The Man Inside: Trauma, Gender, and the Nation in The Brave One
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/15295030903550977
ISSN1529-5036
Autores Tópico(s)Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy
ResumoAbstract This essay argues that The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007) treats 9/11 and its aftermath, including America's controversial wars and culture of surveillance, as cultural traumas and, in response, attempts to manage disruptions to American master narratives, particularly in relation to gender. A vigilante film that features a cinematically anomalous female vigilante, Jordan's film positions its hero-villain (Jodie Foster) as a post-traumatic subject whose "female masculinity" and brand of vindictive justice function both to assuage anxieties about American emasculation on September 11th and to atone for the "sins" of a warring nation. By coding its vigilante as disturbed and melancholic, The Brave One figures America as a battered woman who must become a man and, thus, offers a framework for understanding, and even justifying, America's post-9/11 performance of vigilante justice. Keywords: Female masculinityTrauma9/11filmVigilante Justice Acknowledgements She thanks Eric KingWatts and the journal reviewers for the extraordinarily helpful feedback and support. She also thanks Bonnie Dow and the Vanderbilt University Culture and Creativity Workshop. A version of this paper was presented at the National Communication Association meeting in 2008. Notes 1. Taxi Driver is typically understood as an urban remake of The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), a Western featuring John Wayne as a vigilante. Eastwood reprised the role of Dirty Harry Callahan in Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988). Four sequels followed Bronson's original film: Death Wish II (1982), Death Wish 3 (1985), Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987), and Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994). 2. Other vigilante films include Death Sentence (James Wan, 2007), which is based on Brian Garfield's 1975 sequel to the novel that inspired the Death Wish films, Street Kings (David Ayer, 2008), and Max Payne (John Moore, 2008). 3. Interestingly, Wood saw Taxi Driver as a chief embodiment of incoherence, in direct contrast with genre pictures, which he saw as striving for coherence. But as others have argued, "even" a genre film like Death Wish bears the traces of incoherence (Mendik, 2002 Mendik , X. 2002 . Urban legend: The 1970s films of Michael Winner . In Shocking Cinema of the Seventies 58 73 . Hereford, , UK : Noir Publishing . [Google Scholar], p. 60). 4. In addition to affirming a national machismo, this narrative of street justice also articulates an extremely individualistic model of citizenship, favoring the individual over the collective. This image of the citizen-subject is problematic in its refusal to consider either histories of oppression or systemic inequalities, insisting instead that it is "every man for himself." Significantly, this emphasis of rugged individualism was introduced most forcefully during the Reagan era, in direct response to perceived weaknesses and malaise from the Vietnam era. And, this focus on the lone individual also mirrors the tendency to isolate 9/11 as a unique, singular rupture in American history. 5. If Taxi Driver is an urban Western, it's interesting to note that as Bickle becomes more disturbed, his appearance gradually transforms from "cowboy" to "Indian" with respect to the typical iconography of the genre, as embodied by the mohawk he wears at the end of the film. Likewise, if we can read Bain's make-up as war paint, she too seems to have adopted some of the conventional iconography of the cinematic "Indian," which supports the assertion that the masculinity she borrows is not "white." 6. The assumption that Bain's transformation constitutes an appropriation of masculinity is also reproduced within reviews. For example, Variety read Foster as "all but physicalizes the idea of a woman boldly inhabiting a man's skin." See J Chang (2007). The Brave One. Variety 408.3, 48. Likewise, Neil Jordan echoed this sentiment to Charlie Rose, suggesting that Erica Bain, "finds a man inside herself … her inner Clint Eastwood." 7. Although the film never specifies Kirmani's ethnicity, it is significant that Andrews is most famous for his portrayal of an Iraqi soldier in the ABC drama Lost, which is mentioned in almost every review. As such, Andrews' extratextual identity as Iraqi suggests this film's attempts to negotiate the complex terrain of a post-9/11 world: while, on one hand, Andrews' place as a romantic lead might suggest an apologia for America's perceived xenophobia toward Middle-Easterners, Kirmani's almost instant and very brutal demise within the diegesis also suggests ambivalence toward non-white masculinity. Additional informationNotes on contributorsClaire Sisco KingClaire Sisco King is an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University. She teaches in the Department of Communication Studies and the Film Studies Program
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