
Brenda BoyleDenison University · Department of English
Brenda Boyle
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Publications (23)
When the mighty Kong breaks loose from those chrome-steel chains, when that giant ape bursts through the façade of the swanky Broadway theater to leap into a crowded Times Square—the beating heart of New York City, go-go capital of the modern world—it’s an undeniable moment of thrilling terror. Now comes the rampage, the wanton destruction. We’ve c...
This book investigates how contemporary filmic depictions of masculinity and monstrosity can be indicators of our cultural moment. As we’ve demonstrated in the preceding chapters, when dealing with movie monstrosity, a host of issues interact: gender, socioeconomics, warfare, sexuality, able-bodiedness, race. Some films reify the human/monster bina...
The movie 300, directed by Zack Snyder and based on the 1998 graphic novel of the same title by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, opened in the United States in March 2007 to great fanfare. In the first weekend, it set a March record for number of tickets sold (Reuters), outsold previous ancient battle films like Troy (2004) and Gladiator (2000), becam...
Weeks before Tropic Thunder opened in August 2008, disability advocates on Patricia Bauer’s website, News and Commentary on Disability Issues, damned the Ben Stiller film for the actor/director’s playing “a role that leans heavily on the term ‘retard’” (Bauer). Neither Bauer nor the responders to her online posting had seen the film and so could no...
Hegemonic masculinity is the gender performance that, at any given time, becomes “culturally exalted” over alternative masculine behaviors (Connell, “Social Organization” 38). Exemplars of modern hegemonic masculinity frequently are film actors, sports heroes, or even fantasy characters, ideals difficult or impossible to achieve. The actual practit...
Imagine that you’re sitting in the movie theater waiting to watch Terminator Salvation. You’ve bought your slightly overpriced movie ticket. You’re juggling your severely overpriced bucket of soda and barrel of popcorn. At this point, you’re tolerating the pre-programming, all the dross that precedes the trailers. Included in this lackluster cavalc...
In the Norsefire regime of James McTeigue’s 2006 film, V for Vendetta, we come face-to-face with the corporate-military monster we’ve only sensed lurking in the background of King Kong and 300. It should come as no surprise that figured in this near future, British totalitarian regime is the Bush administration of 2000-2008. Where Alan Moore, in hi...
Introductions: Of Masculine, Monstrous, and Me 1. Tossing Blondes in Peter Jackson's King Kong 2. Hooah! We...Are...Sparta! 3. Love and Violence in V for Vendetta 4. Going "Full Retard" in Tropic Thunder 5. The New Millennium Manliness Coda: The Monster's Suit
In The Other Side of Grief: The Home Front and the Aftermath in American Narratives of the Vietnam War, Maureen Ryan challenges the received notion that men, especially men who were engaged in its combat, understand the Vietnam War most fully and essentially. This privileging is evident in the mantra that “you had to be there” to understand, and th...
The critical response to Alien Resurrection marked a departure from negative responses to Alien3. Oblivious to the film's parting from the trilogy's characterization as ‘simultaneously feminist and gynophobic’, some critics remained
steadfast to that trope, insisting ‘Ripley is still the same person.’ Critics of the trilogy determined its sub-text...
Some critics of Coming Home (1978) hierarchize mental and physical disabilities, and judge disabilities in male bodies in terms both of gender and sexuality. This essay concludes that Vietnam War texts like Coming Home can be read as indicting the cultural mores that locate disability as the result of an inherent flaw, as they underscore the corrup...