AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:

The principal aims of the course are:

1.       To consider the context and validity of Laura Mulvey’s observation, “Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like”

2.       To trace the history of the objectified male in pin-ups and movies, and the “explanations” offered by Richard Dyer and Steve Neale, in particular

3.       To explore possible reasons for the marked increase in the latter half of the “eighties in apparent objectification of the male in various media” (advertising, male stripping, as well as movies)

4.       To attempt answers to the (implicit) question in male objectification - for whose pleasure does it occur?

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

At the completion of this course, students should have:

1.       Grasped the reasoning by which Mulvey has refused to find male objectification in mainstream cinema credible;

2.       Explored some examples of the “incredible” as an under-explored but vital component within the “pleasure machine” of Hollywood cinema;

3.       Attempted to understand the peculiarly important and less apologetic foregrounding of the male object in popular media in the later 1980s;

4.       Learned themselves to examine film-viewing in relation to (sometimes a reaction against) Mulveyite accounts of the operations of the gaze;

5.       Gained the experience and courage to offer their own accounts of relations in the films chosen for screening;

6.       Become aware of the conjunction of issues of race as well as gender and sexuality in reactions to the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe;

7.       Been encouraged through the student-run seminars to acquire and/or develop personal qualities (such as independence, ability to take responsibility, self-esteem and confidence) and transferable skills (such as negotiation/working effectively with others, communication, objective-setting, planning and creativity);

8.       Learned, through the First Assignment, to experiment in finding the most appropriate form for the presentation of their ideas, free from the conventions of the formal essay.  

CONTENT:

Laura Mulvey’s denial in 1973 of object status to men in Hollywood cinema, together with her attention to male sadism to the exclusion of masochism as a pleasure open either to male or female spectator, will be considered at first in the context of her “Visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema” argument, then in terms of movie history up to that period, then of movie history after it (principally that from the latter half of the 1980s).

In relation to twentieth-century male “sex symbols” there will be particular consideration of Dyer’s account of the attempted phallicization of the “feminized” male in the position, as pin-up, of photographed object, and of the “alibis” offered, according to Neale, by action-genre narratives to permit spectator focus on the male body while its eroticization is disavowed. This work, particularly Neale’s, is usefully extended by Yvonne Tasker’s examination of “male” action genres, and by such studies as those edited by Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, and by Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumin.

With respect to the later 1980s, there seems to be a shift, whereby more overt means of phallicisation and customary “alibis” are abandoned, and the male object of the gaze is offered less apologetically in advertising images, as well as in pornography “soft” and “hard-core” and strip shows. The “meaning” of this shift will be explored in economic, as well as sexual and socio-political terms, the impact - or lack of it - on feminist and gay politics considered.

Screenings for the course as run in 2001 included:

• Midnight Cowboy John Schlesinger, 1969
• Picnic Joshua Logan, 1955
• Universal Soldier Roland Emmerich, 1992
• Priest Antonia Bird, 1994
• Saturday Night Fever John Badham, 1977
• Hercules Pietro Francisci, 1959

TEACHING AND LEARNING METHODS:

Lecture - 13 Hours

Screening - 12 Hours

Seminar - 12 Hours

Seminar related independent learning - 24 Hours

Assessment related independent learning - 75 Hours

ASSESSMENT:

• First Assignment (midway through course) 40%
• Second Assignment (at end of course) 40%
• Seminar work (continuous assessment) 20%