The last of the book reviews! Actual content shall commence forthwith!
Ecce Homo: The Male-Body-In-Pain As Redemptive Figure is Gender Theory. It has that trait Gender Theory generally has, where about half the time you’re glaring at it going “okay, what the fuck are you even talking about, that makes no sense whatsoever” and half the time you have to make off with their ideas and mate them with other people’s and end up coming up with a horrific idea hybrid no one involved would actually recognize.
Also, fair warning: there is Freud. Honestly, fuck Freud. People who are generally sensible discuss Freud and instantly become idiots; people who are already somewhat disconnected from reality become completely incoherent. I kind of skipped over the Freud chapter, but as far as I can tell it was about Oedipal complexes and castration and sadomasochism and fetishism, although it seems to me Freud ought to have consulted some actual sadomasochists or fetishists before he came up with unwarranted and inaccurate generalizations about our experiences. (Raise your hand, shoe fetishists, if you like shoes because you’re freaked out that cis women don’t have penises! Thought so.)
You know, if Freud was right re: the whole men freaked out that most women have vaginas thing, you’d think that you’d see trans women being considered as universally the most sexysex and all those frat boys instead of making stupid “trap” jokes would be like “fuck yeah! It is a woman, AND I don’t have to cope with my castration anxiety!”
Anyway! This is not a review of Freud, mostly because I would refuse to read that book, because Freud sucks. Seriously, I have dropped classes because Freud was on the syllabus.
The recurring motif of the book is the theme of the crucifixion and different perspectives on Jesus’s sacrifice. Hence the title: Ecce Homo, or Behold the Man, is the Latin translation of Pontius Pilate’s words when he presented Jesus, scourged and crowned with thorns, to the crowd. The author’s thesis is, as far as I can tell, that the male-body-in-pain, as depicted in art and myth, serves as an almost religious, erotic sacrifice that elevates the viewer. Throughout the book, they negotiate the complications of eroticism, sacrifice, and transcendence in discussing All Of The Art.
My favorite bit of the book was the first chapter, which discussed the action movie (and The Passion of the Christ, which it argues fairly convincingly is an action movie in structure). Their thesis is that the action movie lingers over the conventionally attractive male body– arms and legs and zero-body-fat chests, youth and hairlessness and muscles, muscles, muscles. Certainly, action movie heroes quite often tend to lose their shirts; the plotlines generally highlight the male body’s ability to cope with pain, suffering, and violence. The overarching question of most action movies is “will the hero prove his manhood by surviving?”– that is, through his ability to endure pain.
Male pain in the action movie is also fundamentally redemptive: the men endure pain, which enables them not only to defeat the villains but to take revenge on them. In exchange for surviving an increasingly ludicrous number of henchpeople, robots, explosions, and mysteriously nuclear-bomb-proof fridges, the action hero is able to mow down his enemies, thus not simply winning but also destroying the root of evil in the fictional world. (Or at least until the sequel, anyway.)
I think a weakness in this section is that it ignores the reality of female desire. I mean, Hugh Jackman’s propensity to lose his shirt is pretty clearly directed at the heterosexual female demographic. A lot of more modern action movies are fairly clearly directed at the female gaze; in fact, I was a little uncomfortable at some points in (say) X-Men First Class, because of how obviously the film was made out of Fangirl Id. (Look, even that asshole Freud made up some good words sometimes.) I think there’s a somewhat distressing tendency to assume that shirtless men are necessarily homoerotic, which just isn’t true.
Speaking of homoeroticism, my other favorite chapter was about the works of Robert Mapplethorpe, a photographer who concentrated heavily on gay male BDSM. I’m a fan of Mapplethorpe, even if I usually think of him as That Dude Patti Smith Was In Love With Once: his pictures of kinky men are well-shot, well-composed, often hot, and quite human; the people in them strike me as real people, and not objectified kinky people who are OMG SO TRANSGRESSIVE. (You can see a very, very NSFW sample of his works here.)
The author theorizes that Mapplethorpe’s big thing is being honest: a fuckton of Great Art is masochistic and erotic (ask any Catholic teenager who got off on St. Sebastian), Mapplethorpe is just the one who is willing not to draw a veil over it. He confronts the viewer by depicting the male body as attractive (which is extremely challenging to the male gaze and the Myth of Men Not Being Hot) and pain as being pleasurable (which is challenging to pretty much everyone except masochists, and even us sometimes). His artwork exaggerates to the point of parody racial and gender fantasies and shows that they are, well, fantasies. Through the emphasized masculinity and emphasized pain of his subjects, Mapplethorpe points out that masculinity is fundamentally artificial.
The male-body-in-pain challenges ideas of hegemonic masculinity: where hegemonic masculinity requires that a man eternally have power, the male-body-in-pain is, by definition, weak. Paradoxically, that’s the source of its strength. Ecce Homo examines how various artworks negotiate the male-body-in-pain and cope with both making it masculine and highlighting the fundamental unmasculinity of it all. It’s cool. If you like gender theory and don’t mind Freud, check it out.
About ozyfrantz
Thor never goes into moderation though.
I have to agree with Jo wrt Thor. There’s only one shirtless scene, and it’s fairly brief.
Re: Freud – the poor old bugger does tend to get a bit of a hard time, doesn’t he? Being the subject of a cult of personality is rarely forgiving after your death – it kind of means everyone who wants to do their own thinking needs to “murder” you first.
I think it’s worth looking at Freud for the same reason it’s worth knowing a bit about the Bible – if someone was wrong in many ways, but still very very influential, it’s still worth knowing what they were on about. Especially if (like Freud) they came to some wrong conclusions but established some useful concepts (the Ego, Superego and Id are still kinda handy ways of trying to understand minds).
@Ozy: Oh, def. That movie was an absolute snorefest and I only saw it the one time.
In fact, I’m surprised I remembered as much as I did from seeing it the one time.
@Jo:
1. You asserted that the female gaze doesn’t exist. Period. You never specified that it doesn’t exist within a certain genre of a certain medium, you never specified that it had to meet some kind of convoluted requirements that make it a pink carbon-copy of the male version, so I responded. Female gaze exists, and I would know. I’m kind of a female and I kind of make work that is framed from my perspective. If you call my entire body of work “male gaze”, I would laugh. And then punch you in your stupid face. “Damage” means fuck-all.
2. Why are we talking about Thor? Because I brought it up as but one example, and you rolled with it. You also said some things that I disagreed with about it, and therefore addressed those. I thought acknowledging what someone else has said was a basic tenet of having a discussion? If you wanted to talk about every other action movie than the ones I bring up, you should have said so, then I could have mentioned Strange Brew just to watch you get your knickers in even more of a twist.
3. Yawn. NEXT.
Strange Brew
Does this refer to the song by Cream or to Bob and Doug McKenzie? I can’t imagine people here knowing about either, so I have to ask.
@Daisy:
I love Cream. The band, not the dairy product. Don’t be ageist.
@DaisyDeadhead:
Clapton rocks. I like Sunshine Of Your Love, and his version of I Shot The Sheriff.
Most of the music in my collection is from before I was even born, much of that due to recommendations from people who were around when music wasn’t all drum machines and singers screaming their throats raw over looping guitar riffs.
I think she was talking about the film.
@Jo,
“I think the semi-naked men in action movies are MUCH more of a male power fantasy thing than a “female gaze” thing. Action movies being famously targeted at men, and all.”
Romantic movies, among other media genres, are targeted at women. The women featured there can be quite perfect in every way, but that’s how the girls watching would like to see themselves, if only for the span of 90 minutes. I suppose you see no problem in the way women in female-targeted in media are depicted?
Movies that cater to a specific group will cater to their fantasies. I, however, don’t subscribe to a double standard where this somehow isn’t true for female-targeted works, or that just because the fantasy fulfills most of what the audience wants, that there can’t be problematic, self-hating parts hidden within the fantasy, just as there are for women. (For example. Part of how the ubermensch protagonist shows his complete superiority is by demonstrating it against a in-many-ways weaker man – and I’m not talking about the villain – who far more closely resembles the average audience member in appearance and behavior than the main character. There’s a lot of internalized self-hatred there.)
and just look at the vitriol it received as a result from every corner of the nerdiverse, while a soaped-up Megan Fox washing a car in Transformers is completely unremarkable…
Twilight hatedom preceded the movies and is not the result of Taylor Lautner’s abs. Also, you need a prescription if you think Megan Fox-type characters attracted no mainstream media criticism (as they should), because that kind of blindness can be a danger to pedestrians.
(And you’re wrong about men in rom coms, too; they’re treated with respect, allowed independence, and given agency, unlike the “love interests” in your typical action flick, who are there as ‘rewards’ for the male protagonist.)
Nice self-serving assertion. Where’s the proof?
It’s interesting that all your examples of “bad” actions movies (Stallone, Willis, Schwarznegger) happened over a generation ago. The closest you got to a modern example is Transformers, but that was a film series as reviled as Twilight with a director whose hatedom is similar to that of Twilight’s author, Twilight being a series you insist doesn’t count. (If you’re telling me you’re media-savvy and haven’t heard a metric ton of anti-Michael Bay jokes and memes, you’re lying. Not that he doesn’t deserve it, though.) Take your generic big box office, SFX summer blockbuster today and they’re much more like Thor than Transformers.
The typical female lead in a modern action movie. Elizabeth Swann from Pirates wasn’t treated with respect? Hermione Granger had no independence? Jean Grey from X-men had no agency? Bullshit.
@L,
“Sucker Punch” is a bad example, because it was a borderline exploitation flick. Both Hanna and Hunger Games, I think, are better examples.
@the OP,
I agree that calling hot male bods “homoerotic” is very wrong. This is the most egregious example of assuming a default male audience member. Note that besides shortchanging women in established ways (their desires aren’t as catered to), this line of thinking can be bad for men, too. Besides the obvious fact that seeing someone-much-like-you as desirable can be empowering (if still a little better; these are Hollywood actors)… if any movement toward more pleasing portrayals of the male form can be handwaved as being “really for gay men”*, then no amount of concession to women, conveniently, can ever be enough; and I have actually heard some ideologically hard-set het women do this hand-waving to exaggerate their oppression at the hands of those mean movies. Men’s issues blogs, for their part, have a love/hate with a focus on male beauty, which I think is wrong-headed. (The “/hate” half of the equation.) My point is, there is no reason for either side to not be in favor.
*The whole thing also kind of smacks of the idea that “gay men controlling the media”. (Riding another guy’s ass is the new Jew.)
By all means fuck Freud in the real world as anything more than a chapter in the history of psychology, BUT.
Freud’s ideas make for completely kickass literary metaphors. Want to spice up your storyscape? Plunk in a pair of characters personifying Ego and Id, and watch the sparks fly.