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1
Pillion, Owen L. "On Objects and Affections: Contemporary Representations of the Gay Man/Straight Woman Dyad in Popular Film and Television." Thesis, Connect to this title online, 2000. http://www.library.unt.edu/theses/open/20003/pillion%5Fowen%5Fl/index.htm.
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Crilly, Shane. ""Gods in our own world" representations of troubled and troubling masculinities in some Australian films, 1991-2001 /." Connect to this title online, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/37939.
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The dominance of male characters in Australian films makes our national cinema a rich resource for the examination of the construction of masculinities. This thesis argues that the codes of the hegemonic masculinities in capitalist patriarchal societies like Australia insist on an absolute masculine position. However, according to Oedipal logic, this position always belongs to another man. Masculine yet 'feminised,'identity is fraught with anxiety but sustained by the 'dominant fiction' that equates the penis with the phallus and locates the feminine as its polar opposite. This binary relationship is inaugurated in childhood when a boy must distinguish his identity from his mother, who, significantly, is a different gender. Being masculine means not being feminine. However, as much as men strive towards inhabiting the masculine position completely, this masquerade will always be exposed by the elements associated with femininity that are an inevitable part of the human experience. Yet, the more men are drawn to the feminine, the more they risk losing their masculine integrity altogether under the patriarchal gaze. Men, in this dualistic regime, are condemned to negotiate their identity haunted by the promises of the phallus and the fear of its loss. I begin with a model of masculine integrity represented in the image of an ideal father, Darryl Kerrigan, from The Castle and then proceed to problematise it through an examination of its excesses observed in the father of David Helfgott in Shine. In the second chapter I investigate two films that represent mothers as the principal threat to masculine integrity: Death in Brunswick and Proof. Both films reveal a misogynistic impetus, which is expressed as violence against women in The Boys, the sole focus of my middle chapter. With misogyny and violence still resonating, I follow the contours of my argument through an examination of Chopper and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in the fourth chapter, where I emphasise the performative nature of identity, before arriving at a discussion of men and their relationships in the final chapter (Mullet, Praise, and Thank God He Met Lizzie).Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Humanities, 2004.
3
Yeung, Yuk-ngan. "Gender representation in films." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2002. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?
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4
Lam, Suk-yin, and 林淑燕. "The construct of masculinity and femininity in John Woo and Stanley Kwan's films." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1996. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31951144.
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Reburn, Jennifer. "Watching men : masculinity and surveillance in the American serial killer film 1978-2008." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2012. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3390/.
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This thesis explores the depiction of masculinity in the American serial killer film with a particular focus on the articulation of surveillance. I trace shifts and trends in films made between 1978 and 2008. Drawing on existing analyses of the serial killer panic, I argue that cinema swiftly assimilated FBI rhetoric which influenced the development of the serial killer as a cultural figure. In particular, I highlight the profiler as a crucial element of serial killer discourse. This thesis tracks the development of this figure within American cinema, investigates the influence of this character on portrayals of the serial killer, and argues that the killer and profiler are constructed as opposing agents of surveillance. Using a chronological approach, I investigate the films shaped by this historical moment, splitting them into time-specific cycles in order to understand the cultural shifts affecting their development. I argue that a fascination with surveillance is a factor in the continuing power of the serial killer, exploring the different ways in which surveillance is thematised in the films. Highlighting the gendered nature of surveillance, I contend that the films support gender norms, with the killer often functioning as a violent example of the suppression of non-normative expressions of gendered identity. Including discussions of both mainstream and niche films, I show that the serial killer is distanced from normative masculinity in ways which allude to the Gothic and to gender, class and race prejudice, constructing the status of the serial killer as a special, inscrutable individual removed from power structures. The thesis argues that cinematic representations have embraced certain elements of FBI rhetoric, emphasising the exceptional surveillance skills of the profiler. As a result, the serial killer is frequently depicted as an extraordinary figure requiring elite expertise. I consider the ramifications of these portrayals and discuss the moments at which patriarchal power structures underlying this form of violence are both concealed and exposed.
6
Yeung, Yuk-ngan, and 楊玉顔. "Gender representation in films." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2002. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31953773.
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McCleerey, Mark Jefferey. "Monitor Men: An Intertextual Analysis of Motion Pictures Directed by George Clooney." OpenSIUC, 2015. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1025.
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In this dissertation, I analyze five feature films directed by, and one teleplay produced by, movie and television star George Clooney. I argue that traditional critical frameworks for analyzing the work of film directors are not sufficient in approaching the movie-star director. The director who is also a popular screen actor has a signifying function as a star, a function we must add to an auteurist analysis. To analyze the films of a movie-star director, we must take into account that director's star image, primarily because of the opportunities his or her star image offers for intertextual analysis. In this dissertation, such analysis includes other motion pictures and television shows in which George Clooney has starred, plus additional movies that I identify as not only related to Clooney-directed films, but that also illuminate those films via thematic and formal similarities. My overarching objective is to demonstrate that my approach here will be ideal for future analysis of directorial work by other film and television stars.
8
Sutton, Travis Benshoff Harry M. ""According to their wills and pleasures" the sexual stereotyping of Mormon men in American film and television /." [Denton, Tex.] : University of North Texas, 2009. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-9825.
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Lam, Suk-yin. "The construct of masculinity and femininity in John Woo and Stanley Kwan's films." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1996. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B17390801.
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Suen, Pak-kin. "Filming gay representations : male homosexuality in Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2000. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk:8888/cgi-bin/hkuto%5Ftoc%5Fpdf?B23242036.
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Crilly, Shane Alexander. "'Gods in our own world': representations of troubled and troubling masculinities in some Australian films, 1991-2001 /." Title page, table of contents and abstract only, 2004. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phc9291.pdf.
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Lay, John Phillip Benshoff Harry M. "Dangerous, desperate, and homosexual cinematic representations of the male prostitute as fallen angels /." [Denton, Tex.] : University of North Texas, 2008. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-6085.
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Demirkan-Martin, Vulcan Volkan. "Queerable spaces : homosexualities and homophobias in contemporary film : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Studies in the University of Canterbury /." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Cultural Studies, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/2575.
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This dissertation seeks to read contemporary films as symptoms of the societies they are made in, mainly contemporary Western societies, which I argue to be subtly but intensely homophobic. Films imagine/represent their own subject matter in terms of symbolic, encoded scenes. The decoding for the films I chose occurs through a use of very specific, heavily coded spaces as visualisable shorthand for a complex of homophobic reactions. Filmic texts do not have to have denotative non-heterosexual elements to be termed 'queer'. These texts become queer often in their reception by non-heterosexual audiences. In 'queering' these spaces and films, I extensively make use of tools of social geography, film studies and cultural studies The films I chose are not random choices, but they include certain themes that I believe to reflect the subtle homophobia in our societies. In the first chapter, Geographies of Cruising, I analyze the representation of streets and the leading character's cruising on the streets in Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999). The second chapter, Geographies of Effeminacy, concentrates on the denial of space to non-masculine men exemplified in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). In the third chapter, Geographies of Exclusion, the representation of a cellar in Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, 2003) serves to display the links between paedophilia and homosexuality. The fourth and final chapter, Geographies of Abuse and Rape, is an exercise on “out of placeness” and examines the connections made between male/male rape
and homosexuality in I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (Mike Hodges, 2003). The last chapter is
an extended reading of Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005), in which the tension between
closed spaces and wild spaces leads to a discussion of contemporary representation of
homosexuality and a summary of the chapters.
14
Schneider, Matthew. ""They Don't Make'em Like They Used To": Cultural Hegemony and the Representation of White Masculinity in Recent U.S. Cinema." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2005. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4932/.
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The purpose of this work is to illuminate how white male hegemony over women and minorities is inscribed through the process of film representation. A critical interrogation of six film texts produced over the last decade yields pertinent examples of how the process of hegemonic negotiation works to maintain power for the ever changing modes of postindustrial masculinity. Through the process of crisis and recuperation the central male characters in these films forge new, more acceptable attributes of masculinity that allow them to retain their centrality in the narrative.
15
Gallagher, Mark. "Action figures : spectacular masculinity in the contemporary action film and the contemporary American novel /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9978590.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 320-335). Includes filmography (leaves 335-337). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
16
Flook, Christopher A. "A critical analysis of masculinity portrayals in film : definition, ideal, and possible solution." Virtual Press, 2007. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1379432.
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The purpose of this thesis is to critically analyze masculinity portrayals in film at the turn of the Twenty-First Century. Specifically, the films Fight Club and American Beauty are analyzed to determine how these films define masculinity and render the ideal male. This analysis finds that the portrayal of men in these films closely matches the perception of a masculinity crisis. The films also offer a solution to the crisis that follows the philosophical theories suggested by Friedrich Nietzsche. It is concluded that masculinity is a social construction that needs new ideals and definitions to more accurately fit the environment of American men in the new century.Department of Telecommunications
17
Nolan, Petra Désirée. "The cinematic flâneur manifestations of modernity in the male protagonist of 1940s film noir /." Connect to this title online, 2004. http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000122/.
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Nolan, Petra Désiréé. "The cinematic flâneur : manifestations of modernity in the male protagonist of 1940s film noir /." Connect to thesis, 2004. http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000122.
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Lay, John Phillip. "Dangerous, Desperate, and Homosexual: Cinematic Representations of the Male Prostitute as Fallen Angels." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2008. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6085/.
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The purpose of this study is to frame the cinematic male prostitute as a "fallen angel" to demonstrate that the evolution of the cinematic hustler has paralleled historicized ideological definitions of male homosexuality. Because cultural understandings of male homosexuality frequently reflect Judeo-Christian ideological significations of sin and corruption, the term "fallen angel" is utilized to describe the hustler as a figure who has also succumbed to sin due to his sexual involvement with other men. This study constructs an epochal analysis of eight films that explores the confluence of the social understanding of homosexuality with the cinematic image of the hustler from the mid 1960s through the present. In doing so, this study shows that the image of the cinematic hustler is intricately tied to the image of the male homosexual in material cultures and eras that produce them. A filmography is included.
20
Sutton, Travis. ""According to Their Wills and Pleasures": The Sexual Stereotyping of Mormon Men in American Film and Television." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2009. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9825/.
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This thesis examines the representation of Mormon men in American film and television, with particular regard for sexual identity and the cultural association of Mormonism with sexuality. The history of Mormonism's unique marital practices and doctrinal approaches to gender and sexuality have developed three common stereotypes for Mormon male characters: the purposeful heterosexual, the monstrous polygamist, and the self-destructive homosexual. Depending upon the sexual stereotype in the narrative, the Mormon Church can function as a proponent for nineteenth-century views of sexuality, a symbol for society's repressed sexuality, or a metaphor for the oppressive effects of performing gender and sexuality according to ideological constraints. These ideas are presented in Mormon films such as Saturday's Warrior (1989) as well as mainstream films such as A Mormon Maid (1917) and Advise and Consent (1962).
21
Garcia, Sarah C. "We Are Individuals: Librarians’ Demonstration of Individuality on the World Wide Web." Thesis, School of Information and Library Science, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1901/271.
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This study examines a sample of websites created by librarians on the World Wide Web. The websites were analyzed to see how librarians are discussing and presenting themselves on the World Wide Web in the attempt to escape the traditional stereotype. An analysis of these websites revealed that librarians are not trying to completely escape the stereotype but rather to prove that all librarians are individuals outside of their profession.
22
Murphree, Hyon Joo Yoo. "Cowboys, Postmodern Heroes, and Anti-heroes: The Many Faces of the Alterized White Man." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2000. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2620/.
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This thesis investigates how hegemonic white masculinity adopts a new mode of material accumulation by entering into an ambivalent existence as a historical agent and metahistory at the same time and continues to function as a performative identity that offers a point of identification for the working class white man suggesting that bourgeois identity is obtainable through the performance of bourgeois ethics. The thesis postulates that the phenomenal transitions brought on by industrialization and deindustrialization of 50's through 90's coincide with the representational changes of white masculinity from paradigmatic cowboy incarnations to the postmodern action heroes, specifically as embodied by Bruce Willis. The thesis also examines how postmodern heroes' "intero-alterity" is further problematized by antiheroes in Tim Burton's films.
23
Schnoor, Andrea. "Redefining masculinity : the image of civilian men in American home front documentaries, 1942-1945." Virtual Press, 1999. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1133730.
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Redefining Masculinity presents an analysis of the American government's portrayal of civilian men in World War II documentary films. The majority of the films, which serve as a primary source for this study, were created by the Office of War Information (OWI) as a means of stimulating home front support for the war. The government's portrayal of civilian men advocated a significant modification of gender roles. According to the OWI, men understood the politics of war, were aware of the national context of sacrifices, and were able to carry the government's message into American households and defense plants. As a result of their war consciousness, civilian men in government documentary films partially claimed the traditional domestic realm of women and redefined American gender roles as interactive and overlapping. The intersecting gender spheres in OWI films exemplify that men experienced manhood not in isolation from women. This propagandized image of civilian men during the Second World War supports the claims of scholars who criticize the ideology of "separate spheres" to describe socially constructed domains of the male and female gender. In contrast, the thesis findings show that the social, political, and economic definitions of male and female roles can be altered, extended, or adjusted when economically, politically, and culturally expedient.Department of History
24
Hoffman, Warren D. "Gay-valt : queer performance and identity in twentieth-century Jewish American literature, theater, and film /." Diss., Digital Dissertations Database. Restricted to UC campuses, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3135065.
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Wardell, Kathryn Brenna. "The rake's progress: Masculinities on stage and screen." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11457.
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viii, 261 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.My dissertation analyzes the rake, the libertine male, a figure whose liminal masculinity and transgressive appetites work both to stabilize and unsettle hegemony in the texts in which he appears. The rake may seem no more than a sexy bad boy, unconnected to wider social, political, and economic concerns. However, my project reveals his central role in reflecting, even shaping, anxieties and desires regarding gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity. I chart the rake's progress from his origins in the Restoration era to the early twenty-first century. Chapter II examines William Wycherley's comedy The Country Wife in concert with John Dryden's Marriage à la Mode and Aphra Behn's The Rover to analyze the rake's emergence in seventeenth-century theatre and show that his transgression of borders real and figurative plays out the anxieties and aspirations of an emerging British empire. Chapter III uses John Gay's ballad opera The Beggar's Opera, a satiric interrogation of consumerism and criminality, to chart the rake in eighteenth-century British theatre as Britain's investment in global capitalism and imperialism increased. My discussion of Opera is framed by Richard Steele's early-century sentimental comedy The Conscious Lovers and Hannah Cowley's late-century The Belle's Stratagem, a fusion of sentiment and wit. Chapter IV hinges the project's theatre and film sections, analyzing Oscar Wilde's fin-de-siècle comedy The Importance of Being Earnest as a culmination of generations of theatre rakes and an anticipation of the film rakes of the modern and post-modern eras. Dion Boucicault's mid-century London Assurance is used to set up Wilde's queering of the rake figure Chapter V brings the rake to a new medium, film, and a new nation, the United States, as the figure catalyzes American tension over race and gender in early twentieth-century films such as Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat, George Melford's The Sheik, and Ernest Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise. My final chapter reads contemporary films, including Jenniphr Goodman's The Tao of Steve, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz's About a Boy, and Gore Verbinski's trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean for Disney Studios, to assess the ways in which millennial western masculinity is in stasis.
Committee in charge: Dianne Dugaw, Co-Chair; Priscilla Ovalle, Co-Chair; Kathleen Karlyn; John Schmor
26
Crilly, Shane. "'Gods in our own world': representations of troubled and troubling masculinities in some Australian films, 1991-2001." Thesis, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/37939.
Full textAbstract:
The dominance of male characters in Australian films makes our national cinema a rich resource for the examination of the construction of masculinities. This thesis argues that the codes of the hegemonic masculinities in capitalist patriarchal societies like Australia insist on an absolute masculine position. However, according to Oedipal logic, this position always belongs to another man. Masculine yet 'feminised,'identity is fraught with anxiety but sustained by the 'dominant fiction' that equates the penis with the phallus and locates the feminine as its polar opposite. This binary relationship is inaugurated in childhood when a boy must distinguish his identity from his mother, who, significantly, is a different gender. Being masculine means not being feminine. However, as much as men strive towards inhabiting the masculine position completely, this masquerade will always be exposed by the elements associated with femininity that are an inevitable part of the human experience. Yet, the more men are drawn to the feminine, the more they risk losing their masculine integrity altogether under the patriarchal gaze. Men, in this dualistic regime, are condemned to negotiate their identity haunted by the promises of the phallus and the fear of its loss. I begin with a model of masculine integrity represented in the image of an ideal father, Darryl Kerrigan, from The Castle and then proceed to problematise it through an examination of its excesses observed in the father of David Helfgott in Shine. In the second chapter I investigate two films that represent mothers as the principal threat to masculine integrity: Death in Brunswick and Proof. Both films reveal a misogynistic impetus, which is expressed as violence against women in The Boys, the sole focus of my middle chapter. With misogyny and violence still resonating, I follow the contours of my argument through an examination of Chopper and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in the fourth chapter, where I emphasise the performative nature of identity, before arriving at a discussion of men and their relationships in the final chapter (Mullet, Praise, and Thank God He Met Lizzie).Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Humanities, 2004.
27
Abbasi, Ana. "Hard to be soft full frontal nudity in cinema : anxieties of alternative masculinities and the recuperation of patriarchy /." 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10090/16189.
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Johinke, Rebecca Jane. "Blokes and cars : the construction of masculinities in Australian film / Rebecca Jane Johinke." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/114413.
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This thesis examines the construction of masculinities in the genre of Australian film known as 'car crash' films. A number of film texts are used to examine how representations of vehicular masculinity are validated and how heroism is often associated with mastery of a motor vehicle. It contends that gender-technology relation constructs technology as masculine culture, the automobile often pivotal in rites of passage and manifestations of masculinity because other means to perform adulthood and gender are frequently unattainable. Membership of the masculine hegemony can appear within reach when behind the wheel of a 'hot' automobile that signifies power, freedom, escape, conspicuous consumption and control. The male characters in car crash films look to the streets and to the screen to enact blatent constructions of an overt mechanical masculinity, and the performative journey is mapped.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2002
29
Callison, Darcey. "Dancing masculinity for Hollywood : the American dream, whiteness and the movement vocabulary within Hollywood's choreography for men /." 2008. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR51686.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2008. Graduate Programme in Communications and Culture.Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-291). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR51686
30
Garstka, Joshua Andrew. "Every way you look at it, you lose : personal failure to find an authentic sixties masculinity /." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10288/497.
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Moodley, Prevan. "The therapeutic use of movies with gay men in a group context." Thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/616.
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Movies or films may be integrated into psychosocial interventions as springboards for conversation to enhance therapeutic gains. Therapeutic and inspirational engagements with movie texts, as opposed to viewing for entertainment, provide narratives that describe, interrogate and revise unique histories and culturally-mediated subjectivities. To examine narrative outcomes of the application of this strategy, a study was conducted with self-identified gay men in a group context. A postmodern paradigm with philosophical correlates from literary and critical perspectives framed the research approach. A hermeneutic method of investigation involving a reading guide extracted themes that emerged from the therapeutic conversations about connections to pre-selected movies. The first theme, a developmental lens, offered narratives of social isolation, intimacy, coming out and identity turmoil. The second theme, a local community lens, offered narratives of social hostility, religious values and monetary forces. The impact of integrating movies into therapy was evaluated within these narratives. A qualitative and self-reflexive approach enabled the creation of a postmodern research product, including the representation of the theme of community meanings in a modified screenplay format as a negotiation between creative and traditional writing practices. The use of movies in this study offered distinctive narrative findings about the sexuality of the participants, although their engagement with movies implied that conditions for useful therapeutic conversation depend upon psychological viewing characteristics.Dr. Alban Burke
32
Mngadi, Sikhumbuzo Richard. "Space, body and subjectivity : shifting conceptions of black African masculinities in four audio-visual texts." Thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/3049.
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Research in constructions of masculinities in South Africa is already an established field, having in part developed out of the need to contextualise global theories in the
social, economic and cultural realities of African subjects. In its turn, this research has engendered a number of focused studies which have sought to depart from the
traditional ‘men’s studies’ paradigm. Needless to say, studies in constructions of masculinities have infused the traditional paradigm with a new vitality. This thesis proceeds from the premise that to be a man in (South) Africa and elsewhere is contingent upon a diversity of social, economic, political, generational and cultural expectations. I argue that these expectations, which are linked variously to status, sexual orientation and choice, mean that recognition of gender subjectivity as performed must take precedence over the idea of a stable gender role. And, at times, this applies with more force in African societies, traditional and modern (or, as is often the case, a confluence of both), than it does in western ones where class, rather than the complex intersection of tradition and modernity, tends to set gender identities on a more stable platform. I then propose the view that a nuanced conceptualisation of masculinities in South Africa needs to inform analysis of representations of men and women, and I do so by means of an in-depth critical analysis of the shifting conceptions of black African men and women in Shaka Zulu (1986), Mapantsula (1988), Fools (1998) and Yizo Yizo 1 (1999).Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.
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Allan, James L. "Fast friends and queer couples: Relationships between gay men and straight women in North American popular culture, 1959–2000." 2003. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3110464.
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The idea that gay men and straight women have much in common has a long cultural history, as seen in the work of sexologists, feminists, sociologists and cultural historians from the late 19th onward. Stories of relationships between gay men and straight women have been a significant, recurring phenomenon in American popular culture throughout much of the twentieth century, and the period from the late-1950s onward marks a time when such relationships became increasingly prevalent. With the weakening of Hollywood's self-censoring Hays Code and the maturing of television as a mass-market medium, the late-1950s/early-1960s saw the development of openly gay male characters who frequently shared friendships with straight women. Films and television shows featuring this dynamic grew more numerous and circulated more widely as time passed, but these developments progressed differently and at different rates for film and television. This study investigates the development, circulation and reception of representations of the gay-man/straight-woman duo as a cultural figure in North American film and television during the latter half of the twentieth century. As a set of texts in which sex and gender mediate each other in powerful ways, these gay-man/straight-woman stories produce rich analytic possibilities. Drawing on textual analysis, socio-historical context, and audience research, the project outlines the major relationship dynamics found in these gay-man/straight-woman texts (mother-and-son; perfect-couples; gals-and-pals), the historical shifts in their production and popularity, and the implications they hold for the ways our culture imagines relationships between men and women. Despite their gay cachet, the majority of these texts re-circulate normative clichés about gay male and straight female subjectivities and relationships, patterns that reproduce conventional, conservative thinking about who holds and deserves power and respect in our culture. Yet a few of these texts also provide alternative models for relationships between men and women, gay and straight, that contribute to more expansive possibilities for all: a culture of queer variations and relations. These examples affirm the emotional, social and affective value of relationships that cannot be neatly categorized into familial or romantic models, and argue for the importance of friendship as a form of social practice.
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Kolodney, Uri. "A different war, a different sex : gay identity politics in Israeli cinema." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/28286.
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This thesis deals with gay identity politics and its relation to the Zionist ethos as it is portrayed in several Israeli films. It primarily analyzes two different points of view of two film directors whose homosexuality plays a central role in their cinematic work – Amos Gutman and Eytan Fox – and examines the way they perceive their gay lived experience. Analyzing Gutman’s Drifting (1983), Bar 51 (1985), and Himmo, King of Jerusalem (1987), I show how he encloses himself in his own queer universe and demands to be acknowledged as such, practicing his authenticity separately from the hegemonic discourse. On the other hand, the sexual politics in Fox’s Yossi & Jagger (2002) and Yossi (2012), suggests that homosexual men should join the national hegemonic space while ignoring their otherness. Since the films in question use the Zionist narrative and the national identity of their protagonists as points of reference, these two approaches are discussed in relation to the Zionist ethos. Several other films with similar points of reference are analyzed as well, including Fox’s Time Off (1990), Walk on Water (2004) and The Bubble (2006), Dan Wolman’s Hide & Seek (1979), Ayelet Menachemi’s Crows (1987), Nadav Gal’s A Different War (2003), Yair Hochner’s Good Boys (2005), and Mysh Rozanov’s Watch over Me (2010). Discussing the Zionist ethos, I emphasize Daniel Boyarin’s concept of the parallel between Jewishness, queerness, and abnormality. I show how the Zionist yearning for normalcy (the wish ‘to be like all nations’) and the identification of the homosexual as abnormal are embodied in the cinematic representations. The analysis in this thesis is mainly based on queer theory, as it strives to deconstruct and destabilize the traditional binaries of heterosexuality and show how the hegemonic discourse is based on those limited binaries. It challenges any political discourse that by naturalizing heterosexuality enforces heteronormative practices. By highlighting queer marginality in the cinematic text and linking it with elements of post-colonial theory and its analysis of the other, I show how gay identity politics discourse subverts or yields to the Zionist ethos.text
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Katz, Jacqueline Lee. "Queer entanglements: postcolonial intimacies, spaces and times in Greyson and Lewis's Proteus (2003)." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10539/20800.
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A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the
Witwatersrand, in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of
Master of Art in Dramatic ArtsMy dissertation presents a textual analysis of John Greyson and Jack Lewis's South African film, Proteus (2003), which is based on archival records and plots the never-before-told narrative of an intimacy between two inmates on 16th century Robben Island. Locating this same-sex intimacy in the 1700s Cape Colony has far-reaching implications when considered in relation to the increasingly pervasive twenty-first century discourse which proposes that homosexuality is necessarily 'unAfrican'. The film's social and political commentary is, therefore, significant for how we might think about sexuality, among other subjectivities, in post-apartheid South Africa. By analysing the film's formal and thematic attributes, I demonstrate that the directors' protean approach to filmmaking has queering effects for the linear notion of time and the cohesive conceptualisation of identity that the colonial archive tends to reinforce. I suggest that commonsense notions of time, space, language and identity that structure the archive have allowed for multiple fissures to develop along the trajectory from past to present. As I show, the aforementioned process has almost effaced from official records narratives, such as the one told in Proteus, that would trouble totalising ideas about the intimate orientations of certain individuals. Therefore, I argue that while the record of this same-sex intimacy does appear in the archive, it has been subsumed by other, more dominant, narratives. The film's work, which I replicate in my reading of it, has been to queer this archive by foregrounding what has historically been repressed. In my first chapter, I argue that by enacting what Halberstam (2005) terms a mode of 'queer temporality', Proteus carves out spaces in the archive for alternative renditions of history to come into visibility in ways that demand fluidity and heterogeneity. I propose that the strategic filmic mechanisms employed in Proteus necessarily engender nuanced spectatorial procedures, which call on the spectator to engage reflexively with the film. I continue to argue for the spectator's need to be particularly reflexive throughout the dissertation. My second chapter deals with the filmmakers' strategic use of language in order to present a commentary on the material effects that the acts of 'naming' and 'categorising' have on living bodies. The final chapter explores a critical perspective which has not previously been brought to bear on the film. I examine how Greyson and Lewis construct positions for their main characters from which they may assert their subjectivity - what Mirzoeff (2011) describes as 'the right to look'.
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Moser, Joseph Paul. "Patriarchs, pugilists, and peacemakers : interrogating masculinity in Irish film." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/17943.
Full textAbstract:
Examining representations of gender from a postcolonial feminist perspective, Patriarchs, Pugilists, and Peacemakers: Masculinity in Irish Film analyzes select works of three popular filmmakers whose careers, taken together, span the period from 1939 to the present.1 I argue that these three artists--John Ford, Jim Sheridan, and Paul Greengrass--explore fundamental questions about patriarchy and violence within Irish and Irish-American contexts, and that, in the process, they upset conventional notions of masculine authority. Investigating alternative conceptions of manhood presented in these films, as well as these filmmakers’ complex engagement with Hollywood film genres, I offer a fuller understanding of their subtle critiques of patriarchy. I contend that their illustrations of socially sanctioned male dominance in the lives of women, as well as their portrayals of male and female resistance to patriarchy, constitute a subversive challenge to traditional order. In the process, I address gendered archetypes that are prevalent in Irish and American cinemas and analyze the ways in which Ford, Sheridan, and Greengrass employ and critique these masculine types through their portrayals of fathers, sons, boxers and pacifists. Ultimately, I argue that the recent Irish films of Sheridan and Greengrass gesture toward future modes of manhood that completely disavow patriarchy and violence. In sum, this project plots a trajectory of Irish cinema during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, charting a progression from ambivalent critique of patriarchy (in the films of John Ford) to outright rejection of patriarchal masculinity (in Jim Sheridan’s work) to reconceptualization of manhood and the family (in the Irish films of Sheridan and Paul Greengrass).text
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Fruth, Bryan Ray. "Media reception, sexual identity, and public space." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/3214.
Full text
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"Inheriting man's estate : constructions of masculinity in selected popular narrative." Thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/1913.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation analyses the violence of patriarchal culture as it is staged in three twentieth century texts: the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), the South African novelist Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples (1993) and the American film Night of the Hunter (1954) directed by Charles Laughton. Each of these works focuses on the induction of the boy child into culture and the trauma attendant on this process of accession. The thesis is that if culture is violent then it must follow that damage is done to the developing subject in the process of its construction by the cultural forces that shape masculinity. The theoretical grounding of the analysis is derived from two main sources: Jacques Derrida's account of the violence of culture in Of Grammatology (1976) and the analysis of patriarchy and the Oedipal development of the boy child into manhood found in the work of Freud and Lacan. Derrida is used for his thinking on the inherently violent nature of culture and the way in which cultural discourse is structured through binary dualisms. The three chosen works all critique and dismantle binarist thinking as a move towards imagining a less destructive discursive order. The Oedipal narrative, as a myth which describes and explains the forces shaping the male child in the process of acculturation, exemplifies and illustrates cultural violence: As expounded by Freud and Lacan, the Oedipal myth is one which underpins all three of the chosen works. Derrida, Freud and Lacan have been very usefully mediated by several cultural critics and therefore extensive use is made of commentaries by Kaja Silverman, Frank Krutnik and Madan Sarup. Slavoj Zizek's interpretations of Lacan have also yielded much that is interesting about the nature of the Law of the Father and consequently reference is made to his ideas, principally in Chapter Four.This dissertation analyses the violence of patriarchal culture as it is staged in three twentieth century texts: the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), the South African novelist Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples (1993) and the American film Night of the Hunter (1954) directed by Charles Laughton. Each of these works focuses on the induction of the boy child into culture and the trauma attendant on this process of accession. The thesis is that if culture is violent then it must follow that damage is done to the developing subject in the process of its construction by the cultural forces that shape masculinity. The theoretical grounding of the analysis is derived from two main sources: Jacques Derrida's account of the violence of culture in Of Grammatology (1976) and the analysis of patriarchy and the Oedipal development of the boy child into manhood found in the work of Freud and Lacan. Derrida is used for his thinking on the inherently violent nature of culture and the way in which cultural discourse is structured through binary dualisms. The three chosen works all critique and dismantle binarist thinking as a move towards imagining a less destructive discursive order. The Oedipal narrative, as a myth which describes and explains the forces shaping the male child in the process of acculturation, exemplifies and illustrates cultural violence: As expounded by Freud and Lacan, the Oedipal myth is one which underpins all three of the chosen works. Derrida, Freud and Lacan have been very usefully mediated by several cultural critics and therefore extensive use is made of commentaries by Kaja Silverman, Frank Krutnik and Madan Sarup. Slavoj Zizek's interpretations of Lacan have also yielded much that is interesting about the nature of the Law of the Father and consequently reference is made to his ideas, principally in Chapter Four.Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.
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Pascoe, Gerald James. "A qualitative textual and comparative analysis of the representation of masculinity in the action and romantic comedy genres." Diss., 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/9027.
Full textAbstract:
This study is an exploration of the representation of masculinity in film, with particular focus on the way in which the leading male characters in a purposive sample of action genre and romantic comedy genre films represent masculinity. It is posited that masculinity is a construct, the meaning of which is dependent on the social context of the individual. Film being a social artefact could then possibly influence individuals understanding of the construct. Therefore an exploration of the kind of masculinity, the variations thereof across genres, and masculine characteristics of masculinity prevalent in each genre, is a first step in understanding possible influences of the definition of masculinity.
In order to accomplish this exploration, a combination of methods is used to analyse these fictional characters according to a set of codes and „real‟ world norms. The real world norms are based on seven theoretically derived norms of masculinity developed from previous research on masculinity conducted by Levant, Hirsch, Celentano, Cozza, Hill, MacEachern, Marty and Schnedekerl (1992).
The results of the findings from this study indicate that the way in which male characters are created for each genre are different, with male lead characters from the action genre having more characteristics that align with the „real‟ world norms of masculinity (Levant et al 1992). Alternatively, the male lead characters from the romantic comedy genre, have fewer characteristics that align with the seven theoretically derived norms of masculinity. The masculinity represented in the romantic comedy genre is more emotionally available and expressive, less aggressive, more compromising and reliant on others; while in the action genre masculinity is more independent, stoic, aggressive and more physically adventurous. The male lead characters in the romantic comedy genre are more about the emotional aspects of masculinity while the male lead characters in the action genre are more about the physical aspects of masculinity.Communication Science
M.A. (Communication)