Download or read book Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush written by David Greven and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A struggle between narcissistic and masochistic modes of manhood defined Hollywood masculinity in the period between the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. David Greven's contention is that a profound shift in representation occurred during the early 1990s when Hollywood was transformed by an explosion of films that foregrounded non-normative gendered identity and sexualities. In the years that have followed, popular cinema has either emulated or evaded the representational strategies of this era, especially in terms of gender and sexuality. One major focus of this study is that, in a great deal of the criticism in both the fields of film theory and queer theory, masochism has been positively cast as a form of male sexuality that resists the structures of normative power, while narcissism has been negatively cast as either a regressive sexuality or the bastion of white male privilege. Greven argues that narcissism is a potentially radical mode of male sexuality that can defy normative codes and categories of gender, whereas masochism, far from being radical, has emerged as the default mode of a traditional normative masculinity. This study combines approaches from a variety of disciplines—psychoanalysis, queer theory, American studies, men's studies, and film theory—as it offers fresh readings of several important films of the past twenty years, including Casualties of War, The Silence of the Lambs, Fight Club, The Passion of the Christ, Auto Focus, and Brokeback Mountain.
Download or read book Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush written by David Greven and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the struggle between narcissistic and masochistic modes of manhood that defined Hollywood masculinity from the late 1980s to the first decade of the 21st century.
Download or read book Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush written by David Greven and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-12-07 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A struggle between narcissistic and masochistic modes of manhood defined Hollywood masculinity in the period between the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. David Greven's contention is that a profound shift in representation occurred during the early 1990s when Hollywood was transformed by an explosion of films that foregrounded non-normative gendered identity and sexualities. In the years that have followed, popular cinema has either emulated or evaded the representational strategies of this era, especially in terms of gender and sexuality. One major focus of this study is that, in a great deal of the criticism in both the fields of film theory and queer theory, masochism has been positively cast as a form of male sexuality that resists the structures of normative power, while narcissism has been negatively cast as either a regressive sexuality or the bastion of white male privilege. Greven argues that narcissism is a potentially radical mode of male sexuality that can defy normative codes and categories of gender, whereas masochism, far from being radical, has emerged as the default mode of a traditional normative masculinity. This study combines approaches from a variety of disciplines—psychoanalysis, queer theory, American studies, men's studies, and film theory—as it offers fresh readings of several important films of the past twenty years, including Casualties of War, The Silence of the Lambs, Fight Club, The Passion of the Christ, Auto Focus, andBrokeback Mountain.
Download or read book Hard Bodies written by Susan Jeffords and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hard Bodies looks at some of the most popular films of the Reagan era and examines how the characters, themes, and stories presented in them often helped to reinforce and disseminate the policies, programs, and beliefs of the 'Reagan Revolution.'
Download or read book Ghost Faces written by David Greven and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Nonfiction category presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation Ghost Faces explores the insidious nature of homophobia even in contemporary Hollywood films that promote their own homo-tolerance and appear to destabilize hegemonic masculinity. Reframing Laura Mulvey's and Gilles Deleuze's paradigms and offering close readings grounded in psychoanalysis and queer theory, David Greven examines several key films and genre trends from the late 1990s forward. Movies considered range from the slasher film Scream to bromances and beta male comedies such as I Love You, Man to dramas such as Donnie Darko and 25th Hour to Rob Zombie's remake of the horror film Halloween. Greven also traces the disturbing connections between torture porn found in such films as Hostel and gay male Internet pornography.
Download or read book Psycho Sexual written by David Greven and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-01-02 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bridging landmark territory in film studies, Psycho-Sexual is the first book to apply Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy to three key directors of 1970s Hollywood—Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and William Friedkin—whose work suggests the pornographic male gaze that emerged in Hitchcock’s depiction of the voyeuristic, homoerotically inclined American man. Combining queer theory with a psychoanalytic perspective, David Greven begins with a reconsideration of Psycho and the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much to introduce the filmmaker’s evolutionary development of American masculinity. Psycho-Sexual probes De Palma’s early Vietnam War draft-dodger comedies as well as his film Dressed to Kill, along with Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Friedkin’s Cruising as reactions to and inventive elaborations upon Hitchcock’s gendered themes and aesthetic approaches. Greven demonstrates how the significant political achievement of these films arises from a deeply disturbing, violent, even sorrowful psychological and social context. Engaging with contemporary theories of pornography while establishing pornography’s emergence during the classical Hollywood era, Greven argues that New Hollywood filmmakers seized upon Hitchcock’s radical decentering of heterosexual male dominance. The resulting images of heterosexual male ambivalence allowed for an investment in same-sex desire; an aura of homophobia became informed by a fascination with the homoerotic. Psycho-Sexual also explores the broader gender crisis and disorganization that permeated the Cold War and New Hollywood eras, reimagining the defining premises of Hitchcock criticism.
Download or read book Screening Images of American Masculinity in the Age of Postfeminism written by Elizabeth Abele and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays presents a sampling of film and television texts, interrogating images of U.S. masculinity. Rather than using “postfeminist” as a definition of contemporary feminism, this collection uses the term to designate the period from the late 1980s on—as a point when feminist thought gradually became more mainstream. The movies and TV series examined here have achieved a level of sustained attention, from critical acclaim, to mass appeal, to cult status. Instead of beginning with a set hypothesis on the effect of the feminist movement on images of masculinity on film and television, these chapters represent a range of responses, that demonstrate how the conversations within these texts about American masculinity are often open-ended, allowing both male characters and male viewers a wider range of options. Defining the relationship between U.S. masculinity and American feminist movements of the twentieth century is a complex undertaking. The essays collected for this volume engage prominent film and television texts that directly interrogate images of U.S. masculinity that have appeared since second-wave feminism. The contributors have chosen textual examples whose protagonists actively struggle with the conflicting messages about masculinity. These protagonists are more often works-in-progress, acknowledging the limits of their negotiations and self-actualization. These chapters also cover a wide range of genres and decades: from action and fantasy to dramas and romantic comedy, from the late 1970s to today. Taken together, the chapters of Screening Images of American Masculinity in the AgeofPostfeminism interrogate “the possible” screened in popular movies and television series, confronting the multiple and competing visions of masculinity not after or beyond feminism but, rather, in its very wake.
Download or read book Millennial Masculinity written by Timothy Shary and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2012-12-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film and television scholars as well as readers interested in gender and sexuality in film will appreciate this timely collection.
Download or read book Men Beyond Desire written by David Greven and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-09-02 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the construction of male sexuality in nineteenth-century American literature and comes up with some startling findings. Far from desiring heterosexual sex and wishing to bond with other men through fraternity, the male protagonists of classic American literature mainly want to be left alone. Greven makes the claim that American men, eschewing both marriage and male friendship, strive to remain emotionally and sexually inviolate. Examining the work of traditional authors - Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Cooper, Irving, Stowe - Greven discovers highly untraditional and transgressive representations of desire and sexuality. Objects of desire from both women and other men, the inviolate males discussed in this study overturn established gendered and sexual categories, just as this study overturns archetypal assumptions about American manhood and American literature.
Download or read book Becoming a Man written by P. Carl and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “scrupulously honest” (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut memoir that explores one man’s gender transition amid a pivotal political moment in America. Becoming a Man is a “moving narrative [that] illuminates the joy, courage, necessity, and risk-taking of gender transition” (Kirkus Reviews). For fifty years P. Carl lived as a girl and then as a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet still waiting to realize himself in full. As Carl embarks on his gender transition, he takes us inside the complex shifts and questions that arise throughout—the alternating moments of arrival and estrangement. He writes intimately about how transitioning reconfigures both his own inner experience and his closest bonds—his twenty-year relationship with his wife, Lynette; his already tumultuous relationships with his parents; and seemingly solid friendships that are subtly altered, often painfully and wordlessly. Carl “has written a poignant and candid self-appraisal of life as a ‘work-of-progress’” (Booklist) and blends the remarkable story of his own personal journey with incisive cultural commentary, writing beautifully about gender, power, and inequality in America. His transition occurs amid the rise of the Trump administration and the #MeToo movement—a transition point in America’s own story, when transphobia and toxic masculinity are under fire even as they thrive in the highest halls of power. Carl’s quest to become himself and to reckon with his masculinity mirrors, in many ways, the challenge before the country as a whole, to imagine a society where every member can have a vibrant, livable life. Here, through this brave and deeply personal work, Carl brings an unparalleled new voice to this conversation.
Download or read book Gender and Contemporary Horror in Comics Games and Transmedia written by Robert Shail and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the constant changes in contemporary popular media, the horror genre retains its attraction for audiences of all backgrounds. This edited collection explores modern representations of gender in horror and how this factors into the genre's appeal.
Download or read book Cable Guys written by Amanda D. Lotz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the meth-dealing but devoted family man Walter White of AMCOCOs Breaking Bad, to the part-time basketball coach, part-time gigolo Ray Drecker of HBOOCOs Hung, depictions of male characters perplexed by societal expectations of men and anxious about changing American masculinity have become standard across the television landscape. Engaging with a wide variety of shows, includinga The League, a Dexter, anda Nip/Tuck, among many others, Amanda D. Lotz identifies the gradual incorporation of second-wave feminism into prevailing gender norms as the catalyst for the contested masculinities on display in contemporary cable dramas. Examining the emergence of male-centered serials such asa The Shield, a Rescue Me, anda Sons of Anarchy aand the challenges these characters face in negotiating modern masculinities, Lotz analyzes how these shows combine feminist approaches to fatherhood and marriage with more traditional constructions of masculine identity that emphasize menOCOs role as providers. She explores the dynamics of close male friendships both in groups, as ina Entourage aanda Men of a Certain Age, wherein characters test the boundaries between the homosocial and homosexual in their relationships with each other, and in the dyadic intimacy depicted ina Boston Legal aanda Scrubs .a Cable Guys aprovides a much needed look into the under-considered subject of how constructions of masculinity continue to evolve on television."
Download or read book Race Men written by Hazel V. Carby and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who are the "race men" standing for black America? It is a question Hazel Carby rejects, along with its long-standing assumption: that a particular type of black male can represent the race. A searing critique of definitions of black masculinity at work in American culture, Race Men shows how these defining images play out socially, culturally, and politically for black and white society--and how they exclude women altogether. Carby begins by looking at images of black masculinity in the work of W. E. B. Du Bois. Her analysis of The Souls of Black Folk reveals the narrow and rigid code of masculinity that Du Bois applied to racial achievement and advancement--a code that remains implicitly but firmly in place today in the work of celebrated African American male intellectuals. The career of Paul Robeson, the music of Huddie Ledbetter, and the writings of C. L. R. James on cricket and on the Haitian revolutionary, Toussaint L'Ouverture, offer further evidence of the social and political uses of representations of black masculinity. In the music of Miles Davis and the novels of Samuel R. Delany, Carby finds two separate but related challenges to conventions of black masculinity. Examining Hollywood films, she traces through the career of Danny Glover the development of a cultural narrative that promises to resolve racial contradictions by pairing black and white men--still leaving women out of the picture. A powerful statement by a major voice among black feminists, Race Men holds out the hope that by understanding how society has relied upon affirmations of masculinity to resolve social and political crises, we can learn to transcend them.
Download or read book A Critical Companion to Mel Gibson written by Adam Barkman and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-02-02 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelve essays in A Critical Companion to Mel Gibson offer various interpretations of Mel Gibson’s work, treating this prolific but controversial figure not only as a filmmaker but as a historian, religious thinker, and social philosopher. From The Man Without a Face and Braveheart to The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto, and Hacksaw Ridge, this interdisciplinary collection mines Gibson’s life and oeuvre for insight into existential problems, Aristotelian virtues, the politics of film, interreligious dialogue, adaptation issues, and much more.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Alfred Hitchcock written by Jonathan Freedman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-08 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this Companion, leading film scholars and critics of American culture and imagination trace Hitchcock's interplay with the Hollywood studio system, the Cold War, and new forms of sexuality, gender, and desire over his thirty-year American career.
Download or read book Clerks written by Peter Templeton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-27 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of Kevin Smith’s debut film breaks new ground by exploring how Clerks sits at the intersection of political and cultural trends relevant to alternative youth cultures in the early 1990s. Clerks (1994) was born of and appeals to a specific youth subculture, with the multimedia ‘View Askewniverse’ developing out of the film’s initial release. Drawing on existing texts and movements such as Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991), Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and alternative rock subcultures that had developed during and since the 1980s, the film presents a comedic take on working as a young person in 1990s America in a manner that was praised for its authenticity. Filmed on a miniscule budget, the roughness of the film’s aesthetic, combined with a hard rock soundtrack comprised of mostly independent bands, convinced many that it could speak for young Americans, much more than polished, corporate Hollywood productions. The book situates the film within this wider cultural movement and cultural zeitgeist and explores the role of working-class youth and employment in the years following Reaganomics and its consequences, as well as providing insight into the film’s presentation of consumption and of its representation of masculinity and sexuality. Clear, concise and comprehensive, the book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, American independent film, Cult Film, Subcultures and Counterculture, as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly.
Download or read book Queering The Terminator written by David Greven and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Terminator film series is an unlikely site of queer affiliation. The entire premise revolves around both heterosexual intercourse and the woman's pregnancy and giving birth. It is precisely the Terminator's indifference to both that signifies it as an unimaginably inhuman monstrosity. Indeed, the films' overarching contention that humanity must be saved, rooted as it is in a particular story about pregnancy and birth that exclusively focuses on the heterosexual couple and the family, would appear to put it at odds with the political stances of contemporary queer theory. Yet, as this book argues, there is considerable queer interest in the Terminator mythos. The films provide a framework for interpreting shifting gender codes and the emergence of queer sexuality over the period of three decades. Significantly, the series emerges in the Reagan 80s, which marked a decisive break with the sexual fluidity of the 70s. As a franchise and on the individual basis of each film, The Terminator series combines both radical and reactionary elements. Each film reflects the struggles over gender and sexuality specific to its release. At the same time, the series foregrounds the intersection of technology and gender that has become a definitive aspect of contemporary experience. A narrative organized around a conservative view of female sexuality and the family, the Terminator myth is nevertheless a richly suggestive narrative for queer theory and gender studies.
