Real men : representations of masculinity in the eighties cinema

Social, economic, and cultural changes in the 1970s brought about a level of anxiety as to what constituted masculine identity in an era of rising unemployment; diminishing paternal authority within the family; a feminising of the workplace accompanying technological development; and the insistence on 'equal rights' by homosexual, women's and racial minority groups. The feeling of panic that accompanied the rapid social change of the period was reflected in a body of mainstream American films that have come to categorise 'eighties cinema'. These films depicted a style of masculinity that centered on tough, muscular bodies; violence that was both sadistic and masochistic; sexuality that was simultaneously homophobic and homoerotic; patriarchy restored through a refigured father that incorporated the maternal; the creation of all-male worlds through the exclusion of the feminine; and a nostalgia for a stable masculine identity derived more from a fear of the future than a remembrance of the past. The representations of masculinity in these films can be seen as part of a New Right Movement, symptomatic of Reaganite values. The films can also be read as a postmodern play with the images of another generation, in an acting out of excessive cultural expectations. The movies' version of masculinity also offered a fantasy space, providing heroism and power as a counterpoint to dissatisfaction and impotence. In encompassing elements of all of these, a conservative role playing that offered the protection of fantasy and the fun of a game, the films functioned as masquerade. This group of films were a masculine masquerade, in that they were an enactment of a conservative version of masculinity that was a pleasurable game of excess, and at the same time a defence against anxiety in the face of changing social patterns. The masquerade disguised as a quest for the phallus, hiding both the desire, and the refusal, to renounce masculine social powe