Boats and Ho's

So. I'm in the middle of writing this amazing blog about what I like to call the 'bromantic comedy' and what it reveals about representations of masculinity onscreen and particularly representations of heterosexual masculinity. I wasn't always in the middle - last night, after weeks of thinking about it, random moments for the last two years when I thought it might be an interesting subject to pursue after I wrote an essay on traditional representations of masculinity and couldn't find any literature that actually spelled them out, choosing instead to shout MASCULINITY IS IN CRISIS. Ha, yeah. It is. Because instead of tracing the historical development of representations of masculinity in film people have just been using it as the norm and defining everything else around it. Silly gooses.

I had an awesome lead-in quote from Robin Wood about critically analysing films from all different approaches to discover all the ways in which the film is communicating particular ideologies. I used the theory that everyone derives based on Joe Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces - you know, in Western civilisation the initiation rituals other cultures have for adolescent boys to transition into manhood have been, for want of a better way to say it, replaced with the myth of the quest and how these myths are proliferated through films like Star Wars - essentially, society in effect learns how to interact on a social level through popular culture and subsequently that means that we get most of our cultural and social information from the cinema.

Aaaaaannnnndddddd.....back to the whole masculinity thing. I'm seeing a whole bunch of films that seem to be expressing this confusion over representations of masculinity. What they suggest to me is that these films appear to suggest that heterosexual men don't know how they're supposed to act and these representations of masculinity are confused, which may make straight dudes even more confused? Sure, there is one genre of film that doesn't seem to be confused about heterosexual masculinity, but I think they make it even more confusing - well, I watched one example recently Crank 2 with Jason Statham. It both sucked and blowed. I'd be offended if I was a guy.

Maybe it's just as confusing for women, but I feel that there is a lot of film and television that present a confusion on the part of heterosexual men and the way they're supposed to behave, particularly around each other. It manifests itself in a lot of gay jokes and similar (watch the 'you know how I know you're gay?' scene in the 40 Year Old Virgin for an incredibly obvious example), but a lot of films that present male relationships in interesting ways.

Cue awesome analyses of Superbad and I Love You, Man and how they seem to be in a genre I like to call the bromantic comedy. I Love You, Man in particular seems to be about how heterosexual men negotiate the balance between relationships with their partner and with other men. And this film, to me, represents the way two men developing a friendship can be just as awkward and intense as developing a sexual relationship - and heterosexual men always seem to be ill at ease at the thought that their feelings toward other heterosexual men are being mistaken for sexual desire. I love this film because it seems entirely aware of this constant state of confusion and tension that guys live in sometimes.

And I talked about this moment in Superbad where Evan and Seth profess their love for each other and how the film sort of suggests that their relationship is becoming too codependent and it's time to move on with girls. But there's this look between them at the end that suggests that they're aware that they'll probably never be as close as they were ever again.

And now, photos of bro-love from each film:





AWESOME. Yeah, except that after working on it for two days, I was logged in to a different email address to the one I use for this blog and I....LOST IT. I finished it, went to publish and it wouldn't do it - was unable to process my request. Fuck you, motherfucker! And when I went back to the last-saved draft, it was just after I'd written a synopsis of the plot of I Love You, Man. How the fuck am I supposed to use that to go on to my awesome, awesome theory?!? Hence, this lazy version of the sheer brilliance I produced last night.