Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era - Research Paper Example

? Visual Arts and Film Studies By Due The Reagan era is often regarded as the era of bodies. The image followed after Ronald Reagan himself who was a healthy specimen of a human being who is not affected by the rigors of disease or aging. The impact of this young and fit look had a great influence on the movies of that era. The introduction of a former Mr. Universe, Arnold Schwarzenegger into movies is one of the aspects of introduction of hard body idea into Hollywood. According to Shulte-Sasse, the image of hard body became a symbol of unity for all of America. (Jeffords, 26) The hard body status was no more only for the heroes but also for the common American individuals. The people liked to see the movie stars in such personas and attempted to identify themselves as a result. From the very early days of filmmaking, movies used to convey strong political and moral messages. Movies had the power of reshaping the whole society and the higher authorities were quick to realize that. That made them create a censorship so that they could control what the public was watching. Ronald Reagan was himself an actor in the past and the public could not help but link his presidency to his acting days. He was largely identified by the roles that he had played in his movies. However, in reality, it is very difficult to find a link between his politics and his acting days. As of Reagan himself, his marriage was once seen as a typical marriage in Hollywood. But with the passage of time, as Reagan’s daughter recollects, Reagan had and lesser contribution to the family decisions than his wife. When the couple broke up, Reagan remarried and formed a tradition of being masculine both at home and at the office. Also, Reagan’s political messages became more gendered. After the Vietnam War, the American society seemed to have become effeminate. Reagan ideology attempted to restore the lost sense of masculinity. Moreover, the restoration of masculinity seems to be limited to white men. Black men have not been an active part of this hard body movement. However, there are some exceptions. In the movies of the Reagan era, masculinity has been a dominant subject. These movies displayed the male body in a manner that emphasized on masculinity. These bodies were “the indefatigable, muscular, and invincible masculine body [that] became the linchpin of the Reagan imaginary.” (Jeffords, 24, 25) The action adventure movies became a norm and the display of hard bodies like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger epitomized the same. One of the most convincing embodiments of hard body virtues is the character of John Rambo. The movie series has such a thumb print on the genre of action movies that every subsequent action movie is compared to it. The original character of Rambo from David Morrell's 1972 novel is more of a sympathetic monster who is bound to destruction because of his actions. Prior to Rambo Series, there were not many movies that promoted masculinity. Even Alfred Hitchcock’s movies had limited masculinity. According to Peberdy, “…both Hitch and his clientele represent a softer side of masculinity, offering on the one hand additional insight in the ‘permeation of a discourse of masculinity crisis during the 1990s and 2000s.” (7) In the movie, First Blood, Rambo is made heroic and the police play the role of villains. Rambo is never directly responsible for the death of any of his pursuers. Being a veteran of the Vietnam War, Rambo is both physically and psychologically disturbed. He keeps up the appearance of being unaffected by the war but from the inside, he is torn apart. The character is played by Sylvester Stallone who is very a good physical specimen. Rambo goes through great physicality in the movie. He suffers a lot physically but shows great endurance to physical pain. In First Blood, he falls through pine trees from a height and one of the pine branches rips his arm. He screams in pain for a moment but as a vindictive policeman, Golt, continues to go after him, he gets a hold of himself very quickly. After Golt falls out of his chopper and dies, Rambo uses a thread and a needle to stitch his arm by himself. It is a very painful process if no anesthetic is used. Rambo, however, shows very little pain while doing it. Not only is he shown to suffer in the present but his past also depicts that he has been a victim of torture in the POW camp in Vietnam. There are scars on his body and a flashback shows that he was brutally cut by his torturers. In Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo is captured on a reconnaissance mission in Vietnam. He has leeches all over his body but he shows little pain to his captors. This is also shown by Colonel Podovsky’s comments when he says to Rambo, “You seem no stranger to pain” and “The strongest so far”. Rambo is electrocuted at a very high voltage which is shown by the flickering electric bulbs. He screams with pain at times but never concedes to his captors all through the torture. He also intimidates his captors when Sergeant Yushin takes his knife from a brazier where it has been heating, and cuts a line on Rambo’s face. Rambo does not scream at this time and just grimaces. However, right after that, Rambo is very compassionate for his partner as when Colonel Podovsky directs Sergeant Yushin to put the knife in Rambo’s partner’s eye, Rambo agrees to radio his unit. While escaping from the POW camp, Rambo holds the barbed wire up with his bare hands and he shows great courage while doing so. He forms great affiliation towards with an agent who is a local woman named Co-Bao. After she helps him escape from the POW camp, Rambo kisses her and promises her to take her to America with him. However, Co gets killed in an attack by the Vietnamese. This is yet another aspect of Rambo being a hard body. As a warrior, Rambo must let go of sexual temptations and live to fight for what is right. Rambo is shown as an ascetic male hero who goes on all alone and renounces women and sexuality. In Rambo III, Rambo is shown fighting in a tournament showing great physicality. Once again, he shows compassion for his defeated opponent and helps him getting up. Instead of celebrating his victory, he quietly leaves in a motorboat showing the spirit of a warrior who fights alone. Later in the movie, when Rambo infiltrates the Russian base for the first time, he moves under a tank in order to get further inside and remain unseen. He holds a rope and tries to keep himself up. There is a moment when he is dragged by the tank, which is very painful. He grunts in pain but never lets the rope go hence showing manly courage. The most important scene that depicts Rambo as a hard body is where a piece of shrapnel from an explosion gets lodged into his body, and he works on his wound in firelight. He uses his thumb to force the shrapnel out of his body. Then he uses some gunpowder from a bullet, and a light stick to cauterize his wound. That is a very painful thing to do and Rambo might be the only person on the face of the earth who can do that. According to Jeffords, these scenes cause a huge amount of discomfort among the male members of the audience. (49) The male members can be expected to fantasize about imitating Rambo heroics but it is unlikely that they would fantasize about cauterizing their own wounds. Jeffords claims that the wounds of Rambo’s body have always failed to identify audience with him. She adds that scenes in which Rambo suffers refute the idea of his being a hard body for these scenes show that a hard body can be wounded. It is not invincible and not a machine but human flesh. The movie on the whole is a portrayal of Rambo’s body and the audience wants to have a body like that. However, the audience cannot be expected to go through the ordeals as Rambo does. Jeffords suggests that the eroticization of male body can be achieved without violence. Such violent scenes are also against the basic ideas of Reaganism according to which there must be adequate protection for the national body so that it can keep from hurting. Ronald Reagan was a politician but also an entertainer in his past. Jeffords points out that both politicians and moviemakers endeavor to find out the themes which can click with the mass audience. They try to find such themes with which the audience can identify themselves. This is why entertainment and politics often follow similar themes to create a connection with the audience. When the American hostages in Lebanon were freed, Ronald Reagan remarked, “Boy, I saw Rambo last night. Now I know what to do the next time this happens” (28). This shows that the president himself wanted the whole country to identify itself with the heroics of Rambo. He contributed in making Rambo the symbol of an American male. Another reason of endorsing Rambo to the Americans might be the fact that Rambo is shown as a veteran of the Vietnam War. He has had a horrid experience which has changed him. Many real life Vietnam War veterans can relate to that. It was actually the Vietnam War that had snatched away the intensity of masculinity of the American males. Rambo is shown to have had that experience to its fullest capacity but he is able to put the past behind him and move forward. In reality, there would have been many Vietnam War veterans who would have been trained like Rambo. But after experiencing the War and being in the prison camp, it would be very out of the ordinary if someone could perform such heroics as Rambo does. The events in the Rambo series are, therefore, highly exaggerated. But the ideals are always exaggerated. The ideals are perfect and the followers strive to be as close to the ideal as possible. Following is the discussion of movies whose hard body status can be judged by considering how far they resemble to Rambo. Fight Club Rambo series set the tone for hard body movies. A noteworthy and a very novel attempt in hard body movies is the movie Fight Club starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. Norton’s character has a psychological problem that results in his having an imaginary friend which is Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden. The fact that Tyler is imaginary is revealed at a very later stage of the movie. Norton’s character is unnamed throughout the movie. However, Tyler calls him Jack, which may be construed as his real name. The movie highlights a strange fact which is that consumerism makes the society feminine. Perhaps the biggest projection of this fact is the character of Bob who has been a bodybuilder in his past. He has been a pure hard body but the use of some medications has culminated in him having developed breasts. The protagonist’s character does not know what he is looking for in order to be satisfied. He finally finds the answer in a fight club which he creates with Tyler. Tyler is depicted as a hard body and a non-conformist. He appeals to the protagonist who is trying to break the shackles of feminism. Fight club makes him feel more like a male. Gerstner claims that, “Whether the national debate turned on the popular or avant-garde arts, the impulse to position art as “American,” white, and manly returned again and again to secure a national aesthetic.” (XII) Fight Club is yet another effort to restore this sense. The movie is dedicated to the protagonist’s efforts to become a hard body like Tyler. According to Gronstad, “One of the reasons that make Fight Club such a landmark event in the cinema of violence is that it represents the acme of a tradition in which the awareness of the artificiality and performativity of this violent Other has emerged only slowly and tentatively.” (172) Another aspect that sets Fight Club apart is that the violence of this movie is not accidental or unwanted by any of the parties involved. For instance, Tyler asks the protagonist to hit him as hard as he can. The protagonist is reluctant to do so but upon persistent requests, he hits Tyler. Tyler commends the protagonist but also hits him back. Afterwards, both characters start fighting with each other for no reason other than they just like to fight. The pain caused is caused by mutual consensus and subjugation to pain is deliberate. Later, when Tyler puts an acid solution on Jack’s wrist, Jack protests for a while but when he sees a mark on Tyler’s wrist too, he accepts the pain. Tyler tells him, “You just had a near-life experience” which means that only through feeling pain can the protagonist know that he is alive. One exception is the scene in which Jack fights against a young and handsome guy, and beats him mercilessly. He keeps on beating him even after he signals that Jack should stop. In a sharp contrast, the violence shown in Rambo is accidental and unavoidable. Rambo never subjugates to pain deliberately, and makes best efforts to avoid pain. Most of Jack’s and Tyler’s dialogues depict the fact that modern society is making them less masculine and they must break free. While expressing as to whom they would like to fight, they take a look at an underwear advertisement showing a male model. Jack challenges the ad saying, “Is that what a man looks like?” this shows that Jack desperately wants to lose his image of soft body. Tyler says to Jack, “We’re designed to be hunters and we’re in a society of shopping. There’s nothing to kill anymore, there’s nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that social emasculation is everyman created.” Jack’s struggle in retrieving his manhood is not a lone journey. There are hundreds of men who show interest in his fight club and want to become members. All of them want to claim their manhood back. Overall, the men in the society are very effeminate. This is shown by the fact that when Tyler gives the fight club members a “homework assignment”, the members try their best to initiate fights with people outside the club so that they can get beaten up. Most of them find it very difficult to find people who are also willing to fight. In the beginning of the movie, Jack indicates that all of his troubles started due to a girl named Marla Singer. Marla is depicted as a femme fatale who is dressed in black, wearing a hat, and smoking a cigarette. As the movie proceeds, the audience finds out that Marla actually knows very little about what is going on. This shows that being a female, Marla is a big threat to Jack’s masculinity. Her existence is nothing but a hurdle in Jack’s achievement of a hard body status. This is also shown in the bathtub scene when Tyler says, “We’re a generation of men raised by women. I doubt if another woman is what we need.” His ideal being is in the shape of Tyler Durden and he wants to be like him. His efforts to earn his manhood through fighting seem insufficient as he wants something more fulfilling. His alter ego, Tyler, creates an army with a vision of creating a prehistoric civilization of men “stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller center.” At the end of the movie, Jack gets rid of Tyler by shooting himself. All that he strives to achieve throughout the movie is actually achieved by his army but he makes attempts to stop it. This means that he retains some major aspects of his soft body days. The movie ends with major credit card companies crumbling down hence resetting the debts of the society. This also gives the “men” a chance to be “men” again. The Fighter The Fighter is a movie that tells the true story about a boxer named Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg. Unlike other movies telling true stories of boxers like Muhammad Ali and James Braddock, The Fighter tells the story of a welterweight boxer who was used as a stepping stone for other boxers. Ward is trained by his half-brother named Dicky Eklund, played by Christian Bale, who is famous for knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard a long time ago. However, he gets addicted to crack cocaine and becomes very weak. Ward is managed by his mother. Ward faces many challenges in his life and one of them is his dysfunctional family. His mother and brother do not care about what could happen to Ward’s body and career when they agree for Ward fighting a boxer who is 20 pounds heavier than him. Ward is beaten, which disappoints him and he quits boxing. Ward is shown as a strong man who gets stronger to overcome his challenges. The answer to all his problems and worries is in becoming a successful boxer. This can only be achieved when he trains harder and becomes a hard body. He needs to become immune to pain. Ward faces a great psychological setback when Dicky tries to raise money for Ward’s training through illegal means. Further, while trying to help Dicky when he is being beaten by the police, Ward gets his hand broken by one of the policemen. His pain and suffering is quite similar to that of Rambo because it is accidental and unavoidable. In order to regroup, Ward has to stay away from his family which is a difficult thing to do. He is lured into training again by his father. He trains very hard to become a hard body. He fights various fighters and works his way up the ladder without the help of his family. His psychological regrouping is not complete because he is away from his family and the people around him consistently try to instill the belief in his mind that his family is a bad influence. He remains confused as when he visits Dicky in the jail, he refuses to take Dicky’s honest advices. He thinks that Dicky wants to revive his own career. However, when he fights against an up and coming undefeated fighter, he finds Dicky’s advices very useful as they help him overcome his opponent. He remains confused about his family as when Dicky is released from jail, he favors the assistance of his family despite his contract stating otherwise. He has mixed feelings regarding whether Dicky really is a bad influence. This confusion makes his girlfriend leaving his side for some time. This confusion is dealt with by Dicky who reunites everyone. Ward wins the championship fight in London. At the end of movie, Dicky is shown giving the credit of Ward’s victory to Ward alone. But it is not true. Ward may not have even won the No.1 contender fight if it was not for Dicky’s advice. Therefore, Ward may not be a pure hard body. If his hard body status is benchmarked to that of Rambo, his status is much lower. Rambo works alone and is free of sexual temptations. He is a true warrior and requires minimum help from others. The same is not true for Ward. His life is greatly influenced by his family. His downfall is caused by his family and his family helps him get up again. However, it must be kept in mind that The Fighter is based on a true story and there are no pure hard bodies in real life. Therefore, Ward’s not being a pure hard body is not a drawback of the movie. The Dark Knight The Dark Night is the second installment to Christopher Nolan’s Batman series. The character of Batman/Bruce Wayne is played by Christian Bale. Batman has always been famous for having a great psychological problem. Having lost his parents in his childhood has a great impact on his mind. This event often stops him from functioning normally in the society. That traumatic experience has an influence on his masculinity too, because his father is not able to do anything to stop the tragedy. According to Calvin Thomas, “This inability not only feminizes Dad, as all inabilities and disempowerments conventionally will in patriarchal representation, but also threatens his privileged racial identity since… it is in reality black men who trouble getting cabs in New York City.” (Powrie, 220) Therefore, to some extent, his struggle is also to restore the masculinity of whites. His city, Gotham City, is full of crime. Few bad people have almost taken the city hostage for their own benefit. The whole system is corrupt and there is no other way than brute force that can make Gotham peaceful. To some extent, this movie can also be related to Fight Club because the cruel system has made men lose their masculinity to some extent. Bruce Wayne needs to become a hard body to combat with crime. The Dark Knight is notable for the character of the Joker, played by Heath Ledger. The Joker is responsible for most of the crimes in the city and even the criminals are afraid of him. He takes such measures that the whole city is left at his mercy. He destroys Gotham on his own volition and blames the destruction of the city on Batman because he refuses to come out of hiding. This creates a huge conflict for the protagonist. If he comes out of hiding, Batman would die (in spirit at least). If he does not, the Joker would keep on destroying Gotham and this would also challenge his masculinity as he would be considered a coward. Bruce has not always been a pure hard body as he repeatedly shows weaknesses that affect his performance. His attachment with Rachael takes him out of the definition of a lone warrior. Also, he is greatly dependent on Alfred and Lucius Fox. He cares a lot for Rachael and he knows that his enemies would come after her if he takes any action against them. This problem is greatly solved when he chooses the get-up of Batman for his crime fighting. However, he depends on Alfred to keep his secret and keep his equipment intact. Also, he requires Fox to keep his secret and make improvements to his equipment. As far as Bruce’s transformation to hard body is concerned, one needs to go back to Batman Begins in which he is taken by Ra's al Ghul and made a member of League of Shadows. He trains with ninjas in difficult circumstances. He becomes a hard body as he passes various tests which require great determination and strength. However, he refuses to execute a person who is allegedly guilty of a crime. He demands justice for the alleged. His disagreement ends up in the destruction of the whole training setup and in his leaving the league of shadows. He does not complete his training and that is probably the reason why he is never able to confront his inner demons. He ends up having two personalities. Bruce Wayne is often manipulated by others for he is a shy person. He likes to be reticent due to the impact of the events of his childhood. Batman seems to compensate for all the frustrations that he has to face as Bruce Wayne. Batman is confident and can stand up in front of the people against whom Bruce Wayne struggles. By joining the League of Shadows in Batman Begins, he becomes strong. But by recollecting himself to fight against the Joker in The Dark Knight, he becomes stronger. In The Dark Knight, Bruce watches Rachael die because of the Joker. However, when he gets the upper hand on the Joker at the end of the movie, he does not kill him. Had that been Rambo instead of Batman, the Joker would have surely died in a brutal manner. Batman stands to uphold the law and believes that even the most dangerous of criminals have a right to trial. There can be an argument whether Batman can be Batman without his armor and other equipment. If he can repel bullets, take hard hits, and survive huge falls, it is more because of his suit and less because of his being a hard body. Despite of these arguments, being Batman demands great courage and immense physicality. Therefore, though not to the extent of Rambo, Batman is a hard body. Raging Bull Raging Bull in another boxing movie telling the true story of Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro. Jake is quite a hothead as he beats up his first wife mercilessly. He also beats her during her pregnancy. Beating a woman never constitutes as one being a hard body. However, the extent to which Jake shows his independence makes him a very good candidate. His intent is very positive and he likes to get what he wants. He even beats up his own brother when he suspects that he has been sleeping with his second wife. The scenes of violence that really make Jake a hard body are his fight scenes. Especially, the final fight in which he is beaten by Sugar Ray Robinson, he takes great amount of punishment but refuses to go down easily. Once again, it can be argued that the “hard body” is shown as able to be wounded. Jake is a human and not invincible. He is beaten by one man only. But this man is bigger than him and probably better than him because he is young and has better reflexes. Jake is at the age where he struggles to keep up with his opponent’s athleticism. Even then, according to his age, his fight is shown as a remarkable one. He is always in the face of his opponent as if he is asking him to dish out more punishment. It is probably because of the fact that he knows that this fight would be the last fight of his career and he may never be put against such odds again. But the craving for violence in the movie on the part of Jake is willful and deliberate. He feels more and more masculine after each hit. This means that he partly is a hard body and partly desires to be a hard body. However, he settles for a domestic life at the end of the movie. This is very far from the concept of hard body. Compared to Rambo, Jake’s status of a hard body is quite low because he shows the signs of tiredness and laziness at the end of the movie. These are the characteristics that Jeffords has attributed to the soft bodies (24). Jake is left with some regrets as he talks about what he has become and what he could have been. On the other hand, Rambo is quite a free spirit who never airs his regrets out, if any. Also, he never settles for a certain thing but keeps on moving on in search of places in which he is needed. Therefore, Jake is a hard body that is turned into a soft body by the end of the movie. Spiderman The movie Spiderman shows a nerdy kid getting superpowers and becoming a hard body. The character of Peter Parker, played by Tobey Maguire, is a victim of the society. But the society is not as cruel and dark as it is for Batman. Living and blending in the society is difficult for Peter because he is an effeminate man. He is a quintessential geek who has trouble fitting in the world that is overshadowed by macho men. Peter never yearns of becoming a hard body at any point in his normal life. He tries to strengthen the depiction of masculinity through other means. For instance, he thinks that he would be more socially accepted if he has a cool car. Even after he gains superpowers miraculously, he still wants a car for himself as he is not sure whether becoming a hard body would truly show his masculine side. During his normal days, he knows and accepts his limitations and acts accordingly. It is at a very later stage that he finds out that he can impress Mary Jane through other means that do not involve a car. In a contrast, the protagonists have made deliberate efforts to become a hard body in aforementioned movies. It is different for Peter as he gets his powers without knowing anything. However, when he knows of his newly acquired capabilities, he gets very excited and makes efforts to become a hard body. This is shown in the scenes where he tries to jump as far as possible and tries to shoot the spider web out of his wrist whenever he wants. He spends a lot of time outdoors and tries to hone his skills. His goal of becoming strong and skilful is not primarily to fight crime. He wants to have some financial gain in some way. It is after his uncle’s unfortunate death that he decides to fight crime using his powers. He is very vulnerable in terms of the family ties that he has. Mary Jane, played by Kirsten Dunst, is the love of his life and the Green Goblin exploits this fact to his advantage. Also, the Green Goblin attacks Peter’s aunt and hospitalizes her. These attachments take away the lone warrior status from Spiderman. When he is hurt for the very first time, it comes as a shock to him. He is hurt and does not show the true spirit of a hard body. The cut that he receives is not as painful as the wounds that Rambo receives. However, Peter later learns how to deal with this pain with the passage of time. But his encounters are less physically intense as they are for Rambo or Jack. Overall, violence has not been able create such spectacles that would allow Peter to show his masculinity. For instance, Peter shows great anger and aggression when the killer of his uncle is trapped in front of him but Peter is not able to kill him on his own. He has doubts about doing so which show that he is yet to become completely masculine. The killer falls down accidentally. Also, the fight scenes are not such in which Peter has to kill anyone. The most he does is knocks someone unconscious or beats someone enough to make sure that he does not come after him anymore. It can be argued that the plot of the movie does not allow Peter to kill many men because the real threats to his society are posed by a solitary villain. According to modern standards and within the scope of the movie, Spiderman can be regarded as a hard body. In fact, Spiderman has given a new dimension to the portrayal of masculinity. The kind of hard body that Peter Parker is is quite an antithesis to classical macho masculinity as it has been portrayed in the Hollywood for many years. Therefore, though distant from Rambo in many respects, Spiderman can still be regarded as a hard body. Kick-Ass Kick-Ass is another movie in which a nerdy kid becomes a hard body. However, the extent of his hard body status is not very high. Unlike Spiderman, he willfully purchases a bodysuit and tries to become a superhero. During his initial crime fighting encounter, he gets stabbed and run over in a hit and run scenario. He is left with permanent nerve damage. This injury comes as a blessing in disguise for him as he gains an enhanced capacity to endure pain and enhanced durability. To some extent, it can be said that his powers are hard earned. But the manner in which he gets his powers is purely accidental. One of the major aspects of the protagonist’s efforts is the fact that everybody thinks that he is a homosexual. This rumor is a taint on his masculinity and the struggle to become a hard body is partly due to the fact that he wants to dispel these rumors. Therefore, masculinity comes as a great issue in the movie. There are many movies in which nerdy kids are shown getting dismissed by girls which forces them to resort to such actions that can depict their masculine sides. The protagonist of Kick-Ass is one such kid. However, his attention shifts purely to fighting crime after first few experiences. One of the major attributes of a hard body is its endurance to pain and Kick-Ass is all about that. Compared to Rambo, Kick-Ass comes quite close in respect of violence. The bloody encounters give the protagonist the mental strength of a hard bodied individual. However, like Spiderman, the protagonist is not strong from the beginning of the movie. He has to get some experience and go through painful events in order to become strong. However, after getting strong, he remains vigilant and continues to fight crime. Therefore, Kick-Ass is also a hard body. The discussion of the aforementioned movies shows the extent to which male characters strive to achieve the hard body status. The ideal hard body according to the Reagan ideology can never be attained. No matter how hard is the body, it can be hurt and be beaten. If physically supreme, the body can be hurt using other devices like threats to hurt loved ones or the innocent. Even Rambo has fallen to this threat at times. One can argue that The Terminator is a pure hard body because he is physically supreme and free from emotions. But The Terminator is a machine and hard body essentially requires the human element. However, it can clearly be seen the most compelling image of a hard body is Rambo. By using this character as a yardstick, one can measure the extent to which other male protagonist attempt to achieve the same status. The use of violence, endurance to pain, and hitting the enemy hard are the ideals purported by Rambo. The movies that have come afterwards have used the same to varying degrees in order to achieve the hard body status. Another major aspect is the restoration of masculinity in the hard body movies. If protagonists start out as weak or as soft bodies, they attempt to become strong. If they are already strong, they strive to become stronger. The weak protagonists often struggle to assert their masculinity by whatever means available to them. The attempts of showing off of masculinity are also mocked in the movies of post-Reagan era. For instance, male characters arriving in big cars are often described as having small penises. The most commendable efforts to achieve masculinity are made while trying to be a hard body as depicted by John Rambo. Therefore, it can rightly be said that the hard body ideal created during the Reagan era and personified by Rambo shaped American cinema by creating a standard for male physicality that continues to drive male coming of age narratives. References Jeffords, Susan. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print. Gronstad, Asbjorn. Transfigurations: Violence, Death and Masculinity in American Cinema. Amsterdam University Press: Holland, 2008. Print. Gerstner, David A. Manly Arts: Masculinity and Nation in Early American Cinema. Duke University Press: USA, 2006. Print. Peberdy, Donna. Masculinity and Film Performance Male Angst in Contemporary American Cinema. Houndmills: Palgrave-McMillan, 2011. Print. Powrie, Phil. The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema. London: Wallflower Press, 2004. Print. Rambo Trilogy. Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Perf. Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna. Tristar, 1982, 1985, 1988. Film. Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Edward Norton, Brad Pitt. 20th Century Fox, 1999. Film. Spiderman. Dir. Sam Raimi. Perf. Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco. Columbia Pictures, 2002. Film. Raging Bull. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf. Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci. United Artists, 1980. Film. The Fighter. Dir. David O. Russell. Perf. Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo. Paramount Pictures, 2010. Film. Kick-Ass. Dir. Matthew Vaughn. Perf. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Mark Strong, Nicolas Cage. Universal Pictures, 2010. The Dark Knight. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008. Film. Batman Begins. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson, Morgan Freeman. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2005. Film. Read More