Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Critical and Cultural Studies Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Critical and Cultural Studies
The Wounded Man: Foxcatcher And The Incoherence Of White Masculine Victimhood, Casey Ryan Kelly
The Wounded Man: Foxcatcher And The Incoherence Of White Masculine Victimhood, Casey Ryan Kelly
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
American cinema has recently favored representations of white men as victims of socioeconomic and political change. Recent scholarship on white masculinity suggests that representations of male victimhood enable white men to disavow that hegemonic white masculinity still fundamentally structures society. This essay argues that Hollywood’s wounded man similarly provides white masculinity with stable footing. I illustrate how the unintelligibility of screen masculinity evades criticism and, further, how melancholic male dramas nurture a traumatic attachment to victimhood. Examining the film Foxcatcher (2014), I show how unmasked portraits of white male victimhood function as counterparts to the hard-bodied action hero. The filmmaker’s …
The Post-Nuclear Family And The Depoliticization Of Unplanned Pregnancy In Knocked Up, Juno, And Waitress, Kristen Hoerl, Casey Ryan Kelly
The Post-Nuclear Family And The Depoliticization Of Unplanned Pregnancy In Knocked Up, Juno, And Waitress, Kristen Hoerl, Casey Ryan Kelly
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
This essay explores three films from 2007, Knocked Up, Juno, and Waitress, which foreground young women’s unplanned pregnancies. These movies depoliticize women’s reproduction and motherhood through narratives that rearticulate the meaning of choice. Bypassing the subject of abortion, the women’s decisions revolve around their choice of heterosexual partners and investment in romantic relationships. Although they question the viability of the nuclear family for single pregnant women, these films represent new iterations of post-feminism that ultimately restore conservative ideas that valorize pregnancy and motherhood as women’s imperatives. We conclude by addressing how these movies present a distorted and …
Mario Van Peebles’S Panther And Popular Memories Of The Black Panther Party, Kristen Hoerl
Mario Van Peebles’S Panther And Popular Memories Of The Black Panther Party, Kristen Hoerl
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
The 1995 movie Panther depicted the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense as a vibrant but ultimately doomed social movement for racial and economic justice during the late 1960s. Panther’s narrative indicted the white-operated police for perpetuating violence against African Americans and for undermining movements for black empowerment. As such, this film represented a rare source of filmic counter-memory that challenged hegemonic memories of U.S. race relations. Newspaper reports and reviews of Panther, however, questioned the film’s veracity as a source of historical information. An analysis of these reviews and reports indicates the challenges counter-memories confront in popular culture.