Contemporary masculinities in film, fiction and television

Baker, Brian (2015) Contemporary masculinities in film, fiction and television. Bloomsbury, London. ISBN 9781623567477

Abstract

This book focuses on representations of masculinity in cinema, popular fiction and television from the period 2000-2010. It argues that dominant forms of masculinity in Britain and the United States have become increasingly informed by anxiety, trauma and loss, and this has resulted in both narratives that reflect that trauma and others which attempt to return to a more complete and heroic form of masculinity. While focusing on a range of popular genres, such as Bond films, war movies, science fiction and the Gothic, it attempts to place close analyses of individual films and texts in their cultural and historical contexts, arguing for the importance of these popular fictions in diagnosing how contemporary Britain and the United States understand themselves and their changing role in the world through the representation of men. It draws upon current work in mobility studies and in the study of masculinities to produce the first book-length comparative study of masculinity in popular culture of the first decade of the twentieth century.