Masculinity in Classical Hollywood Cinema: the Male Body Image in Top Hat and the Best Years of Our Lives
This essay will explore the ‘problem of masculinity’ and the way Classical Hollywood cinema invests and deals with the image of the male body, drawing from the analysis of examples from Top Hat (1935) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Steve Neale argues that ‘it is very rare to find analyses that seek to specify in detail, in relation to particular films or groups of films, how heterosexual masculinity is inscribed and the mechanisms, pressures, and contradictions that inscription may involve’ (Cohan and Hark, 1993:9) thus expressing the ‘problem of masculinity’ in classical Hollywood cinema and that the way it is portrayed might vary.
In order to analyse the image of the male body, this essay will use Laura Mulvey’s work on the image of woman on the screen and the ‘masculinisation’ of the spectator position.
Mulvey argues that ‘As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence’ (Mulvey, 1989:20). From this argument one can make the assumption that the male body is an object to be looked at but it is not part of the erotic gaze and spectacle that stops the narrative as the female does, in other words ‘She makes no differentiation between identification and object choice in which sexual aims may be directed toward the male figure’ (Rodowick quoted in Cohan and Hark, 1993:13).
Mulvey argues that ‘The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story-line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation’ (Mulvey, 1989:19). We could say that the Musical being a genre that relies on the spectacle of the musical numbers adds to the ‘problem of masculinity’ in the sense that the man here is also the
Steve Neale argues that ‘it is very rare to find analyses that seek to specify in detail, in relation to particular films or groups of films, how heterosexual masculinity is inscribed and the mechanisms, pressures, and contradictions that inscription may involve’ (Cohan and Hark, 1993:9) thus expressing the ‘problem of masculinity’ in classical Hollywood cinema and that the way it is portrayed might vary.
In order to analyse the image of the male body, this essay will use Laura Mulvey’s work on the image of woman on the screen and the ‘masculinisation’ of the spectator position.
Mulvey argues that ‘As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence’ (Mulvey, 1989:20). From this argument one can make the assumption that the male body is an object to be looked at but it is not part of the erotic gaze and spectacle that stops the narrative as the female does, in other words ‘She makes no differentiation between identification and object choice in which sexual aims may be directed toward the male figure’ (Rodowick quoted in Cohan and Hark, 1993:13).
Mulvey argues that ‘The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story-line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation’ (Mulvey, 1989:19). We could say that the Musical being a genre that relies on the spectacle of the musical numbers adds to the ‘problem of masculinity’ in the sense that the man here is also the