Troubling masculinities : terror, gender, and monstrous others in American film post-9/11 / Glen Donnar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Donnar, Glen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Masculinity in motion pictures.

Motion pictures and men.

Motion pictures, American--21st century.

Motion pictures, American.

Physical Description:

238 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2020]

Summary:

"Troubling Masculinities: Terror, Gender, and Monstrous Others in American Film Post-9/11 is the first multigenre study of representations of masculinity following the emergence of violent terror as a plot element in American cinema after September 11, 2001. Across a broad range of subgenres-including disaster melodrama, monster movies, postapocalyptic science fiction, discovered footage and home invasion horror, action-thrillers, and frontier westerns-author Glen Donnar examines the impact of "terror-Others," from Arab terrorists to giant monsters, especially in relation to cinematic representations in earlier periods of national turmoil. Donnar demonstrates that the reassertion of masculinity and American national identity in post-9/11 cinema repeatedly unravels across genres. Taking up critical arguments about Hollywood's attempts to resolve male crisis through Orientalizing figures of terror, he shows how this failure reflects an inability to effectively extinguish the threat or frightening difference of terror. The heroes in these movies are unable to heal themselves or restore order, often becoming as destructive as the threats they are supposed to be fighting. Donnar concludes that interrelated anxieties about masculinity and nationhood continue to affect contemporary American cinema and politics. By showing how persistent these cultural fears are, the volume offers an important counternarrative to this supposedly unprecedented moment in American history"-- Provided by publisher.

"A challenge to claims about the popular project of masculine redemption in recent genre films"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: remasculinizing American cinema post-9/11

"Shielding us from what we are not yet ready to see": the uniformed hero as victim and in masquerade

"I don't know why this is happening": shamed Everymen and America's own unknowable monsters

"I can still fix this": restoring protective masculinity and/but becoming a monstrous savior

"A variation of vengeance": the inadequacy of revenge in remasculinizing the nation abroad

Conclusion: "how do you love your family and leave them to go to war?"

Notes

Filmography

Works cited

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Donnar, Glen. Troubling masculinities.

ISBN:

9781496828576

1496828577

9781496828583

1496828585

OCLC:

1125130024