Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body

Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series

by Peter Lehman

Peter Lehman charges that Western culture's silence regarding the sexual representation of the male body perpetuates the mythic power of the phallus. Just as the representation of women is so centrally shaped by the mother/whore dichotomy, the male body is restricted to images of spectacular phallic power or its pitiful, often comic collapse. Surveying a wide range of cultural production, Running Scared traces the careful veiling of male images of sexuality to homophobia, castration anxiety, or fears of not measuring up. But Lehman also examines representations that betray male desire to abandon conventional positions of power. Asking how cultural notions of civilization and science shape texts, he examines narratives about feral boys and writings by sexologists. In chapters dealing with Howard Hawks films, Jim Thompson's noir novel, The Nothing Man, in relation to Hemingway texts, and penis-size jokes, Lehman is concerned with male protagonists who have lost or who lack power. The author's alternative readings of films by such openly gay filmmakers as Almodovar and Fassbinder address intersecting issues of gender, sexuality and spectatorship. Concluding with a discussion of new possibilities for representing masculinity and the male body, he draws on Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, the work of feminist photographers Melody Davis and Sarah Kent, and the songs of Roy Orbison. With its provocative analysis of films, sexology, pornography, popular fiction, photographs, popular music, and videos, Running Scared confronts the cultural taboos that limit our representation of and response to images of the male body.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gender and Sexuality

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

Reviews

[Mothwing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much based on Freudian and Lacanian theories, which I have some serious doubts about, but especially the bits about gendered injuries and why women are always injured in their faces and men always injured in extremeties were interesting and informative.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Each chapter feeds into a wider narrative, neatly and effectively, whilst still retaining its focus. A great structure for an academic work that I will return to piecemeal. A classic for a reason, one of the first monographs to address the representation of masculinity on film. Whilst quite psychoanalytic in its readings, this does not dominate and the author is at pains to look at structural norms without universalising experiences of individuals.

[Belinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book about the taboos surrounding representations of the penis in Western culture. Although its primary focus is movies, it also looks at medical discourse and the music of Roy Orbison. When it was first published, this book was hugely influential in the field of masculinity studies and its relevance is still clear in this new revised version. A great read.