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Rebooting Masculinity After 9/11: Male Heroism On Film From Bush To Trump, Owen R. Horton
Rebooting Masculinity After 9/11: Male Heroism On Film From Bush To Trump, Owen R. Horton
Theses and Dissertations--English
Conceptions of masculinity on film shifted after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from representations of male heroism as invulnerable, powerful, and safe to representations of male heroism as resilient, vengeful, and vulnerable. At the same time, the antagonists of these films shifted towards representations as shadowy, unknowable, and disembodied. These changing representations, I argue, are windows into the anxieties Americans faced in the aftermath of the attacks. The continuing presentation of power as linked to violence, however, illustrates the ways in which conceptions of masculinity have stayed the same.