Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-15-2019 1:30 PM Dead Men Walking: An Analysis of Working-Class Masculinity in Post-2008 Hollywood Film Ryan Schroeder The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Tim Blackmore The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Media Studies A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Ryan Schroeder 2019 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Other Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Schroeder, Ryan, "Dead Men Walking: An Analysis of Working-Class Masculinity in Post-2008 Hollywood Film" (2019). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 6421. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6421 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract Working-class masculinity has lost its steam. Since 2008, a sub-genre of Hollywood films has emerged that depicts the current crisis, and imminent demise, of working-class masculinity in the United States. The 2008 financial crisis has had devastating effects on the American economy, and particularly the working-class, whose precarious economic position has only been exacerbated under neoliberalism. These effects have become the thematic focus of a fringe genre of films, which show how the destabilization of the American economy has incited greater instability in gender relations, and has had an acute impact on working-class men. This thesis proceeds by analyzing how these films articulate the current crisis of working-class masculinity in America. Using the framework outlined by R.W. Connell, I explore how working-class masculinity has become marginalized in relation to neoliberal hegemonic masculinity, and how its marginalization has become an excitatory factor for inter-masculine violence, constituting a social problem. Summary For Lay Audience By studying the films Out of the Furnace (2013), Warrior (2011), and Manchester by the Sea (2016), this thesis seeks to identify how Hollywood has represented the working- class in decline, and how blue collar men have struggled in their masculinities since the market crash of 2008. By analyzing the relationships between working-class men in these films, and how these men live out their lives, we gain insight into the conditions of working-class masculinity in American culture at this time. Such an analysis serves to deepen our understanding of the problems with working-class masculinity at hand, and in doing so helps us address these problems moving forward. Keywords Working-class masculinity, Hollywood films, gender relations, hegemonic masculinity, male violence, 2008 financial crisis, neoliberalism, masculinity studies, cultural studies. i Epigraph “That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man.” – Herman Melville ii Acknowledgments Sincerest of thanks to my supervisor, Tim Blackmore, for the kindness, guidance, and support that has seen me through this journey. To my parents, Kim and Jay, for the love and stability they have provided over the years. And to my partner Danielle, who has dealt with the brunt of my madness for the past several months. iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. i Epigraph .......................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................... iii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. v Introduction: The Beginning of the End .......................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Theoretical Foundations ............................................................................... 11 Chapter 2: Gender Relations (Fathers and Brothers) ..................................................... 41 Chapter 3: Gendered Practice (Work, Crisis, and Violence) ......................................... 71 Conclusion: The Final Breath ...................................................................................... 116 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 127 Curriculum Vitae .......................................................................................................... 131 iv List of Figures Figure 1. “We're all lost.” ©Lionsgate, 2011. .................................................................... 48 Figure 2. Brothers Holding Hands. ©Apian Way, 2013. ................................................... 59 Figure 3. Honouring the Code. ©Apian Way, 2013. ......................................................... 84 Figure 4. Lee's Departure. ©Amazon Studios, 2016. ........................................................ 90 Figure 5. Towards Reconfiguration. ©Lionsgate, 2011. ................................................. 118 Figure 6. Russell Repentant. ©Apian Way, 2013. ........................................................... 119 Figure 7. “Just let it go.” ©Amazon Studios, 2016. ......................................................... 121 v 1 Introduction: The Beginning of the End Since the financial crisis of 2008, there have been a number of Hollywood films produced that depict the struggle of working-class men in America. This struggle, what might be called a crisis of masculinity, has resulted from the economic recession that followed the financial crisis. It has become a major topic of cultural importance that has since spread throughout the American cultural imagination, becoming thematically embedded in many mass media cultural products. What is called the 2008 financial crisis was caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis that occurred two years prior, following which a large portion of Americans lost their homes because of under-regulated and unsafe lending practices. When interest rates rose, and homes lost their value, many Americans who had been given interest-only mortgages could no longer afford their houses, and so defaulted on their loans. The surge in speculation and subsequent decline in the real estate market had resounding effects on the economy, ushering in what is known to be the worst economic recession since the great depression.1 The time period following 2008 thus marks a point in which the various insecurities concomitant to the destabilized economy could be seen playing out in popular culture. What has been made visible by a sub-genre of Hollywood films to be released after this point is that the financial crisis has also destabilized gender relations, resulting in a crisis, or what would best be called crisis tendencies, of working-class masculinity. Since the dawn of neoliberalism at the end of the 1970s, the working-class in America has fallen ever more progressively into economic precarity. As a result of a shift in policies towards greater deregulation of the market economy, the median income has been suppressed while the income of top earners continues to increase, as David Harvey explains: “the ratio of the median compensation of workers to the salaries of chief executive officers increased from just over thirty to one in 1970 to more than four hundred to one by 2000.”2 Having already been reduced to a state of economic 1 Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy, The Crisis of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011), 265. 2 David Harvey, "Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 610, no. 1 (2007): 28. 2 vulnerability, the 2008 recession spelled death for the status of working-class men in America (this is of course an all-gender issue, and will be addressed on page 6). Because men’s position of dominance over women within the gender order is legitimated by capitalism, a man must have access to economic resources if he is to fulfill his patriarchal potential. Moreover, under patriarchal logics, it is the expectation that men protect the institution of patriarchy so as to safe-guard their positions of power within society. What is then called hegemonic masculinity is the ideal by which masculinities are organized towards patriarchal perseverance. If a man should lose his access to resources, and thereby fail in his ability to wield economic command, and provide for a family, he loses that which gives him much of his power as a man. When the material benefits of patriarchy, what R.W. Connell calls the “patriarchal dividend,” are lost by such a large strata of men who share in similar configurations of practice – practices which are constituted in their working environments – there is the likelihood that a crisis will occur in the lives of these men. For such men, the destabilization of their gendered positions of power tends to be paralleled by a discussion of an overall crisis of that form of masculinity.3 These crisis tendencies of working-class