According To Masculinity As Spectacle Analysis

The notion of male crisis is very prevalent at this juncture in history. It encompasses many of the social, political, and academic debates about men. According to The Personal and the Political by Stephen Whitehead, Susan Faludi’s thesis is that the modern man has been ‘betrayed’ by a combination of factors, notably a sexist consumer culture that commodifies and objectifies the male; the loss of economic authority; the weakening and reshaping of men’s relationship to the world of work; the public exposure of dominant notions of masculinity to ridicule and censure; and the failure of men, as a gender group, to ‘rebel’ against their emasculinization by ‘the culture.’ Feminism has contributed to the destabilization of patriarchy and the male paradigm of control.

The male crisis has bled out of cultural discussion and is now being used to inform public policy; the discourse is being utilized by politicians to account for male educational ‘underachievement.’ It also is being used to account for men’s health issues and to connect crime and criminality. Public policy meets the male crisis in the number of conflicts between women and men over procreative matters. …show more content…
While Neale tried to argue that the elements Laura Mulvey considered in relation to images of woman could be considered in relation to images as well, he did agree with her basic premise that the spectatorial look in mainstream cinema is male. “It is one of the fundamental reasons why the erotic elements involved in the relations between the spectator and the male image have constantly to be repressed and disavowed” (Neale,