Abstract

Two impressive essays that explore the energetic cultural presence of gender open Action, our first issue for 2004. In ‘Burst into Action’ Stephen Chan explores how the ‘woman warrior’ in Hong Kong action cinema organises aspects of everyday Hong Kong sensibility in the shifting terrain of the global popular. Then, in ‘Men who Surf’, Clifton Evers takes us to some of the moments when male bodies are formed in relation to the violent beauty of waves and surfing cultures. In both cases, the objects that emerge in these studies—the cinema and the beach—become radically different spaces that take us in unexpected directions. These essays are followed by Isabel McIntosh’s engaging study of cultural sovereignty in the disappearance of the Urewera Mural and Raya Massie’s wild ride with the hypercreature.