Ghost Faces

Hollywood and Post-Millennial Masculinity

By David Greven

Subjects: Film Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Lesbian / Gay Studies, Popular Culture
Series: SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema
Paperback : 9781438460062, 314 pages, January 2017
Hardcover : 9781438460079, 314 pages, March 2016

Alternative formats available from:

Read Excerpt View Table of Contents

Request Desk or Examination Copy
Request a Media Review Copy

Table of contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Disrecognitions

1. Ghost Faces, Genre Bodies

2. The Murderous Origins of Bromance: Genre, Queer Killers, and Scream

3. “I Love You, Brom Bones”: Beta Male Comedies, Bromances, and American Culture

4. Apparitional Men: Masculinity and the Psychoanalytic Scene

5. Trick-or-Treating Alone: Rob Zombie’s Halloween

6. Torture/Porn: Hostel, Homophobia, and Gay Male Internet Pornography

Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Combines psychoanalysis, queer theory, masculinity studies, and cultural studies to explore contemporary manhood in film.

Description

Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Nonfiction category presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation

Ghost Faces explores the insidious nature of homophobia even in contemporary Hollywood films that promote their own homo-tolerance and appear to destabilize hegemonic masculinity. Reframing Laura Mulvey's and Gilles Deleuze's paradigms and offering close readings grounded in psychoanalysis and queer theory, David Greven examines several key films and genre trends from the late 1990s forward. Movies considered range from the slasher film Scream to bromances and beta male comedies such as I Love You, Man to dramas such as Donnie Darko and 25th Hour to Rob Zombie's remake of the horror film Halloween. Greven also traces the disturbing connections between torture porn found in such films as Hostel and gay male Internet pornography.

David Greven is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina and the author of many books, including Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin and Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush.

Reviews

"Ghost Faces is a fascinating and important book that will offer film scholars interested in genre and gender much to consider. The book does not rely on production information or industry material, but instead on Greven's application of gender and queer theory in order to read and interpret his chosen films. His readings make readers want to go back and watch the films with fresh eyes, and that is after all what a good piece of film theory and scholarship should do. " — Film & History

". ..important food for thought in the postmillennial age. Highly recommended. " — CHOICE