Masculinity & Brokeback Mountain Essay

We often hear the phrase nowadays of “toxic masculinity”. Many use it but often without explanation. What exactly is toxic masculinity? Why is masculinity and the history of hypermasculinity in American culture so toxic? In American culture, there is a history of a “survival of the fittest” mentality. The strongest men are domineering and powerful, and take no nonsense from women, or progressives, or gay people. These traits are hypermasculine, an extremeness of generic masculinity, both of which should be handled with care, as masculinity itself is a fragile construct. American masculinity can be extremely toxic and dangerous to both the men themselves and the people around them. Masculinity can often be a cage to men, whom society

I would like to state the importance of an actor performance and mise-en-scene of the male hero to portray the representation of masculinity in this film. Connells (1995) addresses that Bruce Wayne’s character is the definition of the hegemonic representation of masculinity which embraces and exploits the over exaggerated standards of masculinity of them being serious, unnaturally strong, wealthy and cool. His facial expressions also help contribute to this

= Since the revival of Australian cinema in early 1970s, Australian films have focused on certain themes of social perceptions and representations of masculinity. We see dominant,

At the beginning of the novel, Golding describes Jack's physical appearance as "inside the floating cloak he was tall, thin and bony;

The sexual politics of the man-woman relationship, or more specifically the sexual exploitation of women by men, is a clear concern in Margaret Atwood's "Backdrop Addresses Cowboy." Although the oppressor-as-male theme is by no means an original source of poetic inspiration, Atwood's distinction is that she views the destructive man-woman relationship as a metaphor for, symptom and symbol of, bigger things. From the vantage-point of feminine consciousness, Margaret Atwood empahsizes the "backdrop" as being not only the woman, but also the land and the spiritual life of the universe; the "cowboy" is both a man bent on personal gain (possibly an American based

They actually talk about it, how much better this is than with any woman. It shows them close, it shows them getting personal, even discussing the possibility of running away together. The movie did not discribe the emotional intimacy Jack and Ennis shared even before they had sex. Ennis's emotional transformation in Jack's company appears in the book with the line, "Ennis, riding against the wind back to the sheep in the treacherous, drunken light, thought he'd never had such a good time, felt he could paw the white out of the moon." The deep friendship does not reveal in the movie, the way the book does, which was the foundation for their love. (Walford, Compare/contrast the book vs. the movie, ennisjack, 2006)

Compare and contrast the representation of masculinity in two films or TV series of your choice.

Lastly, Jack forms relations with the new outside world, and consequently he further explores his role within society. According to a specialist, Jack’s limited exposure to the world will create a barrier towards interaction with the community and environment. “‘Like a newborn in many ways, despite his remarkably accelerated literacy and

In his essay, “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Ed Gentry,” Betina Entzminger argues that at the heart of James Dickey’s Deliverance lies the search for a lost masculinity in today’s world, told through the lens of the protagonist’s canoe trip. He asserts that Ed understands the societal pressures upon each gender, forces that compel us towards the stereotypes that pervade our culture. Further, Entzminger believes, “Despite the fact that Ed sees these constructions as constructions, he is unable to rise above them” (Entzminger). Ultimately, Entzminger posits, “Ed dutifully destroys that which challenges his own and his community’s conceptions of gender and sexuality, and he finds comfort in his return to his community at the novel’s close”

The movie surveyed a wide array of the troubles faced by boys and men as they try to navigate the realm of masculinity. A common theme was the command “be a man” and the cultural baggage that comes with living up to that ideal. To “be a man” means to not cry, to not be sensitive, to not let people mess with you, to respond with violence, to be angry, to drink, to womanize.

First off, in Carol Clover’s essay“Men Women and Chainsaws” the argument is focused on how women overcome their challenges throughout various films.  Clover focuses in on a few different films and specifically looks for the “Final Girl” which is the last female standing after overcoming their challenges.  All of this brings a new aspect to film watching because Clover’s theory shifts the viewer's attention from focusing on how the male is essentially tormenting a female to zooming in on how the female overcomes the challenge.  Clover does this because she wants to show the viewers a different aspect of film and genre.  This is because Clover feels that instead of having the audience focusing on a main character which is essentially a male tormentor she has them focus on how the female(s) overcome the challenge and defeat their tormentor.  This perspective opens up a new gateway to film

In the world people idolize the idea of the aggressive and powerful man, but this is a dangerous icon to present to children. Taken to an extreme it can cause the cycle of toxic masculinity to begin. Toxic masculinity is a dangerous set of ideals and beliefs, it provides a dangerous mindset of violent behavior to young boys, leads to anger issues, depression, and a severe urge to compensate for perceived inadequacies by the use of violence in the teenage years, can lead to an adulthood filled with violence towards family, and others, and allows the cycle to repeat.

The physical appearance of Jack also changes greatly within the novel. Golding portrays Jack’s fixation with hunting to cause this. At the beginning of the novel, his image is described as like the other choirboys, wearing shorts, a shirt and a black cloak, “finished off with a hambone frill”. However, we see that in Chapter three, his physical characteristics have now changed from a choirboy to a hunter. This is shown where it says, “His bare back was a mass of dark freckles and peeling sunburn…he was naked.". His image also becomes

Today’s filmmakers have three areas to focus on: the event or theme of the film, the audience who will be watching the film, and lastly, the individual characters and the roles they play and how they are portrayed and interpreted. Many of these films bottom line objectives are to focus on the “erotic needs of the male ego.” The focus on fetishistic scopophilia tend to slant the view such that we see the world as being dominated by men and that woman are

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land explores modernism, specifically focusing on the troubling of binaries and the breakdown of the traditional. The boundaries between life and death, wet and dry, male and female, and more are called into question in Eliot’s conception of modernity and the waste land. The blurring of gender boundaries—significantly through Tiresias and the hooded figure scene in “What the Thunder Said”— in the poem lends itself to Eliot’s suggestion that traditional masculinity breaks down and decays in the waste land. Traditional masculinity is further challenged through Eliot’s criticism of hyper-masculinity and heterosexual relations in the modern era through allusions to the myth of Philomela and the “young man carbuncular” scene in “The Fire Sermon.” Along with this, Eliot stages scenes charged with homoeroticism to further challenge ideas of traditional masculinity. Homoerotic scenes such as the “hyacinth girl” scene in “The Burial of the Dead” and the Mr. Eugenides scene in “The Fire Sermon” suggest an intensity and enticement towards male-male relations, while also offering a different depiction of masculinity than is laid out in the heterosexual romance scenes. Through scenes depicting queer desire and homosexual behavior, Eliot suggests that masculinity in the modern era does not need to be marked by aggression and