Bad Hombres at the Border: Masculinity and Mexico in Rambo Last Blood

Frame, Gregory

Abstract

The Rambo series (1982-2019) has functioned as a barometer of US domestic and foreign policies across its forty year history. At first a traumatised veteran of the war in Vietnam, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) became a hard-bodied defender of US interests. By the fifth instalment, Last Blood, the world-weary Rambo has retreated to the family ranch in Arizona, though he is once more pressed into action to rescue his niece from Mexican sex traffickers. This chapter explores how Last Blood reinforces many of the conventions of the border western through its construction of a stark dichotomy between the bucolic, tranquil US frontier, and a decrepit, hellish Mexico. It also considers how the aged Rambo’s attitudes toward Mexico mirror Trumpian rhetoric and policies regarding the supposed existential threat it poses to US safety and security and, through his vigilantism, proscribes the restoration of violent, authoritarian masculinity as the solution.

• Online Publication Date: Jul 14, 2022
• Publication Date: Aug 11, 2022
• Deposit Date: Apr 25, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: May 4, 2023
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Pages: 279-292
• Book Title: Screening the Crisis: US Cinema and Social Change in the Wake of the 2008 Crash
• Chapter Number: 17
• ISBN: 9781501388125
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/19006137
• Publisher URL: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/screening-the-crisis-9781501388125/