Susanna Paasonen is Professor of Media Studies at University of Turku, Finland. With an interest in studies of sexuality, affect and popular media culture, she is most recently the author of TechnoPharmacology (with Joshua Neves, Aleena Chia and Ravi Sundaram, 2022), Dependent, Distracted, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media (2021), Objectification: On the Difference of Sex and Sexism (with Feona Attwood, Alan McKee, John Mercer and Clarissa Smith, 2020) and Who’s Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media (with Jenny Sundén, 2020).

This is perhaps the most extensive academic treatise ever written on Russian-born actor Yul Brynner (1920–85). Paasonen does not deliver a standard biography of the famed actor; rather, she studies Brynner in a number of ways that transcend him as an individual. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

• Acknowledgments A fantastic figure Flexible origins and exotic displays A royal presenceBodily assets, or, ‘S-E-X’ Strong, silent, ethnic types Cosmopolitan commitments Man, beast, machinePerformance style, posturing and campAn afterlife – et cetera, et cetera, et cetera References

Susanna Paasonen is Professor of Media Studies at University of Turku, Finland. With an interest in studies of sexuality, affect and popular media culture, she is most recently the author of TechnoPharmacology (with Joshua Neves, Aleena Chia and Ravi Sundaram, 2022), Dependent, Distracted, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media (2021), Objectification: On the Difference of Sex and Sexism (with Feona Attwood, Alan McKee, John Mercer and Clarissa Smith, 2020) and Who’s Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media (with Jenny Sundén, 2020).

This is perhaps the most extensive academic treatise ever written on Russian-born actor Yul Brynner (1920–85). Paasonen does not deliver a standard biography of the famed actor; rather, she studies Brynner in a number of ways that transcend him as an individual. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

• Acknowledgments A fantastic figure Flexible origins and exotic displays A royal presenceBodily assets, or, ‘S-E-X’ Strong, silent, ethnic types Cosmopolitan commitments Man, beast, machinePerformance style, posturing and campAn afterlife – et cetera, et cetera, et cetera References

Susanna Paasonen is Professor of Media Studies at University of Turku, Finland. With an interest in studies of sexuality, affect and popular media culture, she is most recently the author of TechnoPharmacology (with Joshua Neves, Aleena Chia and Ravi Sundaram, 2022), Dependent, Distracted, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media (2021), Objectification: On the Difference of Sex and Sexism (with Feona Attwood, Alan McKee, John Mercer and Clarissa Smith, 2020) and Who’s Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media (with Jenny Sundén, 2020).

This is perhaps the most extensive academic treatise ever written on Russian-born actor Yul Brynner (1920–85). Paasonen does not deliver a standard biography of the famed actor; rather, she studies Brynner in a number of ways that transcend him as an individual. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

• Acknowledgments A fantastic figure Flexible origins and exotic displays A royal presenceBodily assets, or, ‘S-E-X’ Strong, silent, ethnic types Cosmopolitan commitments Man, beast, machinePerformance style, posturing and campAn afterlife – et cetera, et cetera, et cetera References