Location shooting in “the Wild East”: risk and masculinity in Hollywood productions in the Philippines

Abstract

This essay argues that risk has become a crucial part of Hollywood’s transnational media productions, revealing these productions’ links to various forms of masculinity. Entailing the deliberate confrontation of uncertainty, the concept of risk connotes rational decision-making, territorial exploration, economic investment, and, more implicitly, the kinds of masculinities associated with these practices. As such, risk becomes a means of understanding how the older forms of white masculinity associated with empire map onto newer geopolitical contexts, gendering production narratives that seek to mythologize filmmakers as auteurs, businessmen, and danger-seekers. Focusing on American productions in the Philippines, the essay examines risk and white masculinity in three cases of filmmaking: 1970s exploitation cinema commemorated in Machete Maidens Unleashed!; Apocalypse Now and Coppola’s subsequent tourism ventures; and the blockbuster The Bourne Legacy.

Keywords:

• Global Hollywood
• production studies
• masculinity
• transnational cinema
• risk
• Philippines

Notes

1. Jonathan Gray (2010) argues for close analysis of paratexts (e.g., trailers, interviews, entertainment news, merchandising, and DVD extras) as key to understanding not only the meaning of the main text, but also the production and regulation of culture. See Show Sold Separately.

2. See the Race and Hollywood Project at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA: http://www.bunchecenter.ucla.edu/index.php/2012/06/race-and-hollywood-background/. The DGA’s 2015 “Feature Film Diversity Report” reveals that white men occupy 82.4 percent of directing positions: http://www.dga.org/News/PressReleases/2015/151209-DGA-Publishes-Inaugural-Feature-Film-Diversity-Report.aspx.