A Spectacle

02-05-2021

A Spectacle

Directed by Peter Leto. With Christopher Meloni, Mariska Hargitay, Richard Belzer, Ice-T. After a sexual assault is broadcast over a university Intranet, Stabler is led to a computer expert on campus who is threatening to kill the victim if SVU doesn't look into the disappearance of his brother in 2003.

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The article “Masculinity as a spectacle: Reflections on men and mainstream cinema” by Stephen Neale (1993 [2005]) was written with specific intention to increase discussion and awareness on the representation of masculinity within a cinematic genre.

Neale begins the article stating that masculinity in cinema has not been discussed enough, because heterosexuality is the structured norm in society.

Neale supports his arguments by using examples such as Hitchcock films like Laura Mulvey does in her article “visual pleasure and narrative cinema”(1975) which he uses as a central reference point.

Neale also draws from John Ellis’ theory of identification (“visible fictions”, [1982]) Ellis also takes into consideration Mulvey’s ideas.

Identification, takes two main forms these being; “narcissistic identification” and “phantasies and dreams”. Identification and desires in the cinema are fluid and multiple.

Despite the fractured nature of identification, films tend to create a male/female division reflecting the patriarchal society:

“There is constant work to channel and regulate identification in relation to sexual division. In relation to the orders of gender sexuality and social identity and authority marking patriarchal society” (Neale: 1993 [2005] 11)

Neale seeks to examine the process of narcissistic identification and current ideologies of masculinity in more detail.

In mainstream cinema the male protagonist represents the “ideal ego” with masculine features such as power and omnipotence. Phantasies make the spectator aspire to be the male hero, for example Clint Eastwood. In contradiction this ideal ego can also develop feelings of symbolic castration for the viewer, as they could feel inadequate. Furthermore, Neale talks about repressed homosexual voyeurism, saying that the look of the male can cause just as much anxiety as the look of the female. However Neale makes it clear that the male body is disqualified as an erotic object in Hollywood cinema:

“In a heterosexual and patriarchal society, the male body cannot be marked explicitly as the erotic object of another male look: that look must be motivated and in some other way, its erotic component repressed.” (Neale: 1993 [2005] 14)

Neale states, there are two types of masculine images in the Western: the symbolic and the nostalgic narcissism. The first, leading to social integration and marriage, and the second: a resistance to social standards and responsibility. In a nostalgic view it seeks to celebrate the means of masculinity and omnipotence, which is threatened by women and society.

In the second part of Neale’s article “Looking and Spectacle”; two ways of looking are identified: voyeuristic looking and fetishistic looking. Voyeuristic looking demands a distance between the spectator and spectacle, which allows the spectator partly to control what they see.

“Fetishistic looking implies the direct acknowledgment and participation of the object viewed… The voyeuristic look is curious, inquiring, demanding to know.” (Ellis 1982: 47)

He compares how we look at female and males in cinema, saying that whilst women are an object of beauty, men are not marked by desire, but by fear, hatred and aggression, excluding an erotic view on the male body. The male body, however, is sometimes feminized; we often see this in musicals, where for example John Travolta is made the object of gaze in ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977). In conclusion women are the mystery, whilst men are not being questioned about their masculinity, only tested. Masculinity is the ideal to achieve.

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