The Male Body In Representation

This international and multidisciplinary volume focuses on the male body and constructions of gender in a variety of cultural productions and formats. Locating the subject matter in relevant theoretical fields, it looks at representations of male bodies in various contexts through paranoid and reparative lenses. Organized into four major sections, the contributions assembled in this book feature engaging readings of ‘non/conforming bodies’, ‘fashionable bodies’, ‘passing bodies’, and ‘pioneering bodies’ that to different degrees foreground their critical and creative potentials. In its full scope, the book acknowledges the plurality of gendered experiences and the diversity of male bodies. The Male Body in Representation: Returning to Matter adds to Cultural Studies scholarship interested in the body and gender in general and contributes to the fields of Masculinity and Body Studies in particular.

Running Scared responds to the absence of critical attention to male sexuality in film by bringing representations of phallic masculinity into the spotlight. In his analysis of films, novels, paintings, photographs, popular music, jokes, and videos, Peter Lehman investigates the patriarchal culture that keeps the male body-and especially male genitals-out of sight. Lehman documents the pervasive anxiety underlying images of the male body, arguing that attempts to keep male sexuality hidden in the pursuit of "good taste" and an avoidance of perversion maintains the "male mystique" and preserves the power of the phallus. Lehman examines representations of the male body and male sexuality in a variety of settings and through many different lenses. Among the films he analyzes are Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo and Rio Lobo; Scarlet Street; feral child films The Wild Child, Kaspar House, and Greystoke; and Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses. In these works, Lehman explores the symbolic enculturation of males, assumptions about power and the male body, and the ways that men's and women's bodies are marked differently with regard to scarring, wounding, and aging. In addition to film, Lehman also considers such varied material as Jim Thompson's noir novel The Nothing Man, sexology and medical representations of male sexuality, the video Dick Talk, penis jokes in Hollywood films of the 1970s and 1980s, and popular music by Roy Orbison. This edition of Running Scared also includes a new chapter on male nudity in the films of the 1990s, adding fresh analysis to this classic text. An updated preface situates the book within the current critical climate. Scholars of film studies, cultural studies, and gender studies and general readers interested in representations of gender and sexuality will appreciate this valuable text.

A bold, unconventional cultural exploration of the male body and its current place in the Western World examines contemporary perspectives on masculinity in everything from Playboy to Michael Jordan to the recent Viagra craze.

"There is much to like about a book which gets real about the male anus as a site of penetrability which is not reducible to discourses of feminization, phallicization or psychosis. With real panache and poetic flair, it returns us to an earlier moment in queer theoretical discourse we would associate with Lee Edelman's Homographesis (easily the best book ever written in queer theory and every page of The Penetrated Male reminded me of it), Calvin Thomas' Male Matters, and Leo Bersani's "Is the Rectum a Grave?" Given the recent squeamishness ... in queer theoretical circles about shit, anality, and penetrability, there is real value (and it is not some sort of nostalgia for an earlier moment we might want to get back to) in this book which never shies away from any of these matters. As embodied and eroticized theory, it fills a much needed hole in contemporary discourse about the male body. It is a book I should like to have written." (Michael O'Rourke) Through nuanced readings of a handful of modernist texts (Baudelaire, Huysmans, Wilde, Genet, Joyce, and Schreber's Memoirs), this book explores and interrogates the figure of the penetrated male body, developing the concept of the behind as a site of both fascination and fear. Deconstructing the penetrated male body and the genderisation of its representation, The Penetrated Male offers new understandings of passivity, suggesting that the modern masculine subject is predicated on a penetrability it must always disavow. Arguing that representation is the embodiment of erotic thought, it is an important contribution to queer theory and our understandings of gendered bodies.

Thinking Men explores artistic and intellectual expression in the classical world as the self representation of man. It starts from the premise that the history of classical antiquity as the ancients tell it is a history of men. However, the focus of this volume is the creation, re-creation and iteration of that male self as presented in language, poetry, drama, philosophical and scientific thought and art: man constructing himself as subject in classical antiquity and beyond. This beautifully illustrated volume, which contains a preface by Nathalie Kampen, provides a thought-provoking and stimulating insight into the representations of men in Classical culture.

With the dawn of modern medicine there emerged a complex range of languages and methodologies for portraying the male body as prone to illness, injury and dysfunction. Using a variety of historical and literary approaches, this collection explores how medicine has interacted with key moments in literature and culture.

Images of suffering male bodies permeate Western culture, from Francis Bacon’s paintings and Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs to the battered heroes of action movies. Drawing on perspectives from a range of disciplines—including religious studies, gender and queer studies, psychoanalysis, art history, and film theory—Ecce Homo explores the complex, ambiguous meanings of the enduring figure of the male-body-in-pain. Acknowledging that representations of men confronting violence and pain can reinforce ideas of manly tenacity, Kent L. Brintnall also argues that they reveal the vulnerability of men’s bodies and open them up to eroticization. Locating the roots of our cultural fascination with male pain in the crucifixion, he analyzes the way narratives of Christ’s death and resurrection both support and subvert cultural fantasies of masculine power and privilege. Through stimulating readings of works by Georges Bataille, Kaja Silverman, and more, Brintnall delineates the redemptive power of representations of male suffering and violence.

,The Body and Representation. Feminist Research and Theoretical Perspectives' was conceived as two weeks program within the International Women's University's project area BODY by the Center for Feminist Studies (ZFS) at the University of Bremen and organized in summer 2000. The publication includes results from lectures and seminars and additional contributions adding to main topics. Among the issues raised are concepts, staging, performances and representations of bodies in everyday life, political contexts, art and new media.