(Ir)religious Violence and the (Ab)use of ‘Innocent Weapons’: (Re)imagining Juvenile Masculinities in the Secular-Religious Conflicts of World Cinema James Magee, Jr. An increasingly-popular and vocal group of ‘New Atheists’1 has promulgated the idea that religion is an inherently violent phenomenon that the world would be better off without. The late Christopher Hitchens claimed religion to be “a menace to civilization” and “a threat to human survival” (2007, 25). Sam Harris, still active, refers to religion as “the most potent source of human conflict, past and present” (2004, 35). Such accusations are not reserved for fanatical adherents of various faith traditions, but are also leveled against ‘religious moderates’ who are, according to Harris, “in large part, responsible for the religious conflict… because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed” (ibid, 45). Both writers propose an aggressive solution to the problem of ‘religious violence’,2 a hypocritical defense of ‘secular violence’ (Cavanaugh 2009, 212-20) that exacerbates the existing tensions rather than trying to defuse them. As an agnostic committed to “peaceful co-existence between different religious faiths, and between religious and humanist groups” (Le Poidevin 2010, 118), I offer critique from a non-religious tradition of this ‘irreligious violence’ and the crisis of authority that fuels it (Stahl 2010, 101-5).3 Rejecting a bifurcation of humanity into in- and out-groups, a feature prevalent in the ideologies of both ‘New Atheism’ and fundamentalist expressions of religious faith (Reitan 2009, 217; Stahl 2010, 97), I identify ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (HM) as one common factor in much religious and non-religious violence. First introduced in the mid-eighties (Carrigan et al. 1985), the concept of HM has eluded a clear and concise definition (Donaldson 1993; Whitehead 2002, 93).4 A grassroots understanding of HM as “a ‘dominant’ form of masculinity that influences boys’ and men’s understanding of how they have to act in order to be ‘acceptably’ male” (Frosh et al. 2002, 75) is the definition adopted in this essay. Also, an 1 The four most famous ‘New Atheist’ authors are Sam Harris (2004), Richard Dawkins (2006), Daniel Dennett (2006) and Christopher Hitchens (2007). LeDrew points out that “[w]hile the New Atheism is not in the public eye as much as it was in the late 2000s, it is still alive and well in the secular movement” (2016, 51). 2 While Harris expresses some regret over the alleged necessity of violent measures (2004, 129), Hitchens seemed to relish the idea of eliminating his enemies (see the various casual remarks compiled by Cavanaugh 2009, 219). 3 Stahl (2010) argues that the (failed) ‘New Atheist’ quest for certainty leads to a crisis of authority and then to sociopolitical backlash against the religious fundamentalists with whom they share this epistemological outlook and reactionary chain. 4 Connell’s definition illustrates this obfuscation: “Hegemonic masculinity can be defined as the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (2005, 77). 1 association of HM with “heterosexuality, toughness, power and authority, [and] competitiveness” (ibid, 75-76) is assumed.5 While “[i]t is the successful claim to authority, more than direct violence, that is the mark of hegemony…[,] violence often underpins or supports authority” (Connell 2005, 77). The ‘innocent weapons’ of the essay’s title is a concept drawn from Margaret Peacock’s work on the Soviet and American politics of childhood during the Cold War and refers to the “deployments of innocent, threatened, and mobilized youth” in “visual and rhetorical projects” (2014, 7). Resisting both the ‘Hollywoodcentrism’ of much writing on religion and film (Plate 2003, 9) and the adultcentrism of contemporary masculinity studies,6 I have chosen ten world cinema ‘projects’ to explore the connection between HM and violence7 in depictions of juvenile8 masculinity. The boys in these films, both victims and perpetrators of violence, resist and conform to HM in a variety of sociopolitical and historical contexts. The religious and non-religious violence portrayed in these movies is embedded within these broader cultural conflicts and commonalities across the permeable secular-religious divide (Göle 2010) suggest the roots of violence run deeper than the vocal critics of religion seem willing to admit. I will propose ways in which juvenile masculinities might be reimagined as part of the solution to reducing the amount of violence in the world, an urgent task that will involve the cooperation of both religious and non-religious peacemakers. 1. The Violent Falls of (Hu)man(ity) in Butterfly (1999) and Black Bread (2010) The Spanish Civil War (1936-39)9 has been characterized as “a war of religion,” one waged “between Catholicism and anticlericalism” (Casanova 2010, 2) or, by some “[r]ightists and conservatives[, as] a struggle of ‘Christianity versus atheism’” (Payne 2012, 1), but also as a battle between fascism and democracy or communism. This clash of cultures and ideologies on the Iberian Peninsula ushered in the nearly forty-year dictatorship (1939-75) of Francisco Franco and “has gone down in history…for the horrific violence that it generated” (Casanova 2010, 2). Cinema, a tool for propaganda on both sides of 5 Frosh et al. also include “the subordination of gay men” in their list (2002, 76); this not only overlooks – shockingly so in a book on young masculinities – gay boys (though the authors do explore the subject of boys and homosexuality at several points in their book), but the subordination of alternative masculinities that are not directly linked to sexuality (Connell 2005, 79). 6 The elision of ‘males’ and ‘men’ or discussions of ‘masculinities’ that infer only men as their subjects are ubiquitous in the literature. Boys, where they are mentioned, are typically afterthoughts; usually they are subsumed or ignored altogether. This is true even in Connell’s The Men and the Boys (the order of subjects in the title is not accidental) where the reader is redirected under the index entry for ‘boys’ to the subjects of “education; peer groups; schools; [and] youth” (2000, 248). 7 The definition of ‘violence’ that I assume in this essay is “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has the high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation” (Krug et al. 2002, 5). 8 The concept of juvenility is drawn from evolutionary biology where it describes the period in the life course during which an organism is likely to survive the death of its caregiver, but does not yet sexually reproduce (Pereira 2002, 19). 9 For broad overviews of the Spanish Civil War, see Anderson (2003), Graham (2005), Casanova (2010) and Payne (2012). 2 the conflict (Archibald 2012, 20-21), has primarily been used in post-Francoist Spain to present the viewpoint of the vanquished Republicans, a perspective censored throughout most of the Nationalists’ autocracy (ibid, 22). The first film reviewed in this section of the essay participates in this trajectory of Republican sympathy and is an example of Spanish filmmakers’ marshaling of juvenile characters for recovering memory of the nation’s traumatic past (Wright 2013, 14); the second movie deconstructs this. The 1999 La lengua de las mariposas, released in North America as Butterfly,10 begins in the months leading up to the outbreak of civil war (July 1936) in rural Galicia, which is presented as a quasi- paradisiacal setting (Gómez López-Quiñones 2014, 111) for its juvenile protagonist’s ‘coming of age’ (Boán 2018, 641; Hogan 2018, 165).11 Moncho, conforming to the Romantic ideal of childhood (Yim 2017, 203), explores his bucolic surroundings under the guidance of his kindly Republican teacher Don Gregorio (DG). The boy’s churchgoing mother and his anticlerical father represent the main divisions within Spanish society in regards to religion (Hogan 2018, 169)12 with their son caught in the middle. While rumors of church-burning reach the village,13 they are unsubstantiated and the film’s Republican characters presented as non-violent,14 their opponents as violent and exemplars of HM.15 DG models an alternative form of masculinity for Moncho: egalitarian, peaceful and attuned to nature.16 The film’s tragic conclusion comes swiftly as news of a coup d’état spreads and pro-Nationalist soldiers arrest the village’s Republican sympathizers, but not Moncho’s father, whose wife has destroyed evidence of his affiliation. While the boy is startled when his teacher is led out among the ‘criminals’ to a nearby truck and hesitates when urged by his mother to add his voice to the gathered crowd’s cacophony of verbal assaults, he nonetheless launches an attack: “Atheist! Red!” (Figure 1.1) As the vehicle pulls away, taking DG and the other prisoners to their deaths,17 Moncho joins in with a group of boys who run 10 The film is alternatively titled Butterfly Tongues or Butterfly’s Tongue (UK), the literal translation of the Spanish title being ‘The Tongue of the Butterflies’, which is one of the three short stories by Manuel Rivas on which the movie was based, the others being ‘Carmiña’ and ‘A Sax in the Fog’. 11 Bildungsfilms can approach the subject positively or negatively; Butterfly offers an example of the latter type of movie, which “overturn[s] positive expectations about coming of age, showing how such development is often thwarted by time, place, politics, and other external and internal factors” (Hardcastle et al.