Masculinity and Monstrosity in Contemporary Hollywood Films

In film, Men are good and Monsters are bad. In this book, Combe and Boyle consider the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body and regard gendered behavior as a matter of performativity. Taken together, these two identity positions, manliness and monsterliness, offer a window into the workings of current American society. Often, the manly good becomes the ugly bad, while the monstrous bad turns out to be the attractive good. Movie men and monsters, then, offer a critical window into American culture. Specifically, the authors examine movies as complicated markers of and participants within the foundational social discourse of subject formation and hegemonic discipline. Of particular focus are warfare and militarism, neoliberal capitalism-corporatism-imperialism, the infliction of gender, and the agonistic negotiations of power.

Kirk Combe is Professor of English at Denison University, USA. He teaches and researches in the areas of early modern British satire and drama, critical and cultural theory, and popular culture. He has published numerous articles as well as books, including A Martyr for Sin: Rochester's Critique of Polity, Sexuality, and Society and Theorizing Satire: Essays in Literary Criticism. He recently published his first novel, 2084.
Brenda M. Boyle is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Denison University, USA. Her current scholarship focuses on gender identities, especially as they appear in Vietnam War film and fiction. Her publications include Masculinity in Vietnam War Narratives: A Critical Study of Fiction, Films and Nonfiction Writing, and Fictions of the American War in Vietnam.

Introductions: Of Masculine, Monstrous, and Me
1. Tossing Blondes in Peter Jackson's King Kong
2. Hooah! We…Are…Sparta!
3. Love and Violence in V for Vendetta
4. Going "Full Retard" in Tropic Thunder
5. The New Millennium Manliness
Coda: The Monster's Suit