Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film
Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Daniel Evan Paul, M.A. Graduate Program in Italian The Ohio State University 2019 Dissertation Committee Dana Renga, Advisor Jonathan Combs-Schilling Linda Mizejewski Catherine O’Rawe 1 Copyright by Daniel Evan Paul 2019 2 Abstract “Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film”, pushes against the generally accepted classification of teen film—with its romantic narratives and its classification as popular culture—as a feminine/feminized genre. I argue instead that such films privilege male protagonists and their coming-of-age experience and thus make central the masculine struggle of growing into adult- and manhood. Through close analysis of ten filmic texts, I demonstrate how Italian teen film proposes innovative forms of masculinity through its male protagonists, ones which often appropriate aspects of femininity such as caretaking and emotional availability. These forms of masculinity at once code the young men as inherently damaged, yet also allow the genre’s stereotypically female audiences to mourn the wounded men so that they can subsequently be recuperated into normative society. In that the films I discuss often centralize teenage romance, they are quite easily labeled as melodramas, or even romantic comedies. A common, though not constant, trope of the melodramatic mode is its tendency to depart from a space of innocence which is often characterized by hearth and home. For a melodrama to end happily, it typically does so by centralizing the heterosexual couple or the heteronormative family consisting of husband, wife, and child(ren) in an apparent return to the space of innocence from which it departed.
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