Table Of ContentContemporary Masculinities in
Fiction, Film and Television
Contemporary Masculinities in
Fiction, Film and Television
Brian Baker
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2015
Paperback edition fi rst published 2016
© Brian Baker, 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baker, Brian, 1969–
Contemporary masculinities in fi ction, fi lm and television/
Brian Baker.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62356-747-7 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Masculinity in motion pictures.
2. Men in motion pictures. 3. Masculinity on television. 4. English fi ction–20th century–
History and criticism. 5. American fi ction–20th century–History and criticism.
6. Masculinity in literature. 7. Men in literature. I. Title.
PN1995.9.M34B33 2015
820.9’35211–dc23
2014033054
ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6747-7
PB: 978-1-5013-2009-5
ePDF: 978-1-6235-6922-8
ePUB: 978-1-6235-6738-5
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
Part 1 Narratives of Power
1 Gallivanting Around the World 7
2 Masters and Commanders 27
3 American Hearts of Darkness 47
4 Th e Special Relationship 65
Part 2 Science Fiction
5 Th e Enclave 87
6 Dystopia and the Apocalyptic Scene 106
7 Alien Nations 119
8 Everybody Runs 136
9 Annihilations 153
Part 3 Gothic/Horror/Th e Fantastic
10 Tape Spectra 175
11 Orpheus Descending 191
12 Lecter 204
13 Th e Angels and the Damned 224
Conclusion 243
Bibliography 246
Index 257
Acknowledgements
Although the writing of a book can be a frustratingly isolated and isolating
experience, and not only for oneself, the process cannot take place without the
help and support of others. Personally, I would like to thank Katie Gallof of
Bloomsbury Academic for her ongoing enthusiasm and support for this project,
and Mary Al-Sayed for her diligence and professionalism; friends and colleagues
with whom I have discussed the ideas and texts, and who have provided me
with inspiration and a helping hand at key moments, in particular, Andrew Tate,
Arthur Bradley, John Schad, Catherine Spooner, Chris Witter, Fred Botting,
Bruce Bennett, Amit Th akkar, Nick Hodgin and Lindsey King; and colleagues at
Lancaster University, Keele University, the University of Mainz at Germersheim,
the University of Chester and the Gladstone Library at Hawarden, where parts of
this book were fi rst tried out as seminar papers and at conferences.
Parts of this book have previously been published, and I would like to
acknowledge the following for their permission to reprint this material in a
diff erent form. Chapter 1, from Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale ,
by Christoph Lindner (ed.), Copyright © 2010 Columbia University Press,
Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Part of Chapter 8, from T extual
Revisions: Literature and Film , Brian Baker (ed.), Copyright © 2009 Th e University
of Chester Press, Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 10 was
published, in altered form, as ‘Tape Spectra’ in Th e Irish Journal of Gothic and
Horror Studies , issue 11. Elements of Chapter 12, from Th e Routledge Companion
to Gothic , by Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy (eds.), Copyright © 2007
Routledge, and Th e Lure of the Dark Side: Satan and Demonology in Popular
Culture by Christopher Partridge and Eric S. Christianson (eds.), Copyright ©
2009 Equinox/Routledge, Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
Finally, I must off er my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my wife Deniz
and my daughters Isobel and Sophie, who have put up with the negative eff ects
of the writing of this book with patience and kindness, and without which it
would not exist.
Introduction
Th is book developed from my growing critical interest in the intersection of
representations of gender, in particular, masculinities, and the burgeoning fi eld
in sociology known as mobility studies, of which there is a leading research
centre at my own institution, Lancaster University, which is led by John Urry.
Although my project has since gone beyond the conceptual frame of mobilities,
strong traces of it can be found everywhere in this book, especially in the work
of Tim Cresswell and John Urry, in the attempt to think through constructions
of hegemonic masculinity (the dominant within Anglo-American cultural
representation) in an increasingly mobile, networked and globalized society. In
this, my approach is not instrumental or neutral with regard to the impact of
enhanced mobility upon masculinity; as will become apparent in the course of
this book, my reading of contemporary masculinities (since 2000, but largely
in the era of the ‘ War on Terror ’ that followed 11 September 2001) is one that
is informed by discourses of trauma, pathology and dislocation (in time and
space). In short, across the range of diff erent genre texts I look at in this book,
masculinity is troubled, anxious, fi ssured, unable to cope with the alienating
dynamics of contemporary globalized capitalism. In my previous book,
Masculinities in Fiction and Film 1945 –2 000 , I discussed the ‘ crisis of masculinity ’
that became culturally prominent at the very end of the 1990s, and particularly
visible in fi lms such as F ight Club (1999) and A merican Beauty (1999), as well
as in a variety of publications, from newspaper articles to academic discourse.
In a sense, the ‘ crisis ’ has become the new hegemon, in that the dominance of
neoliberal economics in the global North, crises of legitimacy in ‘ democratic ’
political processes, the experience of war and the eff ects of terrorism, as well
as emergent social and cultural formations produced by digital networks and
globalized travel, have all shift ed the ground for representations of masculinity,
particularly white (hegemonic) masculinity, produced by the capitalist
democracies of Europe and North America.
Th is story is, of course, as old as modernity itself. Sigmund Freud, in Beyond
the Pleasure Principle (1920), to which I will return (most appropriately) at key
2 Contemporary Masculinities in Fiction, Film and Television
points in this book, proposes that the human psychic apparatus develops a kind
of shield to ward off the ‘ shocks ’ (in a physical sense, as well as the psychological
and cultural one theorized by Walter Benjamin) of modern life. Although my
approach is not strictly Freudian, I will make recurrent use of the discourses of
trauma and its relation to cultural works (literature, fi lm, television), some of which
are Freudian in origin. Th e traumatized male subject has become a recognizable
fi gure across a range of cultural representations in the United States and United
Kingdom, concretized in the fi gure of the ‘ veteran ’ or a soldier suff ering from
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Th e representation of the traumatized soldier
has long historical roots, of course, back to the aft ermath of World War I, which
– through texts such as Pat Barker’ s R egeneration (1992) – have remained current
through wars in Vietnam, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Th e fi rst
four chapters of this book negotiate with the fi gure of the damaged soldier,
and the modulation of ‘ secret agent ’ narrative and fi gures such as James Bond
and Jason Bourne through trauma and loss. Th e hyper-mobility I diagnose in
relation to both these agents is, I propose, directly connected to an extension of
military intelligence-gathering power of the United States and United Kingdom
across global spaces and boundaries, recurrent motifs in contemporary cinema.
Th ese chapters will also investigate the connection between masculinity and a
new Imperium, as well as draw on counter-currents with regard to hegemonic
and ‘ damaged ’ masculinities, from the naval novels of Patrick O’ B rian (and their
fi lm adaptation) to the fi lm Four Lions , a black comedy about British Muslims
who have been radicalized and attempt suicide bombings.
In the second section, the focus shift s to science fi ction and uses Darko
Suvin ’s classic statement of science fi ction ’ s capacity for ‘ estrangement ’ eff ects to
read dystopian, post-catastrophic and alien contact/invasion narratives, as well
as those concerned with genetics and the post-human. Th ese fi lms become a
means by which the eff ects of war, exclusion and displacement can be imagined,
in part through the return of these eff ects to the previously unaff ected centres of
power: London, in particular. Accompanying the anxieties of loss are those to
do with fatherhood and the role of the father, which is recurrent in the science
fi ction fi lms I will consider; but in the fi nal chapter of this section, returning
again to Freud ’ s ‘ death drive ’ , the book will consider the attractions of a sublime
annihilation of the masculine subject as a means by which to escape the pain of
loss, of love, of life itself.
In the third section, I turn to horror and the Gothic, in texts which investigate
the pathologization of the masculine subject, from serial killers such as Hannibal
