Contemporary Masculinities in Fiction, Film and Television

While masculinity has been an increasingly visible field of study within several disciplines (sociology, literary studies, cultural studies, film and tv) over the last two decades, it is surprising that analysis of contemporary representations of the first part of the century has yet to emerge. Professor Brian Baker, evolving from his previous work Masculinities in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945-2000 , intervenes to rectify the scholarship in the field to produce a wide-ranging, readable text that deals with films and other texts produced since the year 2000. Focusing on representations of masculinity in cinema, popular fiction and television from the period 2000-2010, he argues that dominant forms of masculinity in Britain and the United States have become increasingly informed by anxiety, trauma and loss, and this has resulted in both narratives that reflect that trauma and others which attempt to return to a more complete and heroic form of masculinity. While focusing on a range of popular genres, such as Bond films, war movies, science fiction and the Gothic, the work places close analyses of individual films and texts in their cultural and historical contexts, arguing for the importance of these popular fictions in diagnosing how contemporary Britain and the United States understand themselves and their changing role in the world through the representation of men, fully recognising the issues of race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, and age. Baker draws upon current work in mobility studies and in the study of masculinities to produce the first book-length comparative study of masculinity in popular culture of the first decade of the twentieth century. While masculinity has been an increasingly visible field of study within several disciplines (sociology, literary studies, cultural studies, film and tv) over the last two decades, it is surprising that analysis of contemporary representations of the first part of the century has yet to emerge. Professor Brian Baker, evolving from his previous work Masculinities in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres 1945-2000, intervenes to rectify the scholarship in the field to produce a wide-ranging, readable text that deals with films and other texts produced since the year 2000. Focusing on representations of masculinity in cinema, popular fiction and television from the period 2000-2010, he argues that dominant forms of masculinity in Britain and the United States have become increasingly informed by anxiety, trauma and loss, and this has resulted in both narratives that reflect that trauma and others which attempt to return to a more complete and heroic form of masculinity. While focusing on a range of popular genres, such as Bond films, war movies, science fiction and the Gothic, the work places close analyses of individual films and texts in their cultural and historical contexts, arguing for the importance of these popular fictions in diagnosing how contemporary Britain and the United States understand themselves and their changing role in the world through the representation of men, fully recognising the issues of race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, and age. Baker draws upon current work in mobility studies and in the study of masculinities to produce the first book-length comparative study of masculinity in popular culture of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1: Narratives of Power 1. Gallivanting Around the World The metaphysics of mobility The Tourist Gaze Vertigo and free running After Casino Royale: The traumatized Bond 2. Masters and Commanders The exploded male body The soldier and trauma Modernism and the war machine Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels 3. American Hearts of Darkness From Republic to Empire Empire masculinities Apocalypse Now (Redux) The Hurt Locker 4. The Special Relationship Dramatic structure Television Homosociality: The Special Relationship The legacy of Tony Blair Part 2: Science Fiction 5. The Enclave Code 46 Never Let Me Go 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later 6. Dystopia and the Apocalyptic Scene Children of Men V for Vendetta 7. Alien Nations War of the Worlds Star Trek Into Darkness Monsters Alien Nations 8. Everybody Runs The Time Traveler’s Wife Minority Report 9. Annihilations The sublime Technicity and the artificial subject Part 3: Gothic/Horror/The Fantastic 10. Tape Spectra Haunted technologies Technology and trauma 11. Orpheus Descending 12. Lecter Hannibal Lecter Lecter and Romantic Satanism Revising Lecter: Hannibal Rising and the televisual Hannibal 13. The Angels and the Damned From conspiracy to theology The mobility and geography of murder Towards apocalypse Life on Mars? Conclusion Bibliography Index