masculinity

“Joe … be gentle with me … ” It’s easy to imagine this demure invitation to premarital sex getting some ribald hooting in British cinemas in 1959. Jack Clayton’s multi-Oscar-winning film was adapted by Neil Paterson from John Braine’s moody, zeitgeisty bestseller, and it’s rereleased now with the traditional trigger warning about offensive and outdated attitudes. Now, that could mean pretty much everything about this film – but without doubt it is specifically aimed at Hermione Baddeley praising the hero’s manliness and…

“There’s nothing fake about what we do,” says wrestler Kevin Von Erich (a teak-hued, wardrobe-sized Zac Efron delivering the finest, rawest performance of his career). He’s fielding a coy question from flirtatious fan (and girlfriend in waiting) Pam (Lily James), and he fervently believes what he’s saying. She, reasonably, asks him how anyone can call themselves a “world champion” wrestler when so much of what plays out in the ring is “pre-arranged”. Kevin argues that the performance is the point; that the difference…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain When a leader cries in public, is it a sign of weakness? On Jan. 14, 2023, Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik was crowned King Frederik X after his mother, Queen Margrethe II, announced she would be abdicating the throne during her annual New Year's Eve speech. After the queen signed a declaration of abdication in a…

I’m sure almost all of us have heard the phrases toxic masculinity, toxic men, and toxic women, but have you heard of toxic femininity? If not, the term "toxic femininity" is used to describe a broad concept of womanhood that is restrictive and repressive, including the pressures women experience to live up to stereotypically feminine features and behaviors.So it’s nothing new that women are constantly being told the way they need to dress up, behave or obviously, be a mother. In simple words, anything that women think,…

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett loves an erotic thriller. “The Bedroom Window with Elizabeth McGovern. Body Heat with Kathleen Turner. The Last Seduction … I mean, basically, I love all of those movies,” he says.The reason we are talking about erotic thrillers is that this is how I have just described Femme, an electrifying two-hander starring Stewart-Jarrett as Jules, a drag queen who is beaten up by a gang of homophobic young men. His life derailed by the attack, Jules withdraws into himself, until a chance encounter at a gay…

Wayne is a fixture on the banger circuit – a rough style of racing in self-built cars. Now that his son Jai-Dee is nearly 13, his debut “full contact” race is finally in view.Jess Kohl’s new short film immerses us into the boisterous world at the same time as revealing a tender relationship between a father and a son. This cinematic coming-of-age story poignantly reframes expectations of masculinity in a tough sport.I spoke with Kohl about making the film, how she gained the trust of this family in order to authentically…

Richard T Kelly writes the kind of chunky panoramic sagas thought to have gone out with the ark. Crusaders (2008) took place in his native Newcastle upon Tyne ahead of New Labour’s rise to power; The Knives (2016), more thrillerish, offered a non-demonising portrait of a beleaguered Tory home secretary in 2010. His quietly stimulating new novel, set in the years between Suez and Thatcher, centres on the discovery of North Sea oil, a subject rich in irony, not least because the advent of “black gold”, seen as the bedrock…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeThere’s a wide gap between outright acceptance and outright rejection. And it’s somewhere within that muddled centre that Dionne Edwards has set her directorial debut, Pretty Red Dress, about a husband’s reckoning with what it means to be a man. Edwards’s film is an admirable if somewhat slight attempt to explore how the gender binary harms all. And, more specifically, the rigid…

Posted in: Comics | Tagged: graphic novel, princeless, Wayward PrincesPrinceless no more - The Dashing School for Wayward Princes, a middle-grade graphic novel by Ben Kahn, Jeremy Whitley and Melissa Capriglione.The Dashing School for Wayward Princes, a middle-grade graphic novel by Ben Kahn of Renegade Rule and Jeremy Whitley of Princeless, drawn by Melissa Capriglione of Basil & Oregano. It tells the story of Leo, a supposed prince who knows that, deep down, she's really a princess. Despite the school's rigid and…

by Francisco Perales, Ella Kuskoff, Michael Flood and Tania King, The Conversation Credit: Shutterstock Today's men express their maleness in different ways. Some adhere to more traditional models of masculinity, characterized by beliefs in male superiority and endorsement of risky or violent behaviors. Others embrace more progressive stances.…