Henry Jenkins (henry3@athena.mit.edu), Literature Section, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02138.

21L.706
Studies in Film and Media
Myths of Gender -- Masculinity
Fall 1994

Masculinity has often constructed itself as the invisible gender, the norm against which "femininity" gets defined. As one critic notes, masculinity in the cinema gets "tested" while femininity gets "investigated." Yet, increasingly, "masculinity" has been investigated and called into question, first by feminism and later by queer theory and politics. What do we mean by "masculinity?" What roles do film, television, and other forms of popular culture play in shaping and reshaping masculine identities? Are all men "masculine" or is "masculinity" something which we need to prove to ourselves and each other as we go through our everyday lives? How do we learn "masculinity" and how does it shape our relations to important people in our lives? Can we change what it means to be "masculine" within American culture and if so, what might a transformed masculinity look like?
These questions will be the central focus of this seminar which will examine everything from Disney movies to Robert Mapplethorpe's photography, from Ernest Hemingway to S.N. Hinton, from tele-evangelism to heavy metal music, in its search for masculine identities and experiences. The course will be organized around six basic units: Defining Masculinity (basic theoretical tools and categories for understanding masculinity); Masculine Initiations (the process by which we acquire our sense of ourselves as gendered); Male Relations (the ways that "masculinity" influences our ties to fathers, brothers, mothers, and friends); Male Rituals (the social practices which express or repress masculine emotion); Male Sexualities (erotic representation, fantasy and pornography); and Masculine Identities (the links between nationalism, race, class, and masculinity).

ASSIGNMENTS:
Students will be expected to prepare a weekly journal which offers their critical insights into the screenings, readings, and course discussions (Due on Tuesday of each week, starting with Sept. 13). Journal entries should be 1-2 pages (longer if needed) and should be interpretive and analytic rather than simply personal.
Students will also prepare two ten page papers, one at the midterm, one at the end of the course. Topics may grow out of journal entries or may respond to some of the questions posed on the study guide or reflect the student's own cultural interests. Students are encouraged to choose a topic relevant to the course's parameters which they want to explore.
All work submitted to this course should reflect the student's own thoughts and research. All outside materials consulted should be cited in proper form. Students may exchange papers for comments and criticism before turning them into the instructor, but students are encouraged not to exchange papers until both students have completed at least a first draft. Any evidence of plagiarism will be brought to the attention of the Committee on Discipline.

Class Participation 10%
Journals 30%
First Paper 30%
Second Paper 30%

ATTENDANCE: Attendance and participation are central to the seminar experience. This course is designed to be taught to a small, intimate group of students. You are expected to come regularly and to participate. Otherwise, the course will not work. Attendance and participation will be monitored and factored into the final assignment of grades in the class.

STATEMENT OF RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES: The topics we are exploring in this course are controversial and often provoke strong personal responses. Without creating a climate of so-called "political correctness," we should be sensitive to each others' feelings in expressing our views. Students are encouraged to express their thoughtful, well- considered responses to the course and should feel safe to express any political viewpoint on the questions explored. However, they should do so in a way that is not confrontational or hostile to the rights, concerns, and lifestyles of other students. I have found in the past that students sometimes feel "marginalized" when we explore topics that do not relate directly to their own personal experiences. It is my position, however, that masculinity and femininity, heterosexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality can not be meaningfully discussed except in relation to each other. Students should feel comfortable asking questions or making comparisons across these various identities. Students who do not feel comfortable dealing with sexually explicit materials or in exploring alternative forms of sexual practice are discouraged from taking this course.

ABOUT THE STUDY GUIDE: I have prepared a detailed study guide for the readings in this course. I have found in the past that many students do not have much experience looking closely at argumentative or analytic essays or feel put off by scholarly modes of language and documentation. I have tried to select readings that are not too "jargony" but I felt that a study guide would help you to walk through the essays and focus on those aspects which seem most relevant to the course. The study guide also will encourage you to make links between various course topics and between the readings and the films, though it covers the films in less detail than the readings. It is my hope that the questions may spark more thoughtful journals, may help students better prepare for class discussions, may provide some suggestions for paper topics, and may allow students to better grasp material covered on days they must miss class. It is no substitute for attending and participating in the class, however. This is an experiment and I will welcome feedback on what we could do to make the study guide more effective and helpful.

Required Texts:
Screening the Male
Barbara Ehrenricht, The Hearts of Men
S.N. Hinton, The Outsiders
Nancy Friday, Men In Love (New York: Doubleday, 1980)
Course Pack (Available from MIT Graphic Arts)

UNIT #1 Defining Masculinity

TH Sept. 8 Gender, Sex, Sexuality
Read: Warren Farrell, "The Ten Commandments of Masculinity" (Handout)
"He Is Playing Masculine...She Is Playing Feminine" from James A. Doyle, The Male Experience (Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown Company, 1983) (Handout)

Recommended Reading: Gayle S. Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" in Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David Halperin (Eds.) The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993). (CP)

Screen: Hard Target

T Sept. 13 Masculine Spectators, Masculine Spectacles
Read:Steve Neale, "Masculinity as Spectacle" (STM)
Richard Dyer, "Brief Affair," The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations (London: Routlege, 1994).

Screen: Risky Business

TH Sept. 15 Performing Masculinity
Read:Kevin Kopelson, "Fake It Like A Man" in David Bergman (Ed.), Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality (Amhearst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993).
Richard Dyer, "Straight Acting", The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation (London: Routledge, 1994).

Screen: Johnny Guitar

T Sept. 20 Mapping the Margins: Masculinity without Men?
Read:Pat Califia, "The Limits of the S/M Relationship, or Mr. Benson Doesn't Live Here Anymore," in Mark Thompson (Ed.) Leather-Folk: Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice (Boston: Alyson, 1991).
Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis, "'They Was No One to Mess With': The Construction of the Butch Role in the Lesbian Community of the 1940s and 1950s" in Joan Nestle (Ed.), The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader (Boston: Alyson, 1992).

Screen: Bigger Than Life

TH Sept. 22 Does Masculinity Have a History?
Read: Barbara Ehrenreicht, The Hearts of Men

Screen:Look Who's Talking

Unit #2 Masculine Initiations
T Sept. 27

Part One: Born to Be Male
Read:Emily Martin, "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles," Signs, Spring 1991.
Eve K. Sedgwick, "How to Bring Your Children Up Gay," Tendencies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993).

Part Two: Boy Toys
Read:Barrie Thorne, "Creating a Sense of 'Opposite Sides'," Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993).
Ellen Seiter, "Action TV for Boys," Sold Seperately: Parents and Children in Consumer Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993).

TH Sept. 29
Screen: Toby Tyler
Blank Check

T Oct. 4 Bad Boys
Read: E. Anthony Rotundo, "Boys Culture," American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic, 1993).

Screen: Stand By Me

TH Oct. 6 Teen Tears
Read: S. N. Hinton, The Outsiders

Screen: TBA

T Oct. 11 NO CLASS

TH Oct. 13 Rocking the Patriarchy
Read: Robert Walser, "Forging Masculinity," Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993).

Screen: Islands in the Stream

Unit #3: Male Relations
T Oct. 18 Fathers, Sons, Brothers
Read: Robert L. Griswold, "Introduction: From Breadwinner to 'Daddy Tracker,' Fatherhood in America: A History (New York: Basic, 1993).

Screen: White Heat

TH Oct. 20 All in the Family
Read: Lucy Fischer, "Mama's Boys" (STM)
Nancy J. Chodorow, "Oedipal Asymmetries and Heterosexual Knots," Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

Screen: Gilda

T Oct. 25 Good Buddies
Read: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Introduction to Between Men," in Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (Ed.), Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1991).
Cynthia Fuchs, "The Buddy Politic" (STM)

Screen: The Deerhunter

Unit #4 Male Rituals
TH Oct. 27 Men at War
Read: Susan Jeffords, "'That Men Without Women Trip': Masculine Bonding and the Ideology of the Collectivity," The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

Screen: Fallen Champ

T Nov. 1 A Good Fight
Read:Henry Jenkins, "Never Trust a Snake!: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama" (Work in Progress)

Screen: Focus on the Family video

TH Nov. 3 God the Father
Read: Handout from Dr. Charles Dobson's Focus on the Family.

Screen: Real Genius

T Nov. 8 Real Men Don't Do Problem Sets
Read: Sherry Turkle, "Hackers: Loving the Machine For Itself," The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984).
Julian Duval, "A Rape in Cyberspace," The Village Voice, December 21 1993.

Screen: Dick; Daddy and the Muscle Academy

Unit #5 Male Sexualities
TH Nov. 10 Dirty Looks
Read: Richard Dyer, "Don't Look Now: Instabilities of the Male Pin-Up", Only Entertainment (London: Routledge, 1992).

Screen: Sex Is...

T Nov. 15 Erotic Fantasies
Read: Nancy Friday, Men In Love (Read first three chapters and two others of your choice)

Screen: Once Upon a Lifetime

TH Nov. 17 Reading Pornography
Read: "Sex Premises,"in Caught Looking
Excerpts from Letters to Penthouse

Screen: City Slickers

Unit #6 Masculine Identities
T Nov. 22 Wild Men, Angry Women
Read: Robert Bly, "Preface" and "The Pillow and the Key," Iron John: A Book About Men (New York: Vintage, 1992).
Camille Paglia, "The Rape Debate," Sex, Art and American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1992).

Screen: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valiance

T Nov. 29 Cowboys and Indians
Read: Virginia Wright Wexman, "John Wayne, the Western and the American Nation," Creating the Couple: Love, Marriage and Hollywood Performance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)

Screen: Posse

TH D 1 Race and Masculinity
Read: Michael Eric Dyson, "The Plight of the Black Male," Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

Screen: American Me

T D 6 Gang Colors
Read: Rosa Linda Fregoso, "Eastside Story Revisited," The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
Richard Rodriquez, "Complexion" in Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Cornel West (Eds.) Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (Cambridge: MIT, 1990).

Screen: Ordinary People

TH D 8 White Guys Can't
Read: Richard Dyer, "Whiteness," The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation (London: Routledge, 1994).

Screen: Making Mr. Right

T D 13 The Future of Masculinity?
Read: Susan Jeffords, "Can Masculinity be Terminated?" (STM)