[Commlist] New Book: Starring Tom Cruise Edited Collection

/Starring Tom Cruise/

Edited by Sean Redmond

Wayne State University Press, 2021

*He had me at hello*

/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.

*Contributors Include:*

Adam Daniel, Michael DeAngelis, Glen Donnar, Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, Sasha T. 
Goldberg, Loraine Haywood, Tara Lomax, Carlos Menéndez-Otero, Ruth 
O'Donnell, Patrick O'Neill, Justin Owen Rawlins, Sean Redmond, Defne 
Tüzün, Alex Wade, Brenda R. Weber, Linda Wight

*Reviews*

Love him or loathe him, there is no denying that Tom Cruise has been one 
of the world's biggest movie stars for a long time. As such, he deserves 
serious scholarly attention, and this book provides it with fifteen 
smart essays that adroitly address just about every imaginable facet of 
the star's cultural, sexual, and symbolic resonance.

*– Gaylyn Studlar*, author of This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and 
Masculinity in the Jazz Age

Sean Redmond’s first-rate edited collection offers detailed 
consideration of the most important roles in Cruise’s successful 
decades-long career. This wide-ranging volume also covers essential new 
ground for the analysis of contemporary Hollywood stardom. Its 
insightful cross-disciplinary examination of the star’s perpetual border 
crossing makes this book an unmissable read. Stars like Tom Cruise never 
seem to lose their shine. This book enables us to understand why.

*– Virginia Luzón-Aguado*, Harrison Ford: Masculinity and Stardom in 
Hollywood

The contributors analyze Cruise’s appearance, his affect, the 
surrounding discourses, and films’ presentation of the actor in ways 
that illuminate the various aspects of his stardom and the society and 
industry that have made him a star for forty years.

*– Cynthia Baron*, author of Denzel Washington

This is a book that star studies has wanted, even if we didn’t know it—a 
wide-ranging set of reflections on the desirability, authenticity, and 
dogged agelessness of contemporary Hollywood’s ubiquitous genre king. As 
equally attuned to the white, masculine normativity of Tom Cruise as to 
his performative excess, sexual indeterminacy, and spiritual 
eccentricity, this book advances star studies by elucidating a changing 
Hollywood landscape through the cultural continuity of its most 
tenacious star.

*– Misha Kavka*, professor of cross-media culture, University of Amsterdam

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