The Monstrous Masculine: Male Metamorphosis in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema
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The access to the contents of this doctoral thesis it is limited to the acceptance of the use conditions set by the following Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en Doctoral Dissertation The Monstrous Masculine: Male Metamorphosis in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema Josephine Swarbrick Supervised by Dr Sara Martín Alegre PhD Programme in English Philology Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística 2020 Contents Introduction: Of Men and Monsters ................................................................................. 1 0.1 Masculine Anxieties and Metamorphosis in Science Fiction Cinema .................... 1 0.2 Methodology: Defining Masculinity, the Monster and the Posthuman .................. 4 0.3 State of the Art: Alternatives to the Monstrous Feminine .................................... 14 0.4 Figuring the Monstrous Masculine: Five Categories of Monstrosity ................... 18 Chapter One.The Male Mutant: Body Horror and the New Flesh in Videodrome (1983) ........................................................................................................................................ 23 1.1 Mutating Men in the 1980s: Science Fiction Meets Body Horror ........................ 23 1.2 Performing Gender in a Mediated Reality ............................................................ 29 1.3 The Monstrous Masculine Mutant in Videodrome ............................................... 38 1.4 Long Live the New Flesh: Posthuman Potential in Body Horror Cinema ........... 52 Chapter Two. Man as Disempowered Cyborg: Physical Vulnerability and Psychological Strength in RoboCop (1987) and RoboCop (2014) ........................................................ 59 2.1 The Cyborg Figure in Cinema: The Rise of the Cyborg Cycle and its Enduring Appeal ......................................................................................................................... 59 2.2 The Political Cyborg: An Introduction to Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987) .... 62 2.2.1 (De)Constructing Masculinity: The Cinematic Cyborg in the late 1980s ............................................................................................................ 65 2.2.2 The Monstrous Male Cyborg in RoboCop (1987) .............................. 73 2.3 The Post-Millennial Cyborg: An Introduction to José Padilha’s RoboCop (2014) ..................................................................................................................................... 86 2.3.1 (Re)Constructing Masculinity: The 21st Century Male Cyborg ......... 91 2.3.2 The Monstrous Masculine Cyborg: RoboCop (2014) ........................ 99 2.4 From Marginal Monster to the Heart of the Nuclear Family: The Evolution of the Male Cyborg Figure in Cinema ................................................................................ 105 Chapter Three. The Male Cyborg as Villain: Coming of Age in the Star Wars Saga . 113 3.1 Four Decades of Male Heroes and Monsters: An Introduction to the Star Wars Saga ........................................................................................................................... 113 3.2 Fathers and Sons: Patriarchy in the Star Wars Saga ........................................... 118 3.3 From Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader: Becoming a Monstrous Villain ........ 130 3.4 Darth Vader: A Mechanical Villain? .................................................................. 138 3.5 The Monstrous Male Villain in the Star Wars Saga ........................................... 147 Chapter Four. Man as Alien: Becoming ‘Other’ in District 9 (2009) .......................... 152 4.1 Aliens in Johannesburg: An Introduction to District 9 ....................................... 152 4.2 Soldiers, Civil Servants and Aliens: Deconstructing Hegemonic Masculinity in District 9 ................................................................................................................... 157 4.3 Becoming Alien: The Monstrous Masculine in District 9 .................................. 165 4.4 Posthuman Potential and Alternative Masculinities in District 9 ....................... 184 Chapter Five. Gendering the Transhuman: Multiplicity and Ambiguity in Representations of Transcendence ............................................................................... 192 5.1 Transhumanism and Cinema ............................................................................... 192 5.2 From Damsel in Distress to Powerful Witch: Representing the Feminine Transhuman in Lucy .................................................................................................. 199 5.2.1 Reproduction and Mothering: Woman as Transhuman Monster ..... 206 5.3 From Privileged to Powerful: Representing the Masculine Transhuman in Transcendence .......................................................................................................... 212 5.3.1 Man as Posthuman Monster: Excessive Power and Uncertainty ...... 218 5.4 Gendering the Posthuman in Transcendence and Lucy ...................................... 228 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 233 Works Cited .................................................................................................................. 250 Filmography ................................................................................................................. 261 Acknowledgements Countless people have helped me on this journey and I could not possibly mention all of them. There are, however, several people I feel the need to highlight, as they were absolutely essential to this process. First and foremost, I would like to express the sincerest gratitude to my supervisor Dr Sara Martín Alegre. Completing this PhD thesis simply would not have been possible without her guidance and encouragement, not only in the academic arena, but also in opening up work opportunities that have allowed me to support myself financially. Equally important has been her moral support, friendship and the lively discussions that have inspired and fed into this work. Secondly, I need to thank my parents Jaydee and Simon for always supporting me and for never ceasing to believe in me and my abilities. I would never have set out on this path if they had not encouraged me to always follow my dreams, or without knowing that they would always be there for me, come what may. Also deserving of a special mention is my sister and friend Abby, not only for proof-reading the entire dissertation, but also for her insightful comments and questions. Likewise, thanks are due to the talented Cristina Juarez for her incredible cover design. Finally, I would like to express my love and gratitude to my boyfriend Daniel for his infinite patience and understanding. It cannot have been easy to live with the stress and worries, but he always endeavoured to understand what I was going through and what I needed. I could not hope for more. Abstract There exists a body of detailed and insightful academic work on the monstrous feminine body in cinema, which for the most part draws on psychoanalytical readings of the texts, as is the case, for example, in the seminal works The Monstrous Feminine (Barbara Creed 1993) and The Female Grotesque (Mary Russo 1995). There is a dearth, however, of material dealing with male monsters, what one may term the monstrous masculine. Contemporary popular cinema provides a wealth of representations of men who undergo striking physical and psychological change through, for example, mutation, technological augmentation or infection. The initial aims of this dissertation are to investigate the representation of male corporeal transformation in science fiction cinema, and to identify the models of monstrous masculinity that emerge from these depictions. Through close reading of some key texts and a consideration of the historical and socio-cultural contexts of the films’ production I will determine the mechanisms at work in the construction of men as monsters as well as provide some answers as to why overwhelmingly male directors portray their male protagonists in this way. Furthermore, I will explore growing presence of posthumanism in relation to the monstrous masculine and elucidate the influence of posthuman ideas as a component of contemporary discourse on the creation and understanding of the male monster in popular cinema. The transformations analysed in this dissertation all instigate or entail, through different mechanisms and devices, the transgression of boundaries upon and within the bodies of the protagonists. The resulting slippage in categories —the blurring of binaries such as male/female, human/machine, self/Other, etc— produces a monstrous masculine body. I offer five categories of masculine monstrosity for consideration in the chapters that follow, in which the male protagonist becomes: mutant, disempowered cyborg, cyborg super-villain, alien, or transhuman. I will identify and examine which binaries are transgressed