Notes bibliogr. Index

In You Tarzan, our contributors put down their lianas long enough to explore the darker continent of masculinity in the movies. Taking the popular cinema as their starting point, a number of male film scholars have been invited to turn the spotlight back on themselves; to name the 'un-named' feelings raised by films, stars or genres as well as importing some of the insights of feminist writing on gender to an analysis of the construction and reading of masculinity in films. Studies range from the gridiron jocks of the Holywood sports feature, to the elegant heroes in successive versions of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Essays on horror and the question of male masochism and pleasure rub shoulders with others on masculinity in the films of the Vietnam war, and comedy, camp and gay men, in this fascinating collection which puts forward new and more complex theories of masculinity in the cinema