War-image as affect, war-image as spectacle in turn-of-the-millennium Hollywood: how are violent masculinities expressed?

Abstract

Through a theoretical engagement with the emergence of a new war film cycle in the 1990s, this paper asks: how are violent masculinities experienced and perceived? Specifically, I point to three distinct directorial approaches to the Hollywood war film – The thin red line, Saving Private Ryan, and Pearl Harbor – in order to analyze how films use war-images for affect or spectacle. This cinematic investigation aims to uncover the visual relations between masculine subjectivities and violence in the war film. Through a theoretical encounter with earlier work, this paper aims to increase the theoretical tools and concepts for understanding and thinking about the intersections of cinema, violence, war, and masculinities. By referencing the war films of Malick, Spielberg, and Bay, I argue that this category of genre film, in turn-of-the-millennium Hollywood, can use affective force to open up possibilities for critiquing and re-thinking masculinities, rather than merely contributing to American myth and nationalism through the use of spectacle.