Masculine Interests

In the first close look at how Hollywood has reflected and helped shaped masculinity, Robert Lang considers how Hollywood articulates the eroticism that is intrinsic to identification between men. He considers masculinity in social and psychoanalytic terms, arguing that it is an ideological-generic construction and that a major function of the movies is to define different types of masculinity, and to either valorize or criticize these forms. Focusing on nine films (The Lion King, The Most Dangerous Game, The Outlaw, Kiss Me Deadly, Midnight Cowboy, Innerspace, Batman and Robin, My Own Private Idaho, and Jerry Maguire), Lang questions the way in which American culture distinguishes between homosexual and nonhomosexual forms of male bonding and, in arguing for a much more complex notion of a homosocial continuum, reveals that queer sexuality is far more present in American cinema than is usually acknowledged.

Author Biography

Robert Lang is associate professor of cinema at the University of Hartford. He is the author of American Film Melodrama: Griffith, Vidor, Minnelli, and editor of The Birth of a Nation. He is currently a Fulbright scholar at the University of Tunis.