Contemporary Masculinities in Fiction, Film and Television by Brian Baker (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Contemporary Masculinities in Fiction, Film and Television by Brian Baker Brian Faucette Brian Baker, Contemporary Masculinities in Fiction, Film and Television. Bloomsbury, 2015. 260pages. 120.00, hardcover. Building on the work he began in his first book, Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres, 1945–2000, Brian Baker’s new book explores the idea of contemporary depictions of specifically British and American masculinities. To do so, he examines examples from literature and fiction to illustrate the changing and complex nature of gender identities for men. Baker reads these modes of masculinity in terms of the crisis narrative, that is, the idea that white men lost their status and power because of progressive movements such as the Civil Rights movement, feminism, and the LGBTQ movement, which allegedly victimized white men. He argues that as a result of 9/11 the narrative of masculinity has centered around “discourses of trauma, pathology” and dislocation” (1). According to Baker these narratives have resulted in cultural texts that “across a range of different genres” represent the idea of masculinity as “troubled, anxious, fissured” and “unable to cope with the alienating dynamics of contemporary globalized capitalism” (1). To better understand these modes of masculinities, Baker draws upon Robert Connell’s idea of “hegemonic masculinity” and Freudian psychoanalysis among many other theories. The book is organized around an analysis of three distinct genres: that of the action/war film, sci-fi and the Gothic/Horror/Fantastic. The first part, labeled Narratives of Power, focuses on the figure of the veteran or soldier suffering from PTSD and connects this idea to a renewed cultural stress on narratives about surveillance and spies. The section consists of four chapters across which Baker makes the case that contemporary masculinities are linked to questions about the increasing influence of technology, the “war on terror” and the growing impact of globalized capitalism. Of the four chapters in this section, the most compelling is the first in which Baker offers an extended reading of the differences between the depictions of James Bond in a Cold War context and that of the contemporary world. To illustrate his point Baker offers a detailed analysis of the opening scene of Casino Royale (Campbell, 2006) where Bond is shown in full pursuit of a suspect. Baker argues that this exciting scene, filled with acrobatics and daredevil moves in the urban environment of Madagascar, “signals a rupture in the visual regime of the Bond series, embracing contemporary globalized capital’s emphasis upon free movement: of information, of resources and of the gaze, and, at the same time the necessity to police this movement and maintain borders or erect barriers to restrict this fluidity” (8). For Baker, this new type of Bond film operates in stark contrast to previous films in the series like A View to a Kill (Glenn, 1985). He argues that A View to a Kill “uses the mobilized gaze, and the spectatorial strategies of tourism, travel and the panorama to limit the disruptive effects of cinematic spectacle,” a point he makes as he discusses the use of the Eiffel Tower in that film and Bond’s battle with the character of Mayday who escapes from Bond by diving off the structure and using a hidden parachute to get down whereas Bond relies on the elevator to continue the chase (16). Barker, using Anne Friedberg’s notion of the spectator and Urry’s idea of the tourist gaze, thus argues that earlier Bond films were more interested in providing audiences with a feeling of tourist spectacle and excitement that were achieved via horizontal movements of the camera and actors. In the case of Casino Royale, as he shows by looking at the long chase sequence that opens the film, there has been a shift in [End Page 59] Bond’s mobility toward the vertical, as he is shown running up cranes, walls, and jumping from one dangerous and improbable location to another. Baker argues that these changes in movement, including his constant running, place the film within the norms of contemporary blockbuster aesthetics by portraying Bond as a global figure who feels at home in any place and any situation even as...