the service, construction, and automotive industries.

This does not mean, however, that a broadly conceived working class is entirely absent from Hollywood films of the “Great Recession.” Whereas films made about the economic collapse describe the disappearance of white-collar jobs and the erosion of the middle class, films made or released during the “Great Recession” constitute a more robust set of “labor texts” across a spectrum of industries and genres. From The Wrestler (2008), The Fighter (2010), and Unstoppable (2010) to Repo Men (2010), New in Town(2009), and The Other Guys (2010) images of working people in Hollywood illustrate what Stanley Aronowitz calls “refractive narratives of working-class history” (1989, 137). In many cases, however, the crisis of labor is also presented as a crisis of masculinity, making each film an important but shortsighted intervention into the ill effects of late capitalism. This is particularly evident in recent mercenary/action films like The Losers (2010), The A-Team (2010), and The Expendables(2010). While the plotlines of these mercenary films seem far removed from the machinations of Wall Street, they offer working-class commentaries on neoliberalism and the current crisis of masculinities in the workplace. If masculinities are shaped by popular media and “closely tied to the economic circumstances in which they are formed and re-formed” (Shaw and Watson 2011, 2), we suggest that the latest mercenary films and The Expendables in particular provide a space where particular concerns of working-class masculinities and bodies are worked out and expressed. Here, combat labor can be read as both a literal expression and a trope of masculine crisis and revival in the workplace at a particular historical moment in the United States defined by unemployment and uncertainty in the job market.

By looking at The Expendables as a labor text, we find a smorgasbord of working bodies and types of physical labor that we can read in concert with the film’s oft-cited preoccupation with aging male bodies. In the following section, we begin to mine The Expendables at various levels of the text for the theme of expendability in relation to men’s bodies and physical labor. In doing so, we reveal multiple intersections among discourses of masculinity, class, aging, and race that are simultaneously (and intertextually) reflective of the divisions of (physical) labor in Hollywood film and the professional sports from which many of The Expendables’ stars emerged. We suggest that while the themes of militarism and masculinity are rather generic and historically imprecise, they articulate quite well with the “end of men” prognosis of the “Great Recession.” The Expendables tells us much about masculine anxieties and the world of work, but in a coded commentary that need not address the toxic mortgages, liquidity shortfalls, and massive waves of unemployment intrinsic to more explicit Hollywood narratives of the recent economic collapse.

The Expendables as Social Commentary: Aging Bodies at Work

To be “expendable,” according to Merriam-Webster and the Oxford Dictionary is “to be used up or consumed in service” (www.merriam-webster.com) and “of relatively little significance, and therefore able to be abandoned and destroyed” (http://oxforddictionaries.com). In many ways, “expendability” is an appropriate title for a film that openly laments the loss of meaningful work for men. Indeed, the main characters, all mercenaries and manual laborers, frequently and self-reflexively complain that their labor is increasingly obsolete. The main characters, who are all ex-soldiers, are depicted as willing to accept any job despite its dangers. Within the film, this situation is due to both the economic restructuring of military operations and the limits of their aging bodies. Aging is a dominant theme in the film whose characters (and the actors who play them) all exceed forty years of age and are tied to performing physical labor to “make ends meet.” Comments about aging are most explicitly directed at the team’s leader, Barney Ross. When Ross and his compadre, Mr. Christmas (Jason Statham) hold a band of Somali pirates at gun point, they banter back and forth about who will kill whom. Christmas, in a teasing intertextual acknowledgment of Ross/Stallone’s age says, “I’ll take the one on the right, you’re not that fast anymore.”

An overt sense of physical, emotional, and economic hardship is reflected in each of the aging protagonists. Ross, the group’s leader, is depicted as a stoic and weary loner more interested in securing employment for his men than female companionship; Mr. Christmas is one of the more youthful (at forty-four) but is notably wearied by his romantic involvements; Yin Yang (Jet Li) a Chinese immigrant, frequently complains about his desperate need of work to support his mysterious “family”; Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), a German national, is an unstable and sadistic drug addict, who shifts his loyalties in order to feed his addiction. His instability is explained as a result of the emotional and physical demands of his job. Peripheral to these characters but included in the mercenary band are Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), an African American mercenary preoccupied with weaponry and the most mature and sensitive of the group, Toll Road (Randy Couture), who reads philosophy and extols the virtues of personal therapy. Perhaps the most pointed reference to the troubled triad of aging, physical labor, and war is personified by “Tool” (Mickey Rourke). This character’s name embeds his function as a middleman for Private Military Corporations, whose role is to deliver jobs from the upper echelons to the motley crew of mercenaries. He organizes work for the expendables and owns a tattoo parlor/automotive garage where the gang works on engines, throws knives, gets tattooed, and waxes poetic about the brutality of an industry that has left their “souls, the human parts, all dried up.” “Tool,” of course, is a rather revealing moniker that symbolizes the film’s interest in masculinity, labor, and perhaps misogyny. While the pseudonym suggests the dehumanization of physical labor—an ex-soldier reduced to an inanimate object—it is also a phallic signifier in the context of the character’s treatment of women; he enters the film riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a scantily clad woman in tow whose name he “cannot remember.” The treatment of women as narrative ornaments—underrepresented, underdeveloped, and oversexualized—helps solidify the gang’s masculine bonding by displacing the “feminine” (a point to which we return below).

The need and inability to refuse work that utilizes the unique skills of combat, despite its dangers, highlights how discourses of class intersect with masculinity and physical labor in The Expendables. The film presents a clear division between characters that commission the jobs (Capital) and those hired to carry them out (Labor). This stratification is represented visually in an early scene where Ross negotiates a job with a shady CIA boss named Mr. Church. At the beginning of this scene, the camera shows a medium close-up of Ross listening to the voice of Church for a full nine seconds before we actually see him on screen. This is to say that the effect of the camera’s focus on Ross’s body, who does not speak, reduces him to his manual labor compared to the intellectual labor performed by those who orchestrate military operations.

The class dimensions of manual versus intellectual labor are further emphasized in the film through the characterization of the villain, James Munroe. Poised, articulate, and always adorned in a business suit, Munroe holds significant power as a colonial tyrant and corporate raider of sorts. Indeed, through the dualistic depiction of Munroe vis-à-vis the expendables, the film makes it clear that mercenaries are divided not only by class but also by masculinity. This is suggested by the inability of Munroe’s henchmen villains to defeat the expendables. Ross and company despise the CIA as an instrument of state violence that outsources its more inglorious and ignoble military missions to “soldiers of fortune” (i.e., expendable labor). This resentment, it seems, is rooted in the relations of production and is most lucid in the tension between the white-collared “effeminacy” of Munroe and the blue-collared “manliness” of the expendables. The moments of class struggle in The Expendables also complicate the “office films” of the “Great Recession” by proposing that the real victims of corporate plunder are working-class men and the working poor of developing countries rather than the middle class tout court. Incidentally, Munroe’s exploitation and abuse of Vilena’s cocaine crop harvesters help build an imagined working-class affinity between the villagers and the expendables, both of which perform the “grunt work” for dubious companies. This symbolic but paternalistic alliance compounds the working-class sensibilities of the film, making it an important if unsuspecting response to the “Great Recession” films that privilege a middle-class perspective. In the denouement scene where Munroe is held at gunpoint by Ross, he claims, “we’re the same, you and I. We’re both mercenaries, we’re both dead inside.” Yet, they are not the same at all, as indicated by the subsequent murder of Munroe by Mr. Christmas. In some ways, this scene can be read as a symbolic “expending” of the avaricious white-collar boss by the diligent but exploited working-class man.

This distinction among mercenaries based on class and masculinity serves to confirm what appears to be the crux of the film—that while the bodies of the working-class mercenaries may be expendable, their principles as “freedom fighters” and their homosocial bonds as working-class men are not. At a time when men in the workplace are purportedly endangered, The Expendables turns to homosociality as a coping strategy. True to myths of working-class masculinity that are rife in popular genres of Hollywood film that celebrate the male body (i.e., action and sport films) the mercenaries are depicted as “real” men whose loyalty to one another endures beyond their physical bodies. This attitude is embedded in an intense homosociality among the group of mercenaries in “good times” and in peril, despite significant disruptions to some of their friendships (i.e., Gunner tries to kill Yang and defects to Munroe’s gang before returning to Stallone’s side by the end of the film). Homosociality in the film is underscored by an open suspicion of women. Cautionary reflections on heterosexual romance are routinely offered by Ross, who encourages his “brothers” to find comfort in male camaraderie instead. (Ironically, Tool wishes only to die in the arms of a woman, presumably nameless). Homosociality, predicated on the denigration of women, is further supported by the film’s soundtrack. While music in the film is sparse, its key songs reiterate the men’s distrust of women: “Keep your hands to yourself” by the Georgia Satellites and “Keep on Chooglin” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. In the final scene of the film, the merry band of mercenaries ride off on motorcycles to the chorus of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys are Back in Town.”

These “boys,” however, also provide the mercenary genre with a complicated brand of multiculturalism, one that is rooted in The Expendables’ multiracial cast. While a cursory multiculturalism attempts to excuse the infantilization of Latin America throughout the film, it also reflects the international character of private military labor pools. (And yet private military operations are presented in the film as a “cottage industry” rather than an instrument of the neoliberal military-industrial complex.) In addition, the multicultural complexion of the mercenary unit invites us at least momentarily to think of working-class bodies across a spectrum of racial and ethnic difference (but not across gender or sexual difference). This might be an important intervention into the predominantly white middle-class narratives of the “Great Recession” if not for the film’s investment in racial hierarchies of labor.

True to the action genre, the white male bodybuilder (Stallone) is the central protagonist whose will and interests drive the narrative (Jeffords 1994; Dyer 1997; Tasker 1993). Despite the crew’s internationality, Ross is situated at the center. While this positioning can certainly be attributed to Stallone’s power as the film’s writer, producer, and director, it necessarily contributes to the uneven and problematic depictions of nonwhite individuals in film and popular culture more broadly (Dyer 1986; Tasker 1993; Chan 2000; Hunt 2004). The only African American character, Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), is depicted largely as a hypermuscular and aggressive “heavy,” preoccupied with weaponry and committed to sacrificing his body for the safety of the group. He uses the largest rifles to fend off a band of enemies, reminding his crew to remember the act of selflessness at Christmas time. Ying Yang, the sole Asian mercenary, is portrayed in markedly different but no less problematic ways. True to stereotypes of Asian men in cinema (Tasker 1997; Chen 1999; Chan 2000) Yang is depicted as small, mysterious, and preoccupied with money. In one scene, Yang pleads with Ross for an increase in salary, claiming that he must support his family. While Yang later admits that he has no family, he insists to Ross that his life is harder than the other mercenaries because “I’m small, must work harder; it is harder for me.”

In a similar context, Jachison Chan (2000) notes how Asian men’s masculinity has been largely marginalized to a western hegemonic norm. He contends that their masculinities are often feminized and stereotyped as well as erased and denied and that this occurs through the visual representation of the body: white men are depicted as big and strong and Asian men as small and weak. The diminishment of Yang is achieved through his comparison in hand-to-hand combat with Gunner, played by the 6′ 4′′ Dolph Lundgren. Following a car chase, Ross, Yang, and Gunner end up in an abandoned warehouse where a fight ensues between Gunner and Yang. While both actors are trained in martial arts, Lundgren a black belt in Karate and Li the consummate professional, comic reference is made by the larger man regarding his opponent’s size: “What do you wear? Size 3? Bring it, happy feet.” ¹ What is most striking about this scene is that even though Li is the superior martial artist, he is defeated by his lumbering, yet larger Aryan opponent. This is a moment where the labor relations of the text refract the labor relations of Hollywood film. This is to say that the ascension of martial arts as the dominant style of combat in action cinema and television is symptomatic of western appropriation and colonization of Hong Kong labor. Leon Hunt calls this “the Hong Kongification of American cinema” (p. 19). Hunt uses this concept to account for the Hollywood careers of Hong Kong actors, directors, and choreographers such as Bruce Lee, John Woo, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan as well as the success of western stars in Hong Kong (i.e., Chuck Norris, George Lazenby, Cynthia Rothrock, and Jean-Claude Van Damme). Yet, rather than an equal diffusion of talent across cultures, Hunt claims that the assimilation of martial arts into Hollywood film has appropriated, marginalized, and erased the labor of Chinese actors, stuntmen, and directors, who were often considered cheap labor by directors and filmmakers. Hunt’s analysis is useful for highlighting the contributions that Chinese film professionals have made to the cinema, but more so for recognizing how these contributions are erased by their discursive representation in texts.

What we wish to highlight with our attention to race in The Expendables, is how a labor text, preoccupied with extolling and lamenting the struggles of working-class men, rests on and elides racialized divisions of labor both within and beyond the film’s narrative. Extending this comment to films of the “Great Recession” more broadly, we contend that in the latest crisis of masculinity narratives, while the white man imagines himself as slighted to the margins of society alongside his fellow racialized Americans—his very lamentation of being marginalized maintains his place at the center.

“Muscle Work,” Aging, and the Physical Actor in Hollywood film

The above analysis highlights the difficulty of separating out the textual and intertextual meanings of The Expendables as well as the fecundity of exploring these interactions in relation to the theme of labor. Intertextuality, as Tasker (2004) notes, has become a feature of the new Hollywood action adventure film. This is largely due to the development of film stars into celebrities, fully intertextual personalities whose meanings are made up of multiple images of their fictional and “real” selves across a range of media texts and industries (Dyer 1986). What is of particular importance to us is how intertextuality in The Expendables reflects the labor relations of Hollywood film. Richard Dyer provides us with a useful framework. In Heavenly Bodies (1986), he focuses on two aspects of the star: how they are produced and how they relate to notions of individualism in capitalist society. While we have already touched upon Dyer’s first point, that stars are constituted by multiple images and by multiple media industries, the second point is of particular pertinence as it describes their relationship to labor. “Stars are examples of the way people live their relation to production in capitalist society” (Dyer 1986, 5). In addition to representing important intersections of sexuality, race, and gender, “the star” for Dyer embodies labor in the market place of the film industry, “made for profit” by its many factions. Dyer tells us that celebrities are quite unusual workers in late capitalist modes of production inasmuch as they are both the products and the producers of that product. This is to say that the star, along with hair dressers, wardrobe, personal trainers, and so on, labors to produce a commodity from their physical body which is then used to produce another commodity—the film. In his case studies of Paul Robeson, Marilyn Munroe, and Judy Garland, Dyer explores “antagonistic” labor relations that are shaped by race, gender, and sexuality. Yet, he is careful to highlight how others, typically (white) male stars, portray a positive relationship to labor in Hollywood. Citing Clarke Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen, Dyer argues that white males display an “instrumental attitude” to labor as “enjoyment.”

To some extent, the stars of The Expendables represent this positive relationship to labor given their overt displays of wealth and hedonism in the media. Indeed, this imagery overflows into the film through intertextual references to their celebrity and via their jaunts on custom Harley Davidson motorcycles. Thus, on one level, there is a marked discrepancy between the economically privileged stars and the working-class characters they portray. However, when we consider their position as physical actors whose bodies are their primary resource, these stars can also be seen as having an antagonistic relationship to the labor process (on a continuum with Garland and Robeson, of course) that is pronounced when we consider how aging affects their ability to perform “muscle work” and move beyond it.

To be sure there are different kinds of physical actors who are tied to their physical labor in different ways. The Expendables represents a range of these “body types” by drawing on an entire pantheon of action heroes to populate its cast. In doing so, the film speaks to the ways in which the “muscle man” pantheon has shifted and expanded over the past few decades in concert with shifting definitions of masculinity (Tasker 1993). We have identified three different kinds of physical laborers in action films that correspond to different kinds of bodies and masculinities: (1) those whose muscular bodies are built exclusively for the screen (Stallone), (2) those whose bodies are built for the screen but who come from competitive athletic backgrounds (Lundgren was a competitive martial artist, Statham an Olympic diver), and (3) those whose bodies are built through professional sports but who have transitioned into film after retirement (Couture was an mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, Crews was a professional football player). Key to understanding the nuances of these types of labor and their symbolism in film is identifying the kinds of masculinities they represent. We will begin by discussing the first two types of physical actors and return to the third type, the professional sports star.

Tasker (1993) explores the distinctions among physical actors and narrative or method actors in action films and explains how they correspond to hierarchies of representation. Distinguishing between “tough guys” and “wise guys,” she explains how the ability of actors to diversify themselves in film is directly linked to whether they are associated with their body or their intellect. She uses the example of Stallone and Bruce Willis where the former has been typecast as a “tough guy,” silent and muscular and who has had difficulty moving out of the action man role compared with Willis, a “wise guy,” possessed of both voice and body and who has successfully diversified himself in film. Tasker’s hierarchy is identifiable in almost all of the resumes of the stars in The Expendables. Stallone’s oeuvre is almost entirely made up of Hollywood action films in which the display of his heavily muscled body drives the narrative (Rocky 1–4 [1976–2006], F.I.S.T[1978] Rambo1–4 [1982–2008], Cliffhanger[1993], Judge Dredd[1995]). Through his roles as a working-class hero, combined with the spectacularization of his hypermusulcar body and characteristic slurred speech, Stallone has been typecast as a “tough guy” and has faced significant challenges attempting to move beyond action cinema into more complex, narrative roles (Tasker 1993). This is compared to Bruce Willis who, while also belonging to the action genre (the Die Hardseries [1998–1995], Last Boy Scout[1991], The 5th Element[1997], Armageddon[1998]), has been characterized as a “wise guy,” playing characters who use their intellect as well as their body to navigate challenges (The Sixth Sense [1999], Unbreakable [2000], 16 Blocks [2006]). Similarly, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays a cameo in an early scene with Willis and Stallone, introduces another rung to the hierarchy of celebrity, labor, and masculinity. While he began from his body, he successfully traversed film for the worlds of finance, real estate, and politics. The differential successes of Stallone and Schwarzenegger, both muscle workers, is revealing of the classed dimensions of physical work and the myth of individualism in the United Sates. This is to suggest that while Stallone has continued to trade on his physical body for work in Hollywood film, Schwarzenegger has traded in his body for other kinds of capital by marrying into the American elite and diversifying himself not only as an actor but as a businessman and politician (see Messner 2007; Boyle 2010).

Mickey Rourke is an interesting case of someone who has moved between these types, from character actor to spectacle as he built his body to play an aging sports entertainer in The Wrestler(2008). This performance, along with his other intertextual imagery in films, illuminates intersections of aging/ailing masculinity and working-class labor. After earning critical acclaim but little “mainstream” recognition for his roles in Diner (1982), 9^1/2 Weeks (1986), and Barfly (1987), Rourke left Hollywood to pursue a career as a prizefighter. While undefeated in eight matches, the thirty-nine-year-old Rourke was considered too old to be a legitimate contender by many boxing promoters. When he decided to return to “mainstream” film in 2005, Rourke was allegedly advised to undergo reconstructive surgery to repair damaged cartilage and scar tissue accumulated during his time in the ring (The botched surgeries have preoccupied film critics and audiences ever since). As an actor, Rourke is of a different ilk than Stallone and Statham, but his well-known activities off-screen supplement The Expendables’ intertextual dialogue with physical labor and the decaying body. Such themes were compounded in The Wrestler (2008) which earned Rourke an Academy Award nomination for his moving portrayal of an aging and slightly delusional working-class “entertainment athlete.” As a celebrity, however, Rourke (like Stallone) can be read as a metonym for not only aging masculinities and “expendability” in Hollywood but also potential redemption in an industry where “everyone loves a comeback” (according to the hit TV series Entourage).

Professional Athletes in Hollywood Film: “Muscle Work” as “Masculine Work”

It seems the widespread appeal and marquee billing of The Expendables has as much to do with its famous cast of former wrestlers, prizefighters, and professional athletes as it does with its revival of old-guard action heroes. The appearance of ex-NFLer (National Football League)Terry Crews adds to the constellation of physical labor and the commentary on aging bodies. As a defensive end, Crews played four seasons in the NFL during the 1990s before pursuing a career as a “muscle” actor. Crews’ transition to acting resembles that of NFL legend Jim Brown, who is celebrated as one of the greatest running backs in the history of the NFL and widely known for his roles in The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Blaxploitation cinema. Unlike Crews, however, Brown retired from professional football in his prime, seeking more cerebral endeavors that football simply could not provide. As Brown explains, “I was a highly-paid, over-glamorized gladiator [in an industry where] . . . the decision makers are the men who own, not the ones who play” (Kram 1996, 1). Although Crews’ retirement and reflections on professional football were less publicized than Brown’s (to say the least), both men arrived in Hollywood by way of an industry routinely described as a modern-day plantation that thrives primarily on “black muscle” (Rhoden 2006, 174). Muscle work is particularly pronounced in the NFL where players are literally reduced to their bodies through the hiring and training practices of the league. The NFL scouting combine combine, a process of measuring and testing athlete’s capabilities in preparation for the NFL draft, is known for its objectification of athlete’s bodies. Put through a battery of physical, mental, and character tests, individuals are literally reduced to statistical data by scientists and treated as such by coaches, sport media, and fans who can follow the draft online (Oats and Durham 2004). In an industry defined primarily by black workers (who outnumber whites more than two to one) and white owners and coaches, it is not uncommon to find plantation metaphors within and beyond the field (Oats and Durham 2004; Dufur and Feinberg 2009). William Rhoden has famously referred to black athletes in the NFL as “$40-million slaves” (2006). In addition to the objectification of the drafting process, the NFL creates an artificially restricted labor market in order to distribute talent across the league. While athletes can become free agents after several years of service with a team, control over player’s labor is largely in the hands of owners (Dufur and Feinberg 2009). This situation has produced frequent labor disputes, as in the lockout of Summer 2011 when players demanded a greater share of the owner’s profits.

As David Zirin points out, NFL players are often treated like “pieces of property” in an industry where playing careers last an average of 3.4 years, the rate of injury is 100 percent, and players are likely to die at least twenty years earlier than the “average” American male (2010, 2). And due to the social honor and economic promise of being a pro-football player, there is no shortage of young men lined up to take an injured player’s place. Such conditions are also commonplace in MMA. While the sport has become increasingly “civilized” since its Vale Tudo (no holds barred) roots (Mayeda and Ching 2008), injuries are frequent, fighters are a plenty, contracts are few, and organizers are fickle. It is only those who reach the elite ranks who can make significant prize money, and even then, it is the owners and organizers who profit most. ²

The ex-athletes in The Expendables further highlight the complex relationship between aging, masculinity, and muscle work. Randy Couture, a former professional Greco-Roman wrestler began his career in MMA in his late thirties and became the only man to win titles in both the middle and the heavy weight divisions at the age of forty and shocked audiences by defeating elite opponents twenty years his junior. Certainly, while the labor pools of professional sports are mostly populated by the young, Couture is not unusual. A number of other well-known athletes have maintained careers into middle age including Chuck Liddell (MMA age forty-two), Tim Thomas (NHL, age forty-one), Mike Modano (NHL, age forty-one), and NFL hall of famer, Brett Favre (forty-three). Certainly, where injury is an ongoing occupational hazard, most suffer the physical, emotional, and mental effects of significant physical deterioration and of disengaging from the cultures and institutions in which they spent most of their lives (Messner 1992).

Yet, while many professional athletes are among the most exploited of muscle workers, Hollywood film appears to offer them a space of longevity outside of sports. Indeed, celebrity athletes play a special role in The Expendables, which is in many ways a homage to aging men. This is because of the kind of aging masculinity they lend to the overall image of the film that is complicated, as critics have pointed out, by the aging/ailing bodies of its vintage Hollywood cast. This is to say that celebrity athletes lend an image of “real” and authentic masculine virility and physical competence to those whose bodies are built purely for the screen and that are clearly beginning to decline. While Stallone’s credibility as an action-film star is bolstered by his hypermuscularity, it is potentially compromised by the physical signs of aging. Herein lies the importance of celebrity athletes. While retired, and older than the newest set of stars in their respective sports, they “authenticate” the physical fitness of the aging cast, who keep apace with the ex-athletes on screen. This image is legitimated by their careers as professional combat athletes—whose bodies were built through the rigors of their full-contact sport and proven on the field. This is in contrast to the Hollywood actors, whose athletic abilities are not so proven and whose bodies have been bent into shape via plastic surgery and a fitness regime made for the screen.

Thus, we may understand celebrity athletes as constituting a representationallabor force within Hollywood film, where “muscle work” is simultaneously “masculine work”—deployed in the service of stabilizing the ailing masculinities of the vintage muscle workers. Certainly, the requisite “masculinities” of their combat sports contributes to the ability of Couture and Crews to shore up the apparent fissures and cracks in the muscular masculine carapaces of Hollywood action heroes such as Lundgren and Stallone. The NFL is notorious for its promotion of aggressive, homophobic, sexist, and nationalist imagery to the extent that it has oft been cited by masculinity scholars as exemplary of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1995; Messner 1992). Those more recently turning their attention to MMA have noted similar kinds of masculinities being promoted (Hirose and Pih 2010; Garcia and Malcolm 2010; Mayeda and Ching 2008). While Garcia and Malcolm (2010) argue that the sport has actually gone through a process of “civilizing” rather than an assumed decivilization, MMA media industries carefully define and promote the sport according to an aggressive form of masculinity that has ensured its immense popularity in the United States and abroad.

This is not to suggest that images of masculinity among NFL and MMA athletes are always devoid of nuance, as striking representations of counterhegemonic masculinities do exist. However, the dominant representation of Crews and Couture as mercenaries who are defined by their combat skills and hyperaggression suggests their commodity value for Hollywood film. As “muscle workers” and “masculine workers,” their bodies and athletic performance serve to quell the more disturbing image of aging masculinities presented by their Hollywood counterparts.

Conclusion

In many ways, The Expendables is entirely consistent with Stallone’s cinematic portfolio, especially in terms of violent masculinity and working-class culture. As Kellner pointed out in the late-1980s, “It is symptomatic that Stallone plays both Rocky and Rambo during a time when economic recession was driving the Rockys of the world to join the military where they became Rambos for Reagan’s interventionist foreign policies” (1995, 65). Indeed, many of Stallone’s films have been received as social commentaries on “the victimization of the working class” (Kellner 1995, 65). Disillusioned and jaded by the treatment of veterans of the Vietnam War, Stallone’s “John Rambo,” for instance, returns to widespread resentment and a dire economic future in the America of First Blood (1982).

We find similar working-class rhythms in The Expendables, a film that debuted at a time when the working class in the United States is largely overshadowed by popular narratives of the “Great Recession” as a mostly middle-class predicament. To this end, The Expendablesinvites us to think about forms of economic struggle and labor beyond the “managerial class” of “recession films” like Up in the Air and The Company Men, which marginalize the working class but turn to it for moments of masculine recovery. Stallone’s mercenary film also encourages us to contemplate the aging body within a constellation of “working-class” jobs—from prizefighting and physical acting in Hollywood to professional sports, where labor has been “locked out” in each of the “big four” leagues (MLB, NHL, NFL, and NBA) since 1994 and twice in 2011 (NFL and NBA). While the various references to physical labor certainly complicate a dominant discourse of the current economic crisis and its middle-class dimensions, the film’s social commentary is limited in several ways. On one hand, the depiction of working-class “authenticity” relies not only on ex-athlete actors, motorcycles, engine grease, and combat but also the displacement of women, whom we are told now “hold the majority of the nation’s jobs” (Rosin 2010, 2). To this end, the film is redolent of a current trend of “retrosexuality” and a cultural backlash against feminisms of which we must always be wary for its misrepresentation and elision of actual power relations and how these shape people’s lives. Indeed, the film’s often articulate commentary on aging and the “expendability” of the working class ends up rehashing a racial hierarchy of labor where black and Asian characters are instrumental to the success of the military mission but displaced by the celebrity screen presence of Stallone and, to a lesser extent, Statham.

On a broader level, and to take us back to where this article began, our examination of labor discourse in The Expendables is revealing of the extent to which hegemonic masculinities continue to shape cultural ideas about bodies, work, and (dis)empowerment. This is to say, that despite the lamentation about the “end of men” that is popular among Hollywood films of “The Great Recession,” hegemonic forms of masculinity may not be as endangered as films like The Expendables might lead audiences to think. In fact, the very suggestion of a crisis of labor among ageing men may suggest less of an actual displacement and more of an overreaction to the encroachment on white, male territories of privilege by women, immigrants, and younger men. ³ Of course, this suspicion requires more analysis and despite the excellent work that has proliferated around images of male bodies and crisis masculinities in Hollywood film, bodies, and their representations remain fruitful and crucial sites of critical intervention.