Which aspects contribute to a masculine demeanour? How do movie producers actively create masculine characters? These two questions guided our analysis of masculinity in movies.
We started by asking ourselves: What’s the difference between sex, gender and sexuality? Because one thing is absolutely clear, the difference is significant! With the term sex we refer to the biological sex of a person, e.g. female and male, while the term gender describes the social construction of femininity and masculinity. What makes a woman*man seem feminine or masculine? Certain aspects of behaviour, clothing, manner of speaking, hobbies etc. are stereotypically associated with particular gender constructions rather than others. Last but not least, the term sexuality refers to a person’s sexual orientation. In other words it indicates the people you are either physically and/or emotionally attracted to.
Having established the difference between these three terms, we continued by watching several scenes from the movie James Bond: Casino Royale (2006) and collected specific aspects that we believed to contribute to Bond’s image as a masculine man. The students considered Bond’s body, actions and his behaviour towards other men and women to be the most significant factors. Scenes such as Bond chasing the bad guy over several levels of a construction site definitely foreground his body and actions while the scene with him and Vesper sitting on the wet floor of the shower illustrate his more emotional and sensitive side.
The highlight of this topic was our visit to the Haydn Cinema where we watched the new James Bond: No Time To Die (2021), which featured Daniel Craig’s tragic ending as 007. We watched him getting closer and closer to the role of being a father, only to give it up for the sake of his new family in the end. This decision was met with a mixture of appreciation and criticism by the students and led to a heated discussion afterwards. Anyway, Bond would never surrender without a fight, so who knows what will happen next … 😊
6AB WPF Englisch
