Masculinity and Film Performance

Two men sit at their desks in an office that was burgled the previous night; their future as salesmen rests in the hands of the policeman in the adjacent room. ‘I swear it’s not a world of men’, Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) states matter-of-factly, ‘It’s a world of clock watchers, bureaucrats, office holders.… We’re the members of a dying breed. That’s why we gotta stick together.’ Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levene (Jack Lemmon) nods but is less confident than his colleague. Praising him on his performance that day, Roma continues: ‘I thought: “The Machine, there’s a man I would work with”.… That stuff you pulled.… That was admirable. It was the old stuff… The things I could learn from you.’ A nervous half-hearted smile crosses Levene’s face: he cannot contain his pride at being complimented by the best salesman in the office but, at the same time, he knows he does not deserve such an honour for he is the man who has stolen the Glengarry leads. As Roma makes a sales call, the camera stays on Levene. The actor takes his clasped hands to his face, presses his index fingers to the bridge of his nose and slowly draws his fingers down, outlining his nose until they rest against his lips (see Figure 1.1). He chokes slightly. With a resigned laugh and sad smile, he sighs and drops his still-clasped hands to his lap.

The term ‘performance’ has been adopted in a variety of ways by numerous disciplines, from literary and theatre studies, to the social sciences and education, spanning both theory and practice. Marvin Carlson has called attention to the ‘essential contestedness’ of performance, arguing that different appropriations of the term are so disparate that ‘a complete survey of them is hardly possible’.¹ It is not my intention in this chapter to attempt such a survey. However, there is a great deal to gain in bringing together differently inflected understandings of the concept; while effectively offering distinct and discrete interpretations, differing approaches do share key themes that are more complementary than contradictory. This chapter explores some of the central tenets of performance across disciplinary boundaries and assesses their usefulness in analysing cinematic performances of masculinity.

In the previous chapter, I considered the concept of ‘performance,’ assessing its usefulness in analysing the cinematic construction of masculinity and male angst. While the second part of the book will specifically examine a number of discursive moments affecting definitions of male identity that took place in the 1990s and 2000s, this chapter will examine, more explicitly, the role of the performer in the construction of such discursive moments. Through case studies of Michael Douglas, Bill Murray and William H. Macy, I examine the mechanics of performance employed by actors to portray angst, considering the specific methods used, how such performances have been read in popular culture and how certain actors have been aligned with ‘male crisis’ as a result of their on-screen performances.

The Wild Man was a prevalent popular cultural figure that raised questions about the state of masculinity at the start of the 1990s, frequently appearing in self-help books, on magazine covers, in politics, and on the screen. At first a mythical figure, popularised in the writings of American poet Robert Bly and his bestselling self-help book for men, Iron John (1990), the Wild Man was personified by Jeff Bridges on the cover of an Esquire special issue titled ‘Wild Men and Wimps’ in October 1991 (Figure 3.1). Scowling into the camera, Bridges looked animalistic with his lion-like mane growing past his shoulders and a week’s growth of hair on his face. In contrast to his facial appearance, Bridges wore a black bowtie, jacket and white shirt; a contradictory mix of ‘civilisation’ and ‘nature’, both cultivated and feral. With the ‘Wild Men’ cover line stamped in bold font across the actor’s forehead, the words resting atop his slanting bushy eyebrows and piercing grey-blue eyes, Bridges became in a single image a figurehead for the men’s movement championed by Bly at the start of the decade.¹ In smaller font and pushed to the edge of the Esquire cover, the Wimp was almost absent. Yet the presence of the Wimp, as the title of the special issue implies, was central to the construction of the Wild Man in the 1990s: the antithesis of Bridges’ wild, hyper-male.

A discussion of ‘The American Family’ in 2001 in US Department of State Journal, US Society and Values, underpins the complex and contradictory discourse around family and fatherhood during the 1990s and early 2000s. The journal special issue acknowledged that American society increasingly encompasses a variety of family units including single-parent households, adoptive households, stay-at-home dads, and step-parenting. Yet the overwhelming message of the journal issue, reinforced by the large accompanying image, was that the model, ideal, best family structure remained that of the ‘traditional’ family comprised of ‘mother, father and children’.¹ Starkly opposing the notion of the father as head of the family, the personification of the crisis of father absence was encapsulated by a 1992 Newsweek cover. The cover featured the image of a white, villainous-looking moustached man on a ‘wanted’ poster with the caption: ‘Deadbeat Dads: Wanted for Failure to Pay Child Support’.² Two years later, fatherlessness was highlighted by President Bill Clinton as the ‘single biggest social problem in our society’. David Blankenhorn — founder of the Institute for American Values and the National Fatherhood Initiative — called the deadbeat dad the ‘reigning villain of our contemporary fatherhood script’, claiming that ‘no other family behaviour, and no other family policy issue has generated such an urgent consensus on what is to be done’.³

A caricature of an elderly man, complete with white hair and exaggerated wrinkles, appeared on the 4 May 1998 cover of Time magazine. With one arm wrapped around a naked blonde woman, who clung to his neck in an intimate embrace, the man held a small blue pill close to his pursed lips. His eyes peered anxiously in the direction of the woman to see if she had noticed his guilty secret. His angst realised in the mediated treatment of male impotence, the suspicious-looking character personified the ‘dirty old man’ stereotype of the aging male. Seven years later, in the wake of mounting fears that the imminent mass retirement of America’s largest demographic would cause a ‘retirement crisis’, aging made the cover of Time once again. This time, a middle-aged man looked up in the air to see a flock of one-hundred dollar bills with wings fly off into the distance. ‘The Great Retirement Ripoff’, the headline proclaimed, ‘Millions of Americans who think they will retire with benefits are in for a NASTY SURPRISE.’

Through the actor and film case studies examined in this book, ‘male angst’ is presented as a performance on two levels. First, angst is revealed as a frown, a concave expression, sad eyes, trembling hands, or a contorted face: a gesture, a series of movements, a sequence of sounds. Second, angst is evident as the breakdown of ‘male’ social roles: the failure to be a ‘traditional’ father and the necessary revision of the father image; the acknowledgement that men can be both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’; or the realisation that the aging process calls for a reassessment of what it means to be a man. The chapters examine the performative nature of male identity by exploring the images and enactments of male angst that have frequently appeared in American films in the last two decades. The book not only considers the ways in which male instability has been performed both on and off screen but also reveals the constructedness of normative masculinity — itself an image consolidated and disseminated by the media. Overall, this book problematises notions of a quintessential ‘crisis of masculinity’ as epitomised by a select handful of actors or encapsulated by a specific film. Instead, the films and actors I discuss offer a miscellany of performance styles and demonstrate multiple tropes of male angst.