Feminist film theory has emerged in the past 20 years to become a large and flourishing field. Its dominant approach, exemplifed by such journals as Screen and Camera Obscura, involves a theoretical combination of semiotics, Althusserian Marxism, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. On this view, human subjects are formed through complex significatory processes,including cinema; traditional Hollywood cinema's "classic realist texts" are purveyors of bourgeois ideology. Added to this theory by Laura Mulvey's now-classic essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" [Mulvey, 1975], was the feminist claim that men and women are differentially positioned by cinema: men as subjects identifying with agents who drive the film's narrative forward, women as objects for masculine desire and fetishistic gazing. Mulvey's essay is heavily invested in theory. It is cited as "the founding document of feminist film theory" [Modleski 1989], as providing "the theoretical grounds for the rejection of Hollywood and its pleasures" [Penley 1988], and even as setting out feminist film theory's "axioms" [Silverman, quoted in Byars 1991]. Mulvey assumed a general picture of cinema as a symbolic medium which, like other aspects of mass culture, forms spectators as bourgeois subjects. She used Lacanian psychoanalysis to ground her account of gendered subjecivity, desire, and visual pleasure. Mulvey allowed little possibility of resistance or critical spectatorship, and recognized no variations in structure or effect of realist cinema. Unsurprisingly, her view has been much criticized and further refined, as writers (including Mulvey herself) have noted issues raised by differences among women, phenomena like male masochism, or genres that function in distinctive ways, such as comedy, melodrama, and horror. Still, writers in feminist film theory commonly assume Mulvey's basic parameters and take some version of psychoanalytic theory as a desideratum. Key issues are often seen only in terms of some refinement or qualification of psychoanalytic theory. Thus Barbara Creed's book The Monstrous-Feminine argues that the fact that women in horror films are often not victims but monsters "necessitates a rereading of key aspects of Freudian theory, particularly his theory of the Oedipus complex and castration crisis." [Creed 1993] Creed turns instead to Kristeva's theory of the abject and the maternal. Far less often, Mulvey's critics have adopted more sharply different theoretical bases such as cultural studies, identity politics, deconstruction, or the philosophy of Foucault.
The resulting "theory" in feminist film theory is peculiar. What justification does a specifically feminist theory have for adopting the patriarchal theory of psychoanalysis? Why is theory needed at all; what is it a theory of or about? What are its data; do they supply evidence in a non-circular way? How is theory related to feminist action and social change? What is the relevant theory of feminism itself? Theory has usually been more problematic in feminism. Feminist philosophers question patriarchal theories and urge the need to link theory with practice. Jane Flax in ³Women Do Theory² describes patriarchal theory as "territorial" or "entrepreneurial" ‹ something used to prop up forms of dominance [Flax 1979]. In the face of theoretical structures that are abstract, hostile, unintelligible, and disempowering, she says, women understandably panic. Similarly, feminist philosophers like Karen Hanson question why writers in film studies have assumed science as a paradigm of theory [Hanson 1995]. In doing so, they set up film theory as distinct from and superior or even foundational to film criticism. Theory stands somehow over and above the more primitive "data": it is ideal, abstract, permanent, austere, universal, and true. Allegedly science/theory has the virtues of being unifying, coherent, well-grounded, and explanatory. But film theorists naively invoke concepts that are quite contested, such as explanation, justification, and systematicity. Nor is there operational agreement within the discipline for what counts as evidence, testing, or confirmation of a theory. This differs sharply from feminism's more usual emphasis on the experiential.
As Hilde Hein notes, "Some feminists advocate a new definition of theory that decenters, displaces, and foregrounds the inessential and that does not flee from experience but 'muses at its edges'" [Hein 1990/93]. Early feminists took consciousness raising as a model for feminist theory because it is necessarily both experiential and transformative. Feminist film theory however is often universalizing, and it makes use of complex language and alienating categories which deny women's experiences as active spectators enjoying films or reading them critically. bell hooks argues for example that
Mainstream feminist film criticism in no way acknowledges black female spectatorship. It does not even consider the possibility that women can construct an oppositional gaze via an understanding and awareness of the politics of race and racism. [hooks, 1992/1995]
In sum, many feminists would criticize feminist film theory as overly abstract, totalizing, jargon-prone, and non-experiential. The dominant psychoanalytic focus has created a narrow framework for the analysis of subjects, pleasure, and desire, while alternative feminist accounts are not considered. For example, Silverman notes in Male Subjectivity at the Margins that "The implicit starting point for virtually every formulation this book will propose is the assumption that lack of being is the irreducible condition of subjectivity" [Silverman, 1992]. This approach is odd. Silverman posits a theory of the subject without saying why and without considering alternatives. Similarly, Mulvey posits a theory of desire and pleasure rooted in Lacan's theory of the self and desire, a view stemming from a particular and highly contested philosophical tradition. To begin from a certain theory of the self or pleasure in interpreting film commits one in advance to categorizations that create the evidence that allegedly confirms them.
An alternative approach would ask how films depict the self and pleasure, or whether viewers can find gaps and ruptures in a film's depictions. Feminist philosophers present alternative views about the construction of women as subjects of knowledge, vision, or pleasure. Carolyn Korsmeyer argues that feminist aesthetics offers a picture of emotional response to artworks different from the traditional one and from that employed in mainstream feminist film theory [Korsmeyer 1993]. Traditional aesthetics is problematic since it sought only a supposedly "disinterested" pleasure. But psychoanalytic theories of the emotions are also problematic: in treating emotions a matter of the unconscious, they ignore key questions about description, introspection, and moral recommendation. Feminst aesthetics by contrast holds that "perception and appreciation not only entail some particular social standpoint, but are also formed out of the responsive dynamic operating within an embodied viewer" [Korsmeyer 1993].
Philosophers of film can use philosophical defenses of the rationality of emotions to offer new, non-psychoanalytic studies of film pleasures. An emotional response to a film (or other artwork) can be rational, permitting positive claims about the viewer: that she is active not passive, cognizing not simply reacting, and potentially critical not simply absorbing ideological effects. Laurie Shrage argues that concentration on film texts has led to an universalizing of psychological subjects and an overemphasis on readers'/viewers' passivitiy [Shrage 1990/1993]. Shrage proposes a contextual approach that recognizes considerable variation among an audience's "cinematic habits." Similarly, Flo Leibowitz [Leibowitz,1995] utilizes a rhetorical and cognitive approach, rather than a psychoanalytic one, to discuss processes of audience identification with certain forms of melodrama, which she thinks may be a form of rational reflection. And Noel Carroll [Carroll 1990/95] supposes that emotions are complex learned forms of behavior acquired from certain "paradigm scenarios", and that film among other sources can offer such scenarios. Thus sexist films like Fatal Attraction present a purportedly valid but problematic paradigm scenario about the omnivorously sexual career woman, and about the "appropriate" level of male emotional response to such women.
Some feminist philosophers think that what is needed is not so much one feminist film theory as a number of strategies of feminist critical readings of films. Hanson mentions Stanley Cavell as an example of someone who offers deeply theoretical and philosophical readings by exploring films individually and attentively. While Cavell's writings on film are idiosyncratic and not necessarily feminist, they offer a springboard for philosophical critiques of assumptions about subjectivity and pleasure still dominant in psychoanalytic feminist film theory [Cavell 1981, 1987]. For example, Naomi Scheman [Scheman 1988/1995] notes that Cavell offers broad and varied notions of the gaze and visual pleasure, enabling one to criticize Mulvey and reject her position that women are subjecs or viewers only "in drag." But Scheman also criticizes Cavell for reading films to uncover not a feminist but only a feminine gaze, one "conscripted" by a masculinist world. Scheman seeks a more promising form of female subjectivity in film, and cities Foucault's point that dominant modes of specularity are quite complex and do "not define women as exclusively as either the seers or the seen" [Scheman 1988/1995].
Significant alternative feminist theories might also inform feminist film theory. Liberal, socialist, and postmodern feminism all suggest new questions and frameworks. Liberal feminism has emphasized traditionally female attributes in constructing alternatives to standard ethics, such as maternal ethics, the ethics of care, or lesbian ethics. These models may romanticize women, but they offer more complex accounts of the social nature of the self than the Althusserian-Lacanian ones, since the self is essentially configured in relation to others (mothers, children, sisters, friends, lovers). Alternatively, work by socialist feminists or feminists in cultural studies foregrounds the linked oppressions of gender, ethnicity, race, and class. Ann Ferguson in Blood at the Root describes women's traditional unpaid forms of labor as a form of "sex-affective production" which has been exploited by men [Ferguson 1989]. Thomas Wartenberg draws on this kind of notion in offering a critical reading of White Palace, a Hollywood film which seems to attend to factors of class and ethnicity [Wartenberg 1995]. However, Wartenberg shows that the film relies on a stereotyped representation of the older, divorced woman, romanticizes the working class, and oversimplifies the nature of class divisions.
Postmodern feminists also present alternatives to a Lacanian-Althusserian theory of the self or subject, since they question standard notions of human identity based on categories of bodily integrity, race, ethnicity, class standpoint, or even gender. Identity is fractured by complex intersecting social technologies. hooks points to Julie Dash's film Daughters of the Dust as exemplifying a specifically black feminist gaze. Other black writers similarly point to the complicated ways in which a specifically black female identity is represented in films. The postmodern approach to contemporary fractured identities takes filmic signifiers to be recirculated and utilized in a larger system of mass media and popular culture. This sort of approach is used by Tania Modleski in her essay "Three Men and Baby M" to link a popular film with contemporary social and legal issues [Modleski 1991]. Modleski criticizes the allegedly comical inability of the three male adoptive parents in Three Men and a Baby to deal with infantile bodily functions. This comedy climaxes in a scene she describes as shockingly voyeuristic, a close and lingering examination of the (female) infant's genitalia. But Modleski does not link this sort of voyeurism to an individual viewer's castration anxiety or threat to subjectivity. Instead, she criticizes the film's heroic, simplistic resolution as revealing a current social anxiety about changing gender roles.
Alternatives to psychoanalytic feminist film theory raise new questions about the representation of women in films because of their different accounts of the self, agency, identity, and the cultural surroundings of the subject. They reflect more textured and nuanced views about the self's complexity and emphasze the film viewer's potential to construct critical readings. In so doing, they offer more scope for feminist social change than a view which maintains we are, in effect, products of the texts around us.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese
The lowly, blue-collar side of New York's Italian mafia is explored in this crime biopic of wiseguy Henry Hill. As he makes his way from strapping young petty criminal, to big-time thief, to middle-aged cocaine addict and dealer, the film explores in detail the rules and traditions of organized crime. Watching the rise and fall of Hill and his two counterparts, the slick jack-of-all-trades criminal Jimmy Conway and the brutish, intimidating Tommy DeVito, this true story realistically explores the core, blue-collar part of the mob.
The first time I watched Goodfellas the parts which stood out to me was the violence. The film is very graphic and there are countless beatings and killings. When I watched it and focused on how each gender is represented I found that the role of women in the film is quite complex.
Karen, who becomes Henry Hill's wife is first seen as a gentle character. When Hill stands her up on what was meant to be their second date she breaks into tears. She seems fragile and emotional, and is very soft-spoken at the start of the film. On their third date Henry takes her to a club popular with the mobsters and Karen is extremely taken with the rich lifestyle Henry leads. She struck me as very naive. "There was nothing like it. I didn't think there was anything strange in any of this. You know, a twenty-one-year-old kid with such connections. He was an exciting guy. He was really nice. He introduced me to everybody. Everybody wanted to be nice to him. And he knew how to handle it".
A while into their relationship Karen begins to change. She covers up for Henry and hides a gun he used to pistol-whip someone. "After awhile, it got to be all normal. None of it seemed like crime. It was more like Henry was enterprising, and that he and the guys were making a few bucks hustling, while all the other guys were sitting on their asses, waiting for handouts. Our husbands weren't brain surgeons, they were blue-collar guys. The only way they could make extra money, real extra money, was to go out and cut a few corners". She was still more gentle-natured that the other mobsters wives but has at this point fallen into the life of crime. She begins to toughen up further when Henry and Karen have children, and is seen making demands and sticking up for herself.
Towards the end of the film Karen is frustrated, swears frequently and threatens Henry with a gun. There is a reason, though, as Henry is having an affair with a drug addict named Janice Rossi. "This is Karen Hill, I want to talk to you. Hello? Don't hang up on me. I want to talk to you. You keep the fuck away from my husband, you understand me? Hello? ANSWER ME. I'm going to tell everybody that walks in this building that in 2R, Rossi, you're nothing but a whore. Is this the superintendent?... Yes, sir, I would like you to know that you have a whore living in 2R. Rossi, Janice Rossi... He's MY husband. Get your own goddamn man." She says this in front of her children after discovering the name and whereabouts of the woman Henry is having an affair with.
Karen is a complex character. She is likeable, and I pity her because of the hardships she gets put through, but she is blinded by love and a character who started out as sweet and innocent becomes violent and harsh.
When Henry was making money, life was sweet, but when his scams weren’t paying off, they had to scrounge like paupers. When Henry went away to prison, Karen was left alone to fend for herself and raise the kids. Worst of all, Henry’s cocaine dealing led to addiction, and Karen was sucked into that seductive whirl as well.
There is a hostess party between all the gangsters wives at the start of the film, which shows the characters gossiping excitedly about the violence commited by their family, or violence they've commited against their children, as if they were discussing beauty tips. They are portrayed as crude, worn down and angry. Karen makes the following comments on them: 'They had bad skin and wore too much makeup. They didn't look very good. They looked beat-up' 'They talked about their rotten kids...and about beating them with broom handles and belts'.
The wives act like Karen does at the end of the film, and when Karen sees how they behave she is shocked and seems completely oblivious to the fact that this is how they need to behave to survive when their husbands are gangsters. Examples of how the wives act are:
"Keep your fucking handsoff me or I'll cut them off."
"What about Jeannie's kid? He was in an argument. A dollar card game. He pulls out a gun. The gun goes off. Some kid gets killed.When the grandmother hears... ...she has a heart attackand drops dead. Now Jeannie has a husband and son in jail and a mother in the funeral parlor."
This is how the wives of gangsters live and Karen doesn't ever think she will get sucked into that world, which is why it is sad that she does.
The women in the films are their to support their husbands, keep their houses clean, raise the children, and cover up their men's crimes. The husbands are out all day long planning their next scam, they come home for dinner and then usually stay out all night (at other women's houses). The wives seem to be fine with this lifestyle which is a very negative view of women. They don't question their husbands and are very submissive. Men definately have the power in the film. They can walk into a restaurant and get tables brought out specially for them, and they never have to queue anywhere. People will lay down for them and attend to their every need. The women are only shown this respect when they are with their husbands and they are still not treated equally. The men meet and greet each other and then nriefly introduce their wives but the women are not included in the conversations. They're allowed to listen but not contribute. Overall there is a negative view of women here and although I did enjoy the film I expected it to be they way it was.
The first time I watched Goodfellas the parts which stood out to me was the violence. The film is very graphic and there are countless beatings and killings. When I watched it and focused on how each gender is represented I found that the role of women in the film is quite complex.
Karen, who becomes Henry Hill's wife is first seen as a gentle character. When Hill stands her up on what was meant to be their second date she breaks into tears. She seems fragile and emotional, and is very soft-spoken at the start of the film. On their third date Henry takes her to a club popular with the mobsters and Karen is extremely taken with the rich lifestyle Henry leads. She struck me as very naive. "There was nothing like it. I didn't think there was anything strange in any of this. You know, a twenty-one-year-old kid with such connections. He was an exciting guy. He was really nice. He introduced me to everybody. Everybody wanted to be nice to him. And he knew how to handle it".
A while into their relationship Karen begins to change. She covers up for Henry and hides a gun he used to pistol-whip someone. "After awhile, it got to be all normal. None of it seemed like crime. It was more like Henry was enterprising, and that he and the guys were making a few bucks hustling, while all the other guys were sitting on their asses, waiting for handouts. Our husbands weren't brain surgeons, they were blue-collar guys. The only way they could make extra money, real extra money, was to go out and cut a few corners". She was still more gentle-natured that the other mobsters wives but has at this point fallen into the life of crime. She begins to toughen up further when Henry and Karen have children, and is seen making demands and sticking up for herself.
Towards the end of the film Karen is frustrated, swears frequently and threatens Henry with a gun. There is a reason, though, as Henry is having an affair with a drug addict named Janice Rossi. "This is Karen Hill, I want to talk to you. Hello? Don't hang up on me. I want to talk to you. You keep the fuck away from my husband, you understand me? Hello? ANSWER ME. I'm going to tell everybody that walks in this building that in 2R, Rossi, you're nothing but a whore. Is this the superintendent?... Yes, sir, I would like you to know that you have a whore living in 2R. Rossi, Janice Rossi... He's MY husband. Get your own goddamn man." She says this in front of her children after discovering the name and whereabouts of the woman Henry is having an affair with.
Karen is a complex character. She is likeable, and I pity her because of the hardships she gets put through, but she is blinded by love and a character who started out as sweet and innocent becomes violent and harsh.
When Henry was making money, life was sweet, but when his scams weren’t paying off, they had to scrounge like paupers. When Henry went away to prison, Karen was left alone to fend for herself and raise the kids. Worst of all, Henry’s cocaine dealing led to addiction, and Karen was sucked into that seductive whirl as well.
There is a hostess party between all the gangsters wives at the start of the film, which shows the characters gossiping excitedly about the violence commited by their family, or violence they've commited against their children, as if they were discussing beauty tips. They are portrayed as crude, worn down and angry. Karen makes the following comments on them: 'They had bad skin and wore too much makeup. They didn't look very good. They looked beat-up' 'They talked about their rotten kids...and about beating them with broom handles and belts'.
The wives act like Karen does at the end of the film, and when Karen sees how they behave she is shocked and seems completely oblivious to the fact that this is how they need to behave to survive when their husbands are gangsters. Examples of how the wives act are:
"Keep your fucking handsoff me or I'll cut them off."
"What about Jeannie's kid? He was in an argument. A dollar card game. He pulls out a gun. The gun goes off. Some kid gets killed.When the grandmother hears... ...she has a heart attackand drops dead. Now Jeannie has a husband and son in jail and a mother in the funeral parlor."
This is how the wives of gangsters live and Karen doesn't ever think she will get sucked into that world, which is why it is sad that she does.
The women in the films are their to support their husbands, keep their houses clean, raise the children, and cover up their men's crimes. The husbands are out all day long planning their next scam, they come home for dinner and then usually stay out all night (at other women's houses). The wives seem to be fine with this lifestyle which is a very negative view of women. They don't question their husbands and are very submissive. Men definately have the power in the film. They can walk into a restaurant and get tables brought out specially for them, and they never have to queue anywhere. People will lay down for them and attend to their every need. The women are only shown this respect when they are with their husbands and they are still not treated equally. The men meet and greet each other and then nriefly introduce their wives but the women are not included in the conversations. They're allowed to listen but not contribute. Overall there is a negative view of women here and although I did enjoy the film I expected it to be they way it was.
Friday, February 09, 2007
http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/80sCopFilms.html
Cop Action Films
by Philippa Gates, Wilfrid Laurier University
An Overview
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the police procedural introduced the first crime films focussed on the police officer as the investigating hero. The procedural showed the police as empowered by the organised force and scientific tools of investigation available to them. The cop shifted from being an average figure just doing his duty in the late 1940s to being a violent vigilante cop in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the vengeful vigilante cop became a wisecracking action-hero that offered an idealisation of law-enforcement and masculinity in American culture. The cop action film offered the film-going audience an image of American masculinity that was tough, independent, and victorious in the face of a society that was dominated by crime. Although the cop action-hero was in many ways an average guy just doing his job, more often he also functioned as a fantasy of indestructible masculinity. With a wisecracking defiance, the cop-action hero defeated the bad guys and challenged the impotence of law enforcement bureaucracy.
Retributive 'Musculinity'
The impact of second-wave feminism caused social conceptions of masculinity to be thrown into flux by the 1980s and this confusion was echoed in the media. Magazines, television, and film offered conflicting conceptions of positive masculinity. The 'New Man' of the men's fashion magazine represented a somewhat feminized type of masculinity - sensitive, romantic, and fashion-conscious. However, alongside the 'New Man' appeared the retributive man - an independent, violent, aggressive, and hyper-masculine hero. He was both a cop and an action hero and continued in the tradition of the vigilante cop, like Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, and the rampage hero, like Sylvester Stallone's Rambo. The cop action-hero, with his emphasis on physicality and violence, emerged, in part, as a backlash to the newer, more feminized, images of masculinity that pervaded the media, especially fashion magazines.
Despite the variety of types of masculinity that popular film offered audiences in the 1980s, audiences chose to watch films that were concerned with portrayals of white, male, action-heroes. Female empowerment had upset gender roles, altered the workplace, and incited new conceptions of masculinity like the New Man and the action-hero represented a backlash this seeming 'feminisation' of society. The action-heroes of the 1980s were defined as working-class in order to differentiate them from the seemingly impotent middle-class male, the victim of social change. The working-class hero represented a more traditional masculinity, unaffected by female empowerment. His job involved hard physical labour and a hyper-masculine physique to perform that labour, neither of which a woman could necessarily perform or attain. Women had become a significant presence in the workforce by the 1980s, including in professional and high-level positions, but they could not so readily invade the space of the working-class male. The 1980s was the zenith of the cop action film and the spectacle of the male body. In these films, the male body functioned as the site for the expression and the working through of personal, and often national, trauma, and two stars that repeatedly performed the role of, and have to come to embody, the cop action-hero are Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis.
The Male Body as a Lethal Weapon
In Lethal Weapon (Donner 1987) the identity of Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is not made clear at the beginning of the film. He is not established as a police detective but as dishevelled and unkempt, living in a run-down trailer, and waking up in the morning with a cigarette in his mouth, a gun in his bed, and a beer as his breakfast. In the scene that follows, he is shown buying drugs from dealers in a Christmas tree lot. When the dealers tell him they want 'a hundred' for the drugs (meaning $100,000), Riggs offers them $100 and a fight ensues, culminating in a shoot out between the dealers, their gunmen, and the police. As the cops surround the tree lot, the remaining dealer holds Riggs hostage with a gun to his temple; however, Riggs demands that his fellow officers shoot the dealer, unperturbed by the threat to his own safety. Riggs' demands escalate to near-hysteria and he finally loses control, grabs the weapon from the dealer, and head-butts him into submission. As the other officers seize the dealer, Riggs is shown wild-eyed and struggling to bring himself under control. Riggs is thus established as a borderline psychotic and an unstable masculinity.
Riggs' demonstration of the violent and heroic side of his masculinity is immediately contrasted in the following scene with the revelation of its emotional side. Alone in his trailer, nursing a drink in one hand and contemplating his wedding photos in another, Riggs breaks down. He examines a bullet (later revealed to be a special hollow-tipped one that he has purchased for his own suicide), loads it into his gun, and then studies the loaded weapon. Suddenly, he raises the gun to his forehead and struggles to pull the trigger. Tears of frustration and disappointment fill his eyes and he returns to the photo of his bride. 'I miss you,' he says to the photo. 'I'll see you later. I'll see you much later.' As is later revealed by the police department's psychologist, Riggs has recently lost his wife of 11 years to a car accident and his grief has pushed him to the edge. According to the psychologist, Riggs is pulling dangerous stunts in the line of duty and is psychotic, suicidal, or - as his partner Murtaugh (Danny Glover) jokes later - a 'lethal weapon.'
This juxtaposition of excessive violence and then excessive emotion marks Riggs as an exploration of divided and traumatised masculinity. His internalised grief stemming from his wife's death is thus transferred into externalised physical action, and Riggs' body becomes the site of the film's deliberation of masculine crisis The physical action that his body performs and the injuries, cuts, and blood that are incurred through that performance of violence represent the internal battle Riggs fights between his emotional vulnerability and his tough manliness. The climax of this internal battle is symbolised in his final hand-to-hand fight with the villainous Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey) whom Riggs has in custody and could simply arrest, cuff, and take away. Joshua represents Riggs' doppelganger: they both served in special forces units in Vietnam and were involved in similar assassination missions; and they both found employment after the war in which they utilise the skills they honed in Vietnam, only on different sides of the law. Joshua represents what Riggs might have become if he had not chosen to harness his violent impulses and employ them for the good of society. However, through his defeat of Joshua, Riggs asserts his difference from the enemy, confirms his ability to be a good cop, and proves his masculinity to himself and the audience, thus, bringing a conclusion to his crisis. Riggs confirms the end of his internal struggle by offering Murtaugh his special bullet as a Christmas present.
The Die Hard Hero
Similarly, in Die Hard (McTiernan 1988), John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a New York cop who comes to L.A. in an attempt to resolve his estrangement from his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) and children. The resolution of this personal issue is interrupted by, and becomes entangled with, the more immediate threat of the German terrorists. Led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), the terrorists hold Holly and her co-workers hostage, and, to win Holly's love back, McClane must first prove his masculinity by defeating the villains that threaten Holly. McClane's body is the site upon which his crisis is expressed through the exposure of his naked, well-muscled physique and then its incurrence of cuts, scars, and injuries as he battles the villains.
Nevertheless, the crisis worked through on his body is not just his own personal crisis but also a national one. The Nakatomi Corporation that employs Holly represents the globalisation and infiltration of Japanese big business into America, and Gruber and his associates represent the threat of terrorism and take-over by the Germans - both former enemies of the United States. McClane's success or defeat as the action-hero must bear the weight of U.S. international interests and he must be distinguished as an American hero in the face of the foreign enemy. Thus, the film aligns McClane with other more traditional figures of American heroism. Gruber accuses McClane of having watched too many movies as he seems to think of himself as John Wayne or Rambo. McClane, not wishing to reveal his name over the radio to the L.A.P.D. in case the enemy hears it, identifies himself as 'Roy Rogers' and so Gruber calls him 'Mr. Cowboy.' Not only is McClane constructed as the lone cowboy and the action-hero, but he is also inscribed as a saviour. In one scene he walks into the room limping, wounded, half-naked, carrying a machine gun, and silhouetted against a backdrop of light; Holly identifies him - breathing the word 'Jesus' at the sight of him.
Despite the alignment of the cop action-hero with very manly and traditional figures of American heroism, McClane also exhibits child-like qualities. Rather than performing the role of the dutiful police officer, McClane treats his pursuit of the villains as a kind of game. After dispatching one of Gruber's minions, McClane then sends the body to Gruber in the elevator, wearing a Santa's hat and with the message 'Now I have a machine gun - Ho-Ho-Ho' written in blood on the victim's shirt. The pleasure of the hunt for McClane is the pursuit of the enemy not killing them, which appears to be distasteful to him. Similarly, the pleasure for the audience is the game McClane plays and the witty commentary and wisecracks directed at the enemy that accompany it. Although McClane may be adolescent in terms of his behaviour, his body is hypermasculine. The employment of a masquerade of manliness, for example his ability to wisecrack in the face of death and his physique being hyper-masculine, mean that the crisis of masculinity that McClane faces - the loss of his wife through a failed marriage - is effectively disguised. Internalised emotion is displaced onto the exposed body of McClane in his performance of violence and heroism.
Bodies and Trauma
Riggs and McClane's bodies thus become the canvas upon which their masculine trauma is inscribed. Rather than expressing his emotions, which would be interpreted as a sign of weakness, the action-hero channels his emotionality into violent retaliation. Thus, Riggs' body literally becomes the lethal weapon of the film's title and also the receiver of the majority of the enemies' violence. This working out of masculine crisis at the level of spectacle means that the male body of the action-hero can be regarded as the triumphant assertion of male power or as the articulation of anxieties about the masculine identity they seem to embody (Tasker 9). The action-hero also performs a masquerade of hyper-masculinity on the surface of his body through action and violence while disguising his divided and troubled masculine identity. The white male body becomes the site of masculine masquerade and masculine trauma in the same instance - the moments of action are expressions of male emotionality transferred into violence and, at the same time, enact the performance of the masquerade. However, the body is not merely the site of masculine identity, it is also that of national identity. While Riggs relives Vietnam in his battle with Mr. Joshua and the other ex-servicemen, McClane fights America's battle against foreign corporate globalisation (embodied by the Nakatomi Corporation's building as much as by the German villains). America's politics are transferred from the public level to the private, and it is the lone action-hero that defeats the threat to American society. Thus, the 1980s cop action film, with its meditation on masculinity and nationalism, transfers internal conflict into external expression on the body of its action-hero.
The Aftermath
However, the emphasis on action, explosions, violence, and body counts diminished in the 1990s as social opinion changed in regards to what qualities were considered positive for masculinity to embody. Although the hard-body heroes of the 1980s-Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Mel Gibson - continue to thrive on the big screen, then tend to do so in more sensitive-man roles. Since the mid-90s Bruce Willis has been playing more sensitive men in films like Mercury Rising (1998) and The Sixth Sense (1999), and when he does appear in an action film, for example Tears of the Sun (2003), he is a hero more concerned with saving lives than exacting violent retribution. Not only has muscleman Schwarzenegger played more family-oriented heroes in Kindergarten Cop (1991), Junior (Reitman 1994), and The 6th Day (2000), but also the macho masculinity that those 80s action heroes represented is now often killed off, quite literally, in favour of new smarter, smaller, more sensitive kinds of masculinity. For example, in Armageddon (1998) the brawny hero who thinks with his fists (Bruce Willis) dies so that the brighter and more sensitive young hero (Ben Affleck) can save the day and marry the love interest. Similarly, in Executive Decision (1996) the muscle man and expected hero (Steven Seagal) is killed off early in the film and the smarter, less physical man (Kurt Russell) takes over. Thus, the 1990s saw a shift from the admiration of 'muscularity' to intelligence in society, a shift that incited a corresponding movement in popular film from a working-class hero to a middle-class one, from a brawny hero to a brainy one, from a man of action to a man of emotion.
Copyright © 2004 Philippa Gates
by Philippa Gates, Wilfrid Laurier University
An Overview
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the police procedural introduced the first crime films focussed on the police officer as the investigating hero. The procedural showed the police as empowered by the organised force and scientific tools of investigation available to them. The cop shifted from being an average figure just doing his duty in the late 1940s to being a violent vigilante cop in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the vengeful vigilante cop became a wisecracking action-hero that offered an idealisation of law-enforcement and masculinity in American culture. The cop action film offered the film-going audience an image of American masculinity that was tough, independent, and victorious in the face of a society that was dominated by crime. Although the cop action-hero was in many ways an average guy just doing his job, more often he also functioned as a fantasy of indestructible masculinity. With a wisecracking defiance, the cop-action hero defeated the bad guys and challenged the impotence of law enforcement bureaucracy.
Retributive 'Musculinity'
The impact of second-wave feminism caused social conceptions of masculinity to be thrown into flux by the 1980s and this confusion was echoed in the media. Magazines, television, and film offered conflicting conceptions of positive masculinity. The 'New Man' of the men's fashion magazine represented a somewhat feminized type of masculinity - sensitive, romantic, and fashion-conscious. However, alongside the 'New Man' appeared the retributive man - an independent, violent, aggressive, and hyper-masculine hero. He was both a cop and an action hero and continued in the tradition of the vigilante cop, like Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, and the rampage hero, like Sylvester Stallone's Rambo. The cop action-hero, with his emphasis on physicality and violence, emerged, in part, as a backlash to the newer, more feminized, images of masculinity that pervaded the media, especially fashion magazines.
Despite the variety of types of masculinity that popular film offered audiences in the 1980s, audiences chose to watch films that were concerned with portrayals of white, male, action-heroes. Female empowerment had upset gender roles, altered the workplace, and incited new conceptions of masculinity like the New Man and the action-hero represented a backlash this seeming 'feminisation' of society. The action-heroes of the 1980s were defined as working-class in order to differentiate them from the seemingly impotent middle-class male, the victim of social change. The working-class hero represented a more traditional masculinity, unaffected by female empowerment. His job involved hard physical labour and a hyper-masculine physique to perform that labour, neither of which a woman could necessarily perform or attain. Women had become a significant presence in the workforce by the 1980s, including in professional and high-level positions, but they could not so readily invade the space of the working-class male. The 1980s was the zenith of the cop action film and the spectacle of the male body. In these films, the male body functioned as the site for the expression and the working through of personal, and often national, trauma, and two stars that repeatedly performed the role of, and have to come to embody, the cop action-hero are Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis.
The Male Body as a Lethal Weapon
In Lethal Weapon (Donner 1987) the identity of Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is not made clear at the beginning of the film. He is not established as a police detective but as dishevelled and unkempt, living in a run-down trailer, and waking up in the morning with a cigarette in his mouth, a gun in his bed, and a beer as his breakfast. In the scene that follows, he is shown buying drugs from dealers in a Christmas tree lot. When the dealers tell him they want 'a hundred' for the drugs (meaning $100,000), Riggs offers them $100 and a fight ensues, culminating in a shoot out between the dealers, their gunmen, and the police. As the cops surround the tree lot, the remaining dealer holds Riggs hostage with a gun to his temple; however, Riggs demands that his fellow officers shoot the dealer, unperturbed by the threat to his own safety. Riggs' demands escalate to near-hysteria and he finally loses control, grabs the weapon from the dealer, and head-butts him into submission. As the other officers seize the dealer, Riggs is shown wild-eyed and struggling to bring himself under control. Riggs is thus established as a borderline psychotic and an unstable masculinity.
Riggs' demonstration of the violent and heroic side of his masculinity is immediately contrasted in the following scene with the revelation of its emotional side. Alone in his trailer, nursing a drink in one hand and contemplating his wedding photos in another, Riggs breaks down. He examines a bullet (later revealed to be a special hollow-tipped one that he has purchased for his own suicide), loads it into his gun, and then studies the loaded weapon. Suddenly, he raises the gun to his forehead and struggles to pull the trigger. Tears of frustration and disappointment fill his eyes and he returns to the photo of his bride. 'I miss you,' he says to the photo. 'I'll see you later. I'll see you much later.' As is later revealed by the police department's psychologist, Riggs has recently lost his wife of 11 years to a car accident and his grief has pushed him to the edge. According to the psychologist, Riggs is pulling dangerous stunts in the line of duty and is psychotic, suicidal, or - as his partner Murtaugh (Danny Glover) jokes later - a 'lethal weapon.'
This juxtaposition of excessive violence and then excessive emotion marks Riggs as an exploration of divided and traumatised masculinity. His internalised grief stemming from his wife's death is thus transferred into externalised physical action, and Riggs' body becomes the site of the film's deliberation of masculine crisis The physical action that his body performs and the injuries, cuts, and blood that are incurred through that performance of violence represent the internal battle Riggs fights between his emotional vulnerability and his tough manliness. The climax of this internal battle is symbolised in his final hand-to-hand fight with the villainous Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey) whom Riggs has in custody and could simply arrest, cuff, and take away. Joshua represents Riggs' doppelganger: they both served in special forces units in Vietnam and were involved in similar assassination missions; and they both found employment after the war in which they utilise the skills they honed in Vietnam, only on different sides of the law. Joshua represents what Riggs might have become if he had not chosen to harness his violent impulses and employ them for the good of society. However, through his defeat of Joshua, Riggs asserts his difference from the enemy, confirms his ability to be a good cop, and proves his masculinity to himself and the audience, thus, bringing a conclusion to his crisis. Riggs confirms the end of his internal struggle by offering Murtaugh his special bullet as a Christmas present.
The Die Hard Hero
Similarly, in Die Hard (McTiernan 1988), John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a New York cop who comes to L.A. in an attempt to resolve his estrangement from his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) and children. The resolution of this personal issue is interrupted by, and becomes entangled with, the more immediate threat of the German terrorists. Led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), the terrorists hold Holly and her co-workers hostage, and, to win Holly's love back, McClane must first prove his masculinity by defeating the villains that threaten Holly. McClane's body is the site upon which his crisis is expressed through the exposure of his naked, well-muscled physique and then its incurrence of cuts, scars, and injuries as he battles the villains.
Nevertheless, the crisis worked through on his body is not just his own personal crisis but also a national one. The Nakatomi Corporation that employs Holly represents the globalisation and infiltration of Japanese big business into America, and Gruber and his associates represent the threat of terrorism and take-over by the Germans - both former enemies of the United States. McClane's success or defeat as the action-hero must bear the weight of U.S. international interests and he must be distinguished as an American hero in the face of the foreign enemy. Thus, the film aligns McClane with other more traditional figures of American heroism. Gruber accuses McClane of having watched too many movies as he seems to think of himself as John Wayne or Rambo. McClane, not wishing to reveal his name over the radio to the L.A.P.D. in case the enemy hears it, identifies himself as 'Roy Rogers' and so Gruber calls him 'Mr. Cowboy.' Not only is McClane constructed as the lone cowboy and the action-hero, but he is also inscribed as a saviour. In one scene he walks into the room limping, wounded, half-naked, carrying a machine gun, and silhouetted against a backdrop of light; Holly identifies him - breathing the word 'Jesus' at the sight of him.
Despite the alignment of the cop action-hero with very manly and traditional figures of American heroism, McClane also exhibits child-like qualities. Rather than performing the role of the dutiful police officer, McClane treats his pursuit of the villains as a kind of game. After dispatching one of Gruber's minions, McClane then sends the body to Gruber in the elevator, wearing a Santa's hat and with the message 'Now I have a machine gun - Ho-Ho-Ho' written in blood on the victim's shirt. The pleasure of the hunt for McClane is the pursuit of the enemy not killing them, which appears to be distasteful to him. Similarly, the pleasure for the audience is the game McClane plays and the witty commentary and wisecracks directed at the enemy that accompany it. Although McClane may be adolescent in terms of his behaviour, his body is hypermasculine. The employment of a masquerade of manliness, for example his ability to wisecrack in the face of death and his physique being hyper-masculine, mean that the crisis of masculinity that McClane faces - the loss of his wife through a failed marriage - is effectively disguised. Internalised emotion is displaced onto the exposed body of McClane in his performance of violence and heroism.
Bodies and Trauma
Riggs and McClane's bodies thus become the canvas upon which their masculine trauma is inscribed. Rather than expressing his emotions, which would be interpreted as a sign of weakness, the action-hero channels his emotionality into violent retaliation. Thus, Riggs' body literally becomes the lethal weapon of the film's title and also the receiver of the majority of the enemies' violence. This working out of masculine crisis at the level of spectacle means that the male body of the action-hero can be regarded as the triumphant assertion of male power or as the articulation of anxieties about the masculine identity they seem to embody (Tasker 9). The action-hero also performs a masquerade of hyper-masculinity on the surface of his body through action and violence while disguising his divided and troubled masculine identity. The white male body becomes the site of masculine masquerade and masculine trauma in the same instance - the moments of action are expressions of male emotionality transferred into violence and, at the same time, enact the performance of the masquerade. However, the body is not merely the site of masculine identity, it is also that of national identity. While Riggs relives Vietnam in his battle with Mr. Joshua and the other ex-servicemen, McClane fights America's battle against foreign corporate globalisation (embodied by the Nakatomi Corporation's building as much as by the German villains). America's politics are transferred from the public level to the private, and it is the lone action-hero that defeats the threat to American society. Thus, the 1980s cop action film, with its meditation on masculinity and nationalism, transfers internal conflict into external expression on the body of its action-hero.
The Aftermath
However, the emphasis on action, explosions, violence, and body counts diminished in the 1990s as social opinion changed in regards to what qualities were considered positive for masculinity to embody. Although the hard-body heroes of the 1980s-Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Mel Gibson - continue to thrive on the big screen, then tend to do so in more sensitive-man roles. Since the mid-90s Bruce Willis has been playing more sensitive men in films like Mercury Rising (1998) and The Sixth Sense (1999), and when he does appear in an action film, for example Tears of the Sun (2003), he is a hero more concerned with saving lives than exacting violent retribution. Not only has muscleman Schwarzenegger played more family-oriented heroes in Kindergarten Cop (1991), Junior (Reitman 1994), and The 6th Day (2000), but also the macho masculinity that those 80s action heroes represented is now often killed off, quite literally, in favour of new smarter, smaller, more sensitive kinds of masculinity. For example, in Armageddon (1998) the brawny hero who thinks with his fists (Bruce Willis) dies so that the brighter and more sensitive young hero (Ben Affleck) can save the day and marry the love interest. Similarly, in Executive Decision (1996) the muscle man and expected hero (Steven Seagal) is killed off early in the film and the smarter, less physical man (Kurt Russell) takes over. Thus, the 1990s saw a shift from the admiration of 'muscularity' to intelligence in society, a shift that incited a corresponding movement in popular film from a working-class hero to a middle-class one, from a brawny hero to a brainy one, from a man of action to a man of emotion.
Copyright © 2004 Philippa Gates
Texts, journalsm, areas of interest & websites
- The Grifters 1990
- Book - Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society by Nicole Hahn Rafter, Oxford University Press (April 1, 2000)
- Ideologies of Heroism
- Masculinity in crime film
- Thelma & Louise 1991, Ridley Scott
- Sin City 2005, Rod Rodriguez & Frank Miller
- www.planetpapers.com
- http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/journal/articles/popular_feminism.htm
- British Crime Cinema By Steve Chibnall, Robert Murphy - crime films used crime to express/explore men's power. Power over society/women/wealth
- http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/80sCopFilms.html
Friday, January 26, 2007
Sin City (2005) Directed by Frank Miller, Quentin Tarentino and Roger Rodriguez
A film that explores the dark and miserable southern town Basin City and tells the story of three different people, all caught up in the violent corruption of the city.
Female characters:
Nancy Callahan - Aged 11 she was kidnapped and almost raped, but Hartigan (the main character who was nearly 50 at the time) saved her. She ends up working as an exotic dancer in a bar and falls in love with Hartigan when he is released from prison after being falsely accused of her kidnapping.
Miho - She works in Old Town (a prostitute town) and is their assasin. She is represented as being strong as she is a very skilled assassin and she alone is good enough to keep all the prostitutes defended.
Becky - One of the many prostitutes in the movie. There are 20 female characters in the movie and 16 are prostitutes. Becky is represented as being a weak. She betrays the other prostitutes.
Goldie - She is shown as a femme fetale type character who spends the night with one of the main characters, Marv. Marv falls in love with her and goes on a huge revenge kick after she is killed. She is shown as the beautiful, helpless victim
Shellie - She's the victim of domestic violence.
Gail - Represented as someone who should be feared. She's the leader of the prostitutes. She's very harsh and violent.
Female characters:
Nancy Callahan - Aged 11 she was kidnapped and almost raped, but Hartigan (the main character who was nearly 50 at the time) saved her. She ends up working as an exotic dancer in a bar and falls in love with Hartigan when he is released from prison after being falsely accused of her kidnapping.
Miho - She works in Old Town (a prostitute town) and is their assasin. She is represented as being strong as she is a very skilled assassin and she alone is good enough to keep all the prostitutes defended.
Becky - One of the many prostitutes in the movie. There are 20 female characters in the movie and 16 are prostitutes. Becky is represented as being a weak. She betrays the other prostitutes.
Goldie - She is shown as a femme fetale type character who spends the night with one of the main characters, Marv. Marv falls in love with her and goes on a huge revenge kick after she is killed. She is shown as the beautiful, helpless victim
Shellie - She's the victim of domestic violence.
Gail - Represented as someone who should be feared. She's the leader of the prostitutes. She's very harsh and violent.
Topic
My Q: How are gender roles represented in crime films?
Hypothesis: I am going to look at how men and women are represented in crime films. What are typical feminie/masculine roles in these films? Do gender roles in crime films represent modern ideologies or old-fashioned ones? What roles in crime films do men play and which roles do women play? Are they represented as equal or does one gender dominate films? Who produces/directs crime films (male or female)? Does this link with gender roles in the films? How do women's and men's responses differ to crime films?
Hypothesis: I am going to look at how men and women are represented in crime films. What are typical feminie/masculine roles in these films? Do gender roles in crime films represent modern ideologies or old-fashioned ones? What roles in crime films do men play and which roles do women play? Are they represented as equal or does one gender dominate films? Who produces/directs crime films (male or female)? Does this link with gender roles in the films? How do women's and men's responses differ to crime films?
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