8220 The animal inside us 8221 Masculinity and violence

-It is a moral movie, but it's also a nihilistic one. It shows us the animal in us. The main problem for the audience is that they don't want to see the animal that's in all of us. Gaspar's film [Irreversible] forces us to see that animal.- And for Cassel, the animal is male. -It's a pro-female movie,- he says. -The purest thing in the movie is the woman. Men fight, they're ugly. The men are stupid, and selfish, and she's like the crushed flower.- Vincent Cassel on Gaspar Noe's Irreversible The discomfort with masculinity is not an invention of the late 20th century, but has been etched into modernity's fabric from its outset. By nature, men are considered violent, egoistic, asocial, amoral, hypersexual, animalistic, callous, devoid of communication skills and irresponsible. This seminar is looking at -Negative Andrology-, i.e. that discourse in which masculinity is always already associated with violence, and how it is expressed aesthetically in various literary texts and cinema. In the first sessions the seminar will provide a theoretical background which helps to understand the historical genealogy of this particular image of masculinity against which the image of a pacifistic and healing femininity has been constructed, and in how far the nature/culture debate plays a part in shaping and perpetuating it. Among others we will look at movies such as Fight Club, Brazil, Bronson, Straw Dogs, and Wolf, but we will also look at British theatre, in particular the 90's In-Yer-Face Theatre which expressed an overtly violent masculinity (Sarah Kane's Blasted, Anthony Neilson's Penetrator, Mark Ravenhill's Shopping & Fucking and Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, Jez Butterworth's Mojo, Tracy Lett's Killer Joe), and if possible, Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar and Pink Floyd's The Wall in music. Anglistik - Literaturwissenschaft Universität Siegen SoSe 2010 M.A. Wilkinson Nils M.A