There a many definitions of masculinity and those definitions are heavily influenced by culture, environment, media, and the child’s parents. When young men start to reach their sexual maturity, they have to create their own definition of what it is to be a man. The idea of masculinity creates a lot of questions, because there is no resource that will give a young male the answer. Due to this, young males learn what it is to be a man from a grab bag of possibilities. Eventually, the young male will have accumulated traits, appearances, behavior, and so on that defines what it is to be a man. With a new sense of self, the young male transforms into his idea of masculinity. In the Maltase Flacon, masculinity is defined through the actions of Sam Spade whom demonstrates the masculine principals of making his achievement of alpha male status a top priority, aggressive behavior, avoiding being feminine, homophobic, and restriction of his emotions (Meek) through his interaction with several characters throughout the film.
Through out the film, Sam Spade has a constant need to prove to himself and other people around him that he is an alpha male. This need is triggered when Sam Spade feels intimidated or challenge by another male. Sam Spade’s alpha male status is challenged when he is taken at gunpoint by Wilmer Cook to see Kasper Gutman. Sam quickly rises to the challenge and manages to take Wilmer’s guns away from him (Falcon). Considering that the gun is a phallic symbol, one could interpret that when Sam took away Wilmer’s guns he symbolically took away Wilmer’s masculinity as punishment for challenging his alpha male status. Sam’s action of emasculating Wilmer inflates his ego and reinforces his masculinity though his achievem...
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...ith several characters throughout the film. This particular definition of what it is to be a man is presented to the public in the form of media. It is possible that this film could serve as a guide for how young men of the past, present, or even future should behave in order to be considered a man. In this film, the femme fatale sexuality is censored, but the ideals that acting violently towards people who are homosexual, constantly fulfilling a need to achieve dominance through aggressive and violence behavior is the cultural norm of what it is to be a man. This film demonstrates people acceptance of this behavior and acts as propaganda.
Works Cited
Meek, Dr. Will. Psychology of Men. Ed. Dr. Will Meek. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. .
The Maltese Falcon. Dir. John Huston. 1941. Warner Bros., 2000. DVD-ROM.
In the essay, “The High Cost of Manliness,” writer Robert Jensen discusses the harmful effects of having male specific characteristics, such as masculinity. Jensen realizes that men’s actions and ways of living are judged based upon the characteristic of being manly. He argues that there is no valid reason to have characteristics associated with being male. Society has created the notion that masculinity is the characteristic that defines males as males.
Both Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler and Population: 485 by Michael Perry explore ideas of masculinity and manhood, but I think Butler shares a more diverse representation of masculinity through his different characters. What it means to be a man The concept of masculinity is considered as the qualities and characteristics of a man, typical of what is appropriate to a man. In this article, A Community Psychology of Men and Masculinity: Historical and Conceptual Review, the authors Eric S. Mankowski and Kenneth I. Maton, analyze four main themes: "Men as gendered beings, the privilege and damage of being a masculine man, men as a privileged group, and men’s power and subjective powerlessness. " The second and fourth themes are described as paradoxes that have created difficulty in efforts to analyze and understand men’s gender and masculinity." However, the point of view of masculinity that Perry raises in population 485 has a different aspect.
Whether this be through morals, choices, beliefs, or personality. Holloway argues that it is through toxic/abrupt masculinity that boys are constantly caught in the crossfires between fight or flight. Masculinity becomes toxic when it becomes obsessive and disruptive. When society gets to the point where they cannot even focus or be themselves because of the fact that the only thing they care about is being the perfect man. The idea of striving to become this perfect man is an example of flight in society. Men are being forced to attempt to fit into these ideals and “prove, and re prove that they are men” in order to avoid the feeling of not fitting in with the rest of the group (Holloway). Holloway continues to discuss how throughout their lives men are constantly seen as emotionally tougher which causes them to grow up believing that if they show emotions they are weaker and are not allowed to be a part of the pack. Therefore instead of fighting this ideal and deciding to stand up for who they are, it is easier to conform and attempt to fit in because if they show discontent then they are shown as weak and unable to handle the “social constructions of masculinity” forcing them to become a social pariah and damage their spiritual
Discriminating gender roles throughout the movie leaves one to believe if they are supposed to act a certain way. This film gives women and men roles that don’t exist anymore, during the 60s women were known to care for the family and take care of the house, basically working at home. However, a male was supposed to fight for his family, doing all the hard work so his wife didn’t have too. In today’s world, everyone does what makes them happy. You can’t tell a woman to stay at home, that makes them feel useless. Furthermore, males still play the roles of hard workers, they are powerful compared to a woman. However, in today’s world a male knows it isn’t right to boss a woman around, where in the 60s, it happened, today women have rights to do what they want not what they are
The film presents the stereotypical behavior of gay men that is evident in our society. Many of the costumes are designed to highlight the characters and the way they live. For example, Bernadette wears long flowing clothes usually white or an off cream. ‘She’ is an older ‘women’ and dresses to look like one with flowing skirts and tops with her hair done up simply.
All over the world Masculinity has many different cultural definitions. Depending where someone is from, and what they were brought up to believe, defines what the term “masculinity” entails. Different Social institutions all over the United States, such as the military, sports, clubs, and fraternities, have been constructing their interpretation of masculinity. One major social institution that is active in thousands of Universities across the United States is campus fraternities. Campus fraternities create their own sense of masculinity by generating certain requirements and characteristics a man must hold in order to represent them as a part of their fraternity.
... homosexual being felt in the world around the 1970’s and 1980’s. The time period in which this play was written was one of great dissonance to the LGBT movement. For Harvey Fierstein to be so bold and public with his own lifestyle was truly admirable and brave. Fierstein shows us that ignorance can destroy a life because of what is unknown.
In the predominantly patriarchal history of the world masculinity and what it means to be a man have differed from culture to culture. When it comes to African American culture, particularly what it has meant to be a man has no clear set of universal rules or guidelines. There are a few different sources such as hip hop and television many young black men across America draw their sense of masculinity from. While hip hop music in particular has had and continues to have a very strong influence on both masculinity and femininity of the youth, young black youth in particular has been affected the most .
In summation, Shakespeare defines and upholds traditional male gender stereotypes. Through the actions of Macbeth and his fellow characters, Shakespeare paints a clear picture on the canvas of verse of what a man should look and act like. From facial expressions views of death, a Shakespearean portrait of masculinity is a fully realized one. Although this work of literature is hundreds of years old, its assumptions about there being a universal idea of what it means to be a “man” are still relevant to today’s world. Everyday, men in the 21st century still live like Macbeth does, always striving to be a “true” man.
Jensen provides evidence throughout the text for three assumptions on why masculinity must be terminated from pertaining to just males. It is proposed that masculinity is harmful for both men and women, that men are surrendering their humanity by conforming with masculinity, and
The topics that Joe Ehrmann uses as framework for his Building Men for Others program are quite intriguing and make you really question masculinity. The first topic, rejecting false masculinity, can be interpreted a few different ways. In the book, it states: “As young boys, we’re told to be men, or to act like men” soon followed with “we’ve got all these parents say ‘be a man’ to boys that have no concept of what that means. I completely agree with the statement of Joe Ehrmann and often question the definition of ‘being a man’. Many boys and men will reject the idea of a man being anything other than being big and strong or having power.
The idea of masculinity in the story appears in a number of ways. One is that he’s adopted an insulated
The attitude towards women has changed dramatically since 1990, the year that this film came out; you will however, find a few men who still have the attitude that women were put on this earth for their enjoyment. In the early nineties, women were hyper-sexualized and viewed as pawns in a game. MTV showed music videos with scantily clad women, which were seen as extremely scandalous at the time. The nineties was also an era of growth, liberalization and sexual discoveries that carried over from the eighties.... ...
The films message to viewers about gender and power is that women are meant to take care of the home and play the supportive role, while men go out to their jobs and provide. Men are strong and burly and women are naïve and domesticated. Women need men and men always come to the rescue to save women and give them a happy ending. Power is portrayed in the film both visually and through the film’s script and dialogue. The common idea that women are inferior to men is placed subtly in this movie throughout the plot and how these charac...
Feminism is a movement that supports women equality within society. In relation to film, feminism is what pushes the equal representation of females in mainstream films. Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist that is famous for touching on this particular issue of how men and women are represented in movies. Through her studies, she discovered that many films were portraying men and women very differently from reality. She came up with a theory that best described why there is such as huge misrepresentation of the social status quos of male and female characters. She believed that mainstream film is used to maintain the status quo and prevent the realization of gender equality. This is why films are continuously following the old tradition that males are dominant and females are submissive. This is the ideology that is always present when we watch a movie. This is evident in the films from the past but also currently. It is as if the film industry is still catering to the male viewers of each generation in the same way. Laura Mulvey points out that women are constantly being seen as sexual objects, whether it is the outfits they wear or do not wear or the way they behave, or secondary characters with no symbolic cause. She states that, “in traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote it-be-looked-at-ness.”(Mulvey pg. 715). Thus, women are nevertheless displayed as nothing more than passive objects for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Mulvey also points out through her research that in every mainstream movie, there is ...