Screening the Male

by Steven Cohan (Editor), Ina Rae Hark (Editor)

Screening the male re-examines the problematic status of masculinity both in Hollywood cinema and feminist film theory.
Classical Hollywood cinema has been theoretically established as a vast pleasure machine, manufacturing an idealized viewer through its phallocentric ideological apparatus. Feminist criticism has shown how difficult it is for the female viewer to resist becoming implicated in this representational system. But the theroies have overlooked the significance of the problem itself - of the masuline motivation at the core of the system. The essays here explore those male characters, spectators, and performers who occupy positions conventionally encoded as "feminine" in Hollywood narrative and questions just how secure that orthodox male position is.
Screening the Male brings together an impressive group of both established and emerging scholars from Britain, the United States and Australia unified by a concern with issues that film theorists have exclusively inked to the femninie and not the spectacle, masochism, passivity, masquerade and, most of all, the body as it signifies gendered, racial, class and generatonal differences.

Genres: Film, Gender, Gender Studies

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 18, 1992

About the author

Steven Cohan is Dean’s Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Syracuse University.

Reviews

[Mohamed Yehia · Rating 3 out of 5]

على الرغم من صعوبة الأفكار التي قد تصل لحد التعقيد والمبالغة في التفسيرات والاستنتاجات , الا أن الكتاب مفيد جدا في توليد رؤية جديدة للأفلام يمكن أن يستخدمها القاريء ويطبقها على الافلام التي يراها ..مجهود كبير في الترجمة لعصام زكريا رغم صعوبة المواضيع والمصطلحات

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent volume. Opening with a 'classic' essay in reprint from Neale, and then developing the themes into more recent criticism is great. I liked the chronological arrangement of topics from classic hollywood to recent (for the publication date) action movies. This historicised focus has kept the scholarship relevant. No one will agree with all the arguments and perspectives put forward in a collection like this, which is the point of a well curated collection.

[Britta · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of essays examining masculinity in cinema -- a topic that has been undervalued. Some were more interesting than others for me personally but all were well-argued and interesting analyses, from the feminized male musical star, to the conflicted identity politics of Spartacus, to the complex gender at play in horror films. Recommended for those interested in film and highly recommended for those interested in gender in cinema.

[Marwa Sami · Rating 2 out of 5]

كتاب شيق جدا في موضوعه، وكان يمكن أن اعطيه تقييما أعلى لولا سوء الترجمة