Gay on Screen

In this essay masculinity and gender is examined and analyzed in movie posters forfour different movies: “A Single Man”, “Brokeback Mountain”, “Tom at the Farm” and “I Killed my Mother”. They all share themes which include the lead male role being sexually attracted to men.The theories focus on gender, stereotypes and sexuality in media with methods regarding semiotics and representation applied on the analysis - through a gender perspective. The study shows that the majority of the leading characters have typical masculine traits and attributes, which an exception for “Brokeback Mountain” which shares some of Fischers definition of gay portraits. John Fiske concludes that it is the people who control media and its design, not the other way around, which can be applied to some, but not all of the posters in this study. Fiske also claims that the media portrait is based on a patriarchal system, depicting men according to a masculine gender, in line with the results of this study