Performance Anxiety: The Interaction of Gender and Power in the Full Monty

Australian Feminist Studies

Volumn 15, Issue 32, 2000, Pages 227-236

  Pearce, Sharyn ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0034374202     PISSN: 08164649     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08164640050138734     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. These remarks are to be found at The Full Monty website: 〈http.www.foxsearchlight.com/fullmonty〉.
2. David H.J. Morgan, Discovering Men (Routledge) London, 1992, p. 99.
3. In fact, The Full Monty does not seem to have aroused much of a critical debate at all. Film reviews have tended to frame it as a touching, yet easy-to-watch 'light-hearted comedy, where nobody's consciousness has been permanently raised' (San Francisco Chronicle, 13 August 1997, p. E4). It is commonly considered a 'nice little piece of fluff', a 'formulaic but enormously entertaining British feel-good movie' (The Advocate, 22 July 1997, no. 738, p. 55), which compares favourably with the wistful Japanese comedy, Shall We Dance?, as well as the two American box office disasters, Showgirls and Striptease. While the Times Literary Supplement calls it slight material which shouldn't be over-intellectualised (12 September 1997, no. 4928, p. 19), People Weekly offers a succinct analysis: 'a jolly, slick ensemble comedy' which is 'completely, cheerfully inoffensive, though there's something going on here about disempowered men trying to reclaim their masculinity by exposing themselves. Best not to think about it' (25 August 1997, vol. 48, no. 8, p. 24).
4. In fact, The Full Monty does not seem to have aroused much of a critical debate at all. Film reviews have tended to frame it as a touching, yet easy-to-watch 'light-hearted comedy, where nobody's consciousness has been permanently raised' (San Francisco Chronicle, 13 August 1997, p. E4). It is commonly considered a 'nice little piece of fluff', a 'formulaic but enormously entertaining British feel-good movie' (The Advocate, 22 July 1997, no. 738, p. 55), which compares favourably with the wistful Japanese comedy, Shall We Dance?, as well as the two American box office disasters, Showgirls and Striptease. While the Times Literary Supplement calls it slight material which shouldn't be over-intellectualised (12 September 1997, no. 4928, p. 19), People Weekly offers a succinct analysis: 'a jolly, slick ensemble comedy' which is 'completely, cheerfully inoffensive, though there's something going on here about disempowered men trying to reclaim their masculinity by exposing themselves. Best not to think about it' (25 August 1997, vol. 48, no. 8, p. 24).
5. In fact, The Full Monty does not seem to have aroused much of a critical debate at all. Film reviews have tended to frame it as a touching, yet easy-to-watch 'light-hearted comedy, where nobody's consciousness has been permanently raised' (San Francisco Chronicle, 13 August 1997, p. E4). It is commonly considered a 'nice little piece of fluff', a 'formulaic but enormously entertaining British feel-good movie' (The Advocate, 22 July 1997, no. 738, p. 55), which compares favourably with the wistful Japanese comedy, Shall We Dance?, as well as the two American box office disasters, Showgirls and Striptease. While the Times Literary Supplement calls it slight material which shouldn't be over-intellectualised (12 September 1997, no. 4928, p. 19), People Weekly offers a succinct analysis: 'a jolly, slick ensemble comedy' which is 'completely, cheerfully inoffensive, though there's something going on here about disempowered men trying to reclaim their masculinity by exposing themselves. Best not to think about it' (25 August 1997, vol. 48, no. 8, p. 24).
6. In fact, The Full Monty does not seem to have aroused much of a critical debate at all. Film reviews have tended to frame it as a touching, yet easy-to-watch 'light-hearted comedy, where nobody's consciousness has been permanently raised' (San Francisco Chronicle, 13 August 1997, p. E4). It is commonly considered a 'nice little piece of fluff', a 'formulaic but enormously entertaining British feel-good movie' (The Advocate, 22 July 1997, no. 738, p. 55), which compares favourably with the wistful Japanese comedy, Shall We Dance?, as well as the two American box office disasters, Showgirls and Striptease. While the Times Literary Supplement calls it slight material which shouldn't be over-intellectualised (12 September 1997, no. 4928, p. 19), People Weekly offers a succinct analysis: 'a jolly, slick ensemble comedy' which is 'completely, cheerfully inoffensive, though there's something going on here about disempowered men trying to reclaim their masculinity by exposing themselves. Best not to think about it' (25 August 1997, vol. 48, no. 8, p. 24).
7. I am referring here to R.W. Connell's germinal study, Masculinities (Polity Press) Cambridge, 1995.
8. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Virago) London, 1977, p. 327.
9. Catherine Waldby, 'Destruction, Boundary Erotics and Reconfigurations of the Heterosexual Male Body,' in Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn (eds), Sexy Bodies (Routledge) London, 1995, p. 268.
10. In grunge novels masculinity often finds itself marooned - confused, contradictory, exhausted and disempowered - in a climate of gender dislocation. For instance, Gordon Buchanan in 1988 (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1995, has little faith in his body as an object of desire. He is ashamed of his small penis, his lack of libido, his sexual incompetence compared with the confident sexuality demonstrated by the white women in the text. His body is diseased, covered with boils, abject and grotesque. In terms of hard/soft bodily categorisations, he is surely supremely pliant.
11. In 'Dragging it Out; Tales of Masculinity in Australian Cinema, from Crocodile Dundee to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 56 (1998), pp. 138-46, Rose Lucas explores some of these changes in the representation of Australian masculinity.
12. It must be said, however, that while the film manages to successfully critique the complex terrain of masculinity, arguing that the Outback, here demythologised and represented in a different sexual sphere, no longer has to be monopolised by one sort of sexuality or one sort of masculinity, it is less satisfactory in its representation of femininity, particularly the racially offensive Filipina character and the 'butch' woman in the hotel bar. In arguing for not just the usual colonising form of masculinity but also for a place for 'a cock in a frock on a rock', it is less generous towards variants of femininity - in fact, the text appears to be deeply misogynistic.
13. Laura Mulvey, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', in Visual and Other Pleasures (Indiana University Press) Bloomington, 1989, pp. 14-26.
14. David Buchbinder, Performance Anxieties: Reproducing Masculinity (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1998, p. 18.
15. David Collinson and Jeff Hearn, 'Men at Work; Multiple Masculinities/Multiple Workplaces' in Mairtin Mac an Ghaill (ed.), Understanding Masculinities (Open University Press) Buckingham, 1996, p. 67.
16. Morgan, Discovering Men, p. 116. See also Thomas W. Dunne, It's a Working Man's Town; Male Working-class Culture (McGill-Queen's University Press) Montreal, 1991 and Sara Willott and Christine Griffin, 'Men, Masculinity and the Challenge of Long-term Unemployment', in Mac an Ghaill (ed.), Understanding Masculinities, pp. 77-92, for further discussion of this particular debate.
17. Morgan, Discovering Men, p. 116. See also Thomas W. Dunne, It's a Working Man's Town; Male Working-class Culture (McGill-Queen's University Press) Montreal, 1991 and Sara Willott and Christine Griffin, 'Men, Masculinity and the Challenge of Long-term Unemployment', in Mac an Ghaill (ed.), Understanding Masculinities, pp. 77-92, for further discussion of this particular debate.
18. Morgan, Discovering Men, p. 116. See also Thomas W. Dunne, It's a Working Man's Town; Male Working-class Culture (McGill-Queen's University Press) Montreal, 1991 and Sara Willott and Christine Griffin, 'Men, Masculinity and the Challenge of Long-term Unemployment', in Mac an Ghaill (ed.), Understanding Masculinities, pp. 77-92, for further discussion of this particular debate.
19. Valerie Walkerdine, 'Class, Attainment and Sexuality in Late Twentieth Century Britain', Keynote Address at the Australian Women's Studies Conference, University of South Australia, Adelaide, 17 April 1998.