Abstract
In Embodying Masculinities, Josep M. Armengol suggests two limitations of current work on the body: most studies focus on women’s bodies and little focus has been dedicated to bodily representations. The volume seeks to address these lacunae by exploring male bodies in US culture through literary and filmic representations. What’s more, the collection is “centrally concerned with showing how the (male) body has recurrently been used as a political tool reflecting and/or contesting different ideologies in different ways at different points” (p. 4).
Teresa Requena-Pelegrí opens the volume by demonstrating how characters in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises challenge the 1920’s manly ideal of “bodily wholeness.” The permeability of the era’s hegemonic masculinity, Requena-Pelegrí suggests, is revealed through several characters’ strategic negotiation of different hegemonic and non-hegemonic subject positions. Thus, there exists a gendered hierarchy of masculinities intrinsically connected to the construction of the male body. Proceeding decennially, the nine chapters in the collection call into question the hard–soft, masculine–effete binary.
Esther Zaplana, for example, suggests the bodily representations and practices of glam rock artists during the 1960s and 1970s highlight the capacity for male bodies to destabilize hegemonic models of masculinity, while simultaneously reminding readers that bodily representations reflect political ideologies. That is, glam rock artists’ embrace of traditionally feminine dress and symbolic acts of male homosexuality struck a chord with the subversive political consciousness of the civil rights era because audiences saw this as transgressive against conventional norms.
While all the essays do well at challenging dichotomous notions of masculinity, Sara Martín’s analysis of differential representations of King Leonidas of Sparta is exemplary. Martín shows how Leonidas’ balance between restraint and excess in Rudolph Maté’s 1962 film The 300 Spartans can be read as a reflection of the self-control that Cold War politics demanded. In contrast, Leonidas’ excess ferocity and neo-barbarianism in Frank Miller’s graphic novel and Zack Snyder’s film adaptations can be read as reflections of the excesses of George W. Bush’s “hard body” post-Reaganite military policies. Martín’s analysis, though, penetrates deeper than the rest by highlighting how both racialization and feminization are used to prop up hegemonic masculinity. Emperor Xerxes I, the antagonist of the battle of Thermopylae, is represented as embodying homosexuality through his absurd bodily decoration and drag-queen vocal tones as well as being generically nonwhite through his tanned body. Yet, by commanding a vast army Xerxes is not disempowered. Thus, Leonidas’ sacrificial heroism is contingent on a feminized and racialized Other. Martín’s move toward an intersectional analysis is, unfortunately, what separates her work from the rest.
While the final two chapters explore contemporary representations of so-called Asian and Arab masculinities, histories of the US male body that fail to address how multiple axis of domination serve to prop up hegemonic masculinity are incomplete. Take, for example, Armengol’s essay on Depression era representations of (white) male bodies. He reminds that New Deal public murals like Allen Thomas’s “Extending the Frontier in Northwest Territory” and literary classics like Philip Rahv’s essay “Paleface and Redskin” served to accentuate masculine strength, aggression, potency, and familiarity with the outdoors. Yet, Armengol does not critically interrogate how attempts to remasculinize (white) America were buttressed by stereotypical constructions of indigenous peoples. He does not ask, for example, whether the era’s postcards with images of Nez Perce men in ceremonial dress encouraged racist attitudes toward “primitive” nations. He fails to consider the extent to which photographs of Yakima spear-fishermen on platforms over the rapids of the Columbia River served to stoke white America’s nostalgia for the outdoors while simultaneously inviting support for imperial projects that “extended the frontier.”
As a collection, Embodying Masculinities offers an uncritical history of the white male body in US culture and literature. The essays challenge dichotomous notions of masculinity by highlighting the pluralizing potential of male bodily representations. But, this pluralizing work textures only our understanding of the dominant strata. A meaningful conversation about how the male body is used as a political tool must consider intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, and more. Doing so would not only disrupt masculine binaries but also bring to the fore the numerous legacies of inequality and domination from which our contemporary moment has been forged.
Despite this shortcoming, Embodying Masculinities is recommended for scholars interested in gender, American, and embodiment studies. I anticipate that the volume will not only be a catalyst toward the development of a history of the male body in US culture and literature, but readers will also find the essays to be interesting and absorbing.