Masculinity and Film Performance: Male Angst in Contemporary American Cinema
Language: English
Pages: 230
ISBN: B009ATDDP6
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A lively and engaging study of on-screen and off-screen performances of masculinity, focusing on well-known male actors in American film and popular culture in the 1990s and 2000s. Peberdy examines specific social, cultural, historical and political contexts that have affected age, race, sexuality and fatherhood on screen.
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becomes public, constructed largely outside film texts), as professional (public persona is indistinguishable from private persona), and as performer (the public ‘work’ of the star on screen). ‘The different modes of stardom’, Geraghty states, ‘require different kinds of knowledge from audiences and although some film stars do operate as celebrities, knowledge of this is not essential to understanding their film appearances’.41 Offering the example of Johnny Depp, she proposes that the
powerful in emphasising John’s fall from grace and go to demonstrate just how far he has moved from the articulate, rational professor of the first act. That John has to 10.1057/9780230308701 - Masculinity and Film Performance, Donna Peberdy Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to McGill University - PalgraveConnect - 2011-09-05 84 Masculinity and Film Performance 85 resort to expletives (and arguably two of the most sexually offensive and derogatory of words) in an
drooping eyes, a look of dismay and bewilderment. For Macy in Oleanna, angst is revealed through a changing vocal pitch and tone – shrillness and whining – that undermine his male authority. Angst for all three actors is presented as vulnerability and exposure: for Douglas, this involves ‘wiping off’ the star persona and externalising inner emotion; for Murray, emotion is externalised through numerous scenes of ‘doing nothing’, and close-ups of the actor’s expressive physiognomy; for Macy, angst
With the hard/soft masculinity spectrum dramatised in various ways – the brass balls and ‘cunts’ of Glengarry Glen Ross, the colour-coded masculine monikers in Reservoir Dogs – the performative nature of masculinity is markedly evident in the ensemble film. Magnolia, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and with Tom Cruise, William H. Macy, Jason Robards, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Alfred Molina and Jeremy Blackman comprising the polymorphous male ensemble, not only
been unable to ‘grow up’. While the distinction between hard and soft masculinity is achieved in Magnolia through the juxtaposition of diverse male performances, it is through Cruise’s character that the most significant contrast of hard and soft masculinity takes place to reveal a bipolar masculinity. Frank’s ‘bucketing-out process’ demonstrates how individual characters also exhibit this distinction within themselves. ‘Frank’ the hyper-masculine seminar leader is revealed to be a mask, hiding
