Thesis (MA (English))—University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / In this thesis, I examine the way in which Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver can be read as a critical investigation of post-World War II American masculinity. Drawing on Susan Faludi’s arguments regarding the post-World War II American ‘masculinity crisis’, I highlight specifically how Taxi Driver addresses American masculinity in the context of ideals of heroism, of the myth of the Wild West, of the Vietnam era, and of the increasingly influential role that the popular media play in shaping conceptions of masculinity. In the process I indicate that Taxi Driver exposes, and critiques, an association in modern American society between masculinity and what analysts have termed the ‘myth of regeneration through violence’.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: Daniel Coleman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 338-351). Also available via World Wide Web.

The 1980s is a formative decade in American history. America sought to reestablish itself as a global power and to reassert the dominant ideology of white, patriarchal capitalism. Likewise, media producers in the 1980s sought to reassert the dominance of the white, male, muscled body in filmic representations. The identity politics of the 1980s and the depictions of the white, muscled body once prominent in the 1980s have been the site of conservative nostalgia for a young, male-dominated, cult audience that is a subset of a larger cultural trend known as retro film culture. This thesis provides historical context behind the populist 1980s B-action films from Cannon Group, Inc that celebrate violent masculinity in filmic representations with white, male action heroes. Equally important is the revival of VHS collecting and how this 1980s-inspired subculture reinforces white, patriarchal capitalism through the cult films they valorize and their capitalistic trading practices despite their claims of oppositionality against mainstream taste and Hollywood films. Lastly, this thesis reveals how a new cycle of contemporary films primarily produced outside of Hollywood reasserts and celebrates the dominance of the white, male, muscled body in filmic representations despite a postmodern and hyperconscious exterior. Overall, I argue how these areas of nostalgia are distinct, yet not unrelated, because they reassert white, patriarchal capitalism through the revival of conservative nostalgia for the 1980s.

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)

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.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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

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)

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