Tag Archives: masculinity

Fran Hughes on 20th Century Women (Mike Mills, 2016)

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Mike Mills stated has stated “feelings are my genre.” 20th Century Women is his semi-autobiographical 21st reflection on masculinity.

The film is led by matriarch, Dorothea (Annette Bening) who is coming to terms with the changing world around her, both socially in 1979 and personally as her son is a teenager becoming his own man.

She wants her son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) to know he does not have to conform to traditional, damaging notions of masculinity. Dorothea tells him “Men always feel that they have to fix things for women, but they’re not doing anything. Some things just can’t be fixed. Just be there, somehow that’s hard for all of you”.

Handyman William (Billy Crudup) is a positive male role model that Dorothea feels Jamie (can look up to, while having his friend Julie (Elle Fanning) and lodger Abbie (Greta Gerwig) can teach him how to be a feminist man who understands the issues the women face.

The film could as easily be retitled 20th Century Family, as the characters become each other’s surrogate, chosen family and share many formative experiences together.  This dynamic highlights how by 1979 many people are living outside the traditional nuclear family typical of previous generations. They share joyful moments but are all there for each other during their most difficult times. As Dorothea states in the film “the people that help you might not be who you thought or wanted, they might just be the people who show up.” These characters show up for each other when it matters most, that’s what being family means to them.

 

All the characters have been shaped by different eras and attitudes of the 20th century. Each central character has their own section somewhere within the non-linear narrative introducing spectators to key moments from their lives. Montage means put together or assemble in French. Here Mills decides to use several montages to highlight events and life experiences that have shaped each central character, in other words experiences that have assembled their current persona. This is cleverly illustrated through scrapbook-style montages that depict political and personal events that have become pieces of who they are. Mills uses a mixture of character photos and archival footage to create an insightful snapshot of their memories.

For Dorothea he uses archival footage from the Great Depression to reflect on how growing up in that time created her resilient personality.  Benning’s performance is electric and unforgettable, one of the strongest of her career.

 

Throughout the film the characters narrate parts of their past prior to 1979 and refer to events in their future further illustrating the importance of this period of their life, being still significant to them, a foundational time in their lives. It feels as if they are in conversation with their younger 1979 selves updating them on where they are now. This feels poignant as it causes the spectator to reflect on their youth, how their life turned out and the people who helped shape who they are today. As Gerwig’s Abbie states “Whatever you think your life is going to be like, just know, it’s not gonna be anything like that”.

Fran Hughes

Alex Santos-Edgar on La Haine (Matthieu Kassovitz, 1995)

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In this podcast Alex Santos-Edgar and I discuss La Haine (Matthieu Kassovitz, 1995): it’s style, its influence, how Paris figures, where masculinity and race figure in it…and more:

 

 

José Arroyo

Brando: cruising, masculinity and queer desire in Reflections in a Golden Eye

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The cruising, the relation between performativity and masculinity, the longing and frustration, the contortions of queer desire in the closet —  I hope this all  comes out in the edit itself.  I’ll eventually put some text in it but not much. I feel the video below speaks for itself.

José Arroyo

Burt Lancaster 1946-1956, The Man Girls Whistle At.

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In the early phase of his career, Burt Lancaster is not only there to be looked at and seen, as all actors are, particularly stars; nor is he just — albeit significantly – characterised by ‘to-be-looked-at-ness,’ something that is seen to be the exclusive and particular lot of women in cinema; and nor is this ‘to-be-looked-at-ness,’ always deflected by action and violence, as is often argued by theorists like Steve Neale. Burt is dressed and undress for the audience’s pleasure. That is true of other stars of the era, one thinks of Rock Hudson, for example, although Burt seems to enjoy it more than Rock. The reason for making this particular video was simply to show how often Burt is propositioned by women, and how that is acknowledged and deflected; how that often sees the characters he plays acknowledge it as an objectifying ploy…one which places him in a position where he has his price and can be bought well….like patriarchal notions of ‘woman’ from the period. He is desirable; can almost always be had on his terms; and can sometimes be bought on others. It’s part of a locus of meanings and actions associated with his star persona at this period that contribute to his representing a particular type of man but one that evokes a certain kind of masculinity in crisis in the post-war period.

 

José Arroyo

Burt serves his sentence in Kiss the Blood Off My Hands

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Was Burt Lancaster ever a gay pinup? I mean he obviously is one to me now but I mean socially, amongst gay subcultures in the 40 and 50s? Kiss The Blood off My Hands has a great scene with Burt, in his prime and shirtless, being flogged senseless. It ostensibly was an approved system of punishment handed out by the courts in post-war Britain, where the film is set. It´s a scene that must have inspired many fantasies and clearly influenced many a subsequent gay sex shop.

PS on a more serious note, it´s also worth thinking about male action stars and scenes like these, where they do bear the burden of the look, where they are objectified, but usually via pain or suffering, a punishment unjustly meted out. Errol Flynn, the major action star of his day, had several scenes like this in the Michael Curtiz pirate pictures he did in the thirties for Warners. What´s interesting about this one, is that the punishment is just. It´s not quite the fault of the character Burt plays. He was a POW, he´s not being too successful at processing trauma, he´s lashing out with terrible consequences. He´s done the deed but the rages or red flags that lead to them are caused by the war and he´s just as much a victim as the people he ends up victimising. He´s mired in circumstances outside of his control that work against him.

 

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 176 – Fight Club

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A film that jogs memories for Mike, as in the process of revisiting Fight Club he realises what an impact it had on him as a teenager. David Fincher’s outrageously stylish and visceral story of a generation of dispossessed men finding purpose in violence has only increased in relevance in the twenty years since its release, drawing comparisons to incels and school shooters, but it also leads Mike to recall how it affected his interests and attitudes in his youth. José, who saw it on its release, was on the positive side of its mixed response and recalls trying to convince his friends of its greatness – and is proud to have been proven right in the years since, in which it rapidly became perhaps the defining cult hit.

Mike is surprised to discover a sexual dimension to it that he hadn’t quite realised was there – obviously, Tyler and Marla’s ceiling-shaking lovemaking sessions hadn’t escaped his attention, but it wasn’t until this screening that he saw Marla as desirable and human, rather than simply present and symbolic. She’s weary but hopeful, fiery and alive but constantly flirting with death, and with the benefit of knowing the film’s infamous twist, deeply sympathetic. Mike argues, too, for a strain of homoeroticism — Steve Erickson writes that Chuck Palahniuk came out as gay in 2004. The clues are everywhere both in his book and Fincher’s film — in the fighting and particularly in Brad Pitt’s appearance – more than powerful and intimidating, he’s attractive, the narrator’s ideal self (though we don’t, as José points out, see him topless and sweaty nearly as often as we might remember).

It’s not without its problems. The question of exactly what it says, and indeed how deliberately it says it, is dependant perhaps on the viewer’s mood and cultural context as much as anything. Fight Club wants to be thought of as a satire, that’s clear, but of what – and is it as much of a satire as it thinks it is? Mike suggests that much of what drives this problematic area of debate is the effectiveness with which the film brings us into the narrator’s mental state, conveying beautifully his attitudes, desires, repressions, regardless of whether we might think of them as positive or negative. Were the film more objective, more willing to offer judgement of its characters, these questions would be less troubling but the film would have none of its potency.

We agree that Fight Club is a considerable piece of work – José less enthusiastically, but it would be hard to be as turned on by it as Mike is. To have seen it on the big screen is a treat – every one of its compositions is electrifying, beautiful, considered and inventive – and the themes it explores have only grown in relevance since 1999. If it comes round, don’t hesitate to buy front row tickets. If it doesn’t, dig out the DVD, which you definitely own, and watch it again.

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 91 – American Animals

 

An imperfect combination of documentary and dramatisation, American Animals gives us a lot to talk about. Its story of four college students embarking on a heist raises ideas of privilege, ambition and hope (or lack thereof), self-image, and above all, masculinity. In its self-conscious invocation of the kinds of films twenty-something white guys adore, such as Fight Club and Reservoir Dogs, American Animals builds a portrait of the modern young man with which Mike sympathises but which José cannot tolerate.

Neither of us finds the film without deep flaws, and indeed we could not claim to have really enjoyed it. But it is valuable and leads to a lively debate. We use the phrase “American masculinity” a lot without burdening ourselves with defining it, and Mike observes that all films with American in the title are full of themselves.

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.