From the Busy Basement

While I won't officially graduate until May - convenient for me, as I can still take advantage of teaching assistant opportunities - I completed my degree requirements for the M.A. in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University. As part of my degree, I prepared a "paper of publishable quality", which is my department's version of a thesis. I'll be presenting an abbreviated version of this paper at the upcoming PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio, Texas, and thought I'd share it here for anyone who wants to read it in its entirety!



"Come see a fat, old man sometime!" Masculinity and Aging in True Grit and Unforgiven analyzes the way True Grit (1969) and Unforgiven (1992) grapple with the antithetical construction of aging and masculinity in Western society. This analysis is achieved primarily through close readings of the films as works of historical fiction that project current concerns about masculinity into the past. Guided by scholarship on age in men and masculinity studies and on masculinity in Westerns, this reading foregrounds the way the aging heroes meet and largely overcome challenges to their masculinity, primarily through traditional demonstrations of strength, violence, and competence aided by the iconicity of each film's star. It is in the nature of these recuperations that a line between the untroubled masculinity of True Grit and the fractured masculinity of Unforgiven can be drawn. Both films reject the antithetical positioning of aging and masculinity in Western society (and many Westerns) and suggest through the bodies of aging gunslingers that even old men can be masculine. While this may seem an uplifting reclamation of masculine identity for older men, its reliance on the demonstration of physical strength, power, and domination tie it to growing requirements that men “age successfully” - which may be just as damaging as denying older men “masculinity” altogether.





Eventually, likely after it comes out on DVD and I can get a second viewing, I'll write a post or two about the new True Grit, the ways it both improves upon and has difficulty measuring up to the previous film, and the different portrayals of Mattie in the two films and novel.  If you're interested in the new film, I highly recommend Kelli Marshall's posts on the film. 

The subtitle for today should read “In which all the provided NOTES pages at the back of the program become filled”

After a nearly disastrous morning where my hosts caught me moments before I inadvertently set off their house alarm trying to leave without waking them, I caught the bus downtown for the first day of the conference. For some reason, I had expected the event to draw mostly undergrad and graduate students, so I was surprised to find myself one of the youngest people there. I would say the mix is probably 80/20 faculty/graduate students, which is both exciting and adds a little pressure to my presentation.

I attended several sessions today, with mixed results. Perhaps a brief recap of some of the more memorable/interesting bits is in order:

Session 1: Mediated Heroes - Real or Imagined? (Faculty from the Mass Comm department at CSU Pueblo)
This was easily my favorite panel of the day. The faculty who presented (Justin Bregar, Sam Ebersole, Sam Lovato, Richard Joyce, Jen Mullen, and Leticia Steffen) were engaging, interesting, and made for a varied but cohesive panel. The topics varied from A-list bloggers and Erma Bombeck to the odd interactions of the statuses of celebrity and hero in the media and why we don’t value journalism heroes like we do those of sports or military. I even learned that there is someone who makes social theory trading cards and Reclaim the Media makes Media Heroes ones (and Joyce gave each of us three of them)!

The question of whether there is (or should be) a line drawn between “heroes” and “celebrities” arose repeatedly in the presentations and discussion. I purposely chose not to engage with the issue in my own paper for the conference (for simplicity’s sake), although I think it is an interesting and important one in our day and age. The discussions always remind me of Joseph Campbell’s insistence in a difference between the two, and how important that is for societies. I do not have my copy of The Power of Myth with me at the moment, but I believe his important distinction between the two is that the hero does what s/he does for the good of the community while the celebrity has personal motives.

Session 2: Frontiers
I was initially quite excited about this panel, as I am finally channeling my own interest in the frontier, the cowboy, and so on into actual academic output this semester. While all the presentations were fascinating in their own way, the one that truly stuck out for me was Matthew R. Turner’s Black Sheriffs and Villains in White Hats: The Image of the Hero in Western Parodies. Focusing specifically on Blazing Saddles and Rustler’s Rhapsody, Turner delineated the ways in which parodic representations deconstruct and subvert the traditional Western hero - the black sheriff, the use of clothing & humor in Rustler’s Rhapsody to question the masculinity of the “singing cowboy” persona, who wins the shootout when both gunmen wear white hats?, etc. These representations rely on and remain in the tradition of the genre to an extent, though. Because of this, they are an evolution of the genre and in some ways presaged/paved the way for the more postmodern, deconstructed, or complicated/ambivalent Western heroes of recent years (Unforgiven, etc) - not the end of the genre, as some called Blazing Saddles. It was utterly fascinating, and I am excited to look up some of the theorists and authors mentioned in the presentation.


Session 3: Representations
This was one of a number of panels at the conference with a less-than-informative title, but the panels all focused on art at some level. I initially attended to hear Ziad R. AbiChakra’s presentation Carving Heroism in Stone: The Contested Space of Lebanon’s World War I Martyr’s Statues, which was extremely fascinated. One of the courses I am taking this semester is on memorializing trauma, and we spent the first several weeks of class discussing World War I monuments and memorials. Our focus was primarily on Europe, so I relished the opportunity to hear about Lebanon’s (especially since Lebanon was not an independent nation until after the war). AbiChakra detailed the erection, evolving meanings, and contestations of the two monuments in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square, and how the government’s recent recasting of the current monument to stand for all the martyrs of Lebanon’s past (instead of just the WWI-related martyrs it was originally intended) actually works to strip the monument of any real meaning for the people.

The surprise of this panel was Andrew J. Huebner’s presentation on memorials to non-Cubans in Havana, Cuba. Apparently, Havana is home to a number of monuments and memorials to individuals like John Lennon (as in the above photo), the Rosenbergs, Abraham Lincoln, the USS Maine.... memorials that, at first, seem out of place but are presented as fitting within anti-capitalist, anti-imperial, anti-racist, and anti-American discourses at the core of official Cuban rhetoric. While his presentation was largely preliminary work and thoughts on the topic, I found it one of the most intriguing of the entire conference.

Session 4: Re-Imagining Masculinity
I’m still not entirely certain how to unpack this panel, presented by three professors from the US Air Force Academy. The first spoke from a philosophical, rhetorical approach on the need for a more inclusive, less “definition-oriented” approach to masculinity, and the last on the need for empathy as an aspect of the warrior hero ethos (particularly as defined by the USAFA). Wedged between these was a professor who spoke on the use of Christian agape love as a model for masculinity, which, in theory, is not so bad. However, his argument (in both his presentation and the Q&A) devolved into a very heteronormative, heterosexist one founded on ideas like the biological difference between men and women that indicates women should not be in combat, that men are built to protect their nations, families and women, etc. It was intensely frustrating to listen to, as it seemed so proscriptive and limiting. There was no space for queer men (whose motivation may not stem from romantic love of women) or for women who are drawn to or more physically suited to what he described as appropriate “masculinity” (women who are physically strong, fast, or aggressive). The audience and the third panel member took him somewhat to task, but he remained stalwart in his (admittedly un-official and not indicative of the Air Force) opinion.

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As you may have noticed, it took me a while to get this recap up and running. Life caved back in on me when I returned - as it is wont to do - and I just couldn’t carve out the time to express all my thoughts on the presentations I attended. I will likely cover the rest of the conference in one post, picking out just a few presentations or panels that struck me. There might be other, unrelated posts before then, however...