Violence as Displacement: The Erotic Gaze in Gladiator and Fight Club :: Essays Papers

Violence as Displacement The Erotic Gaze in gladiator and battle fiat On the screen, two men writhe and make love on the cold concrete floor. One man on top, attribute the other from behind in a chokehold that causes the man on the bottom to succumb to the more powerful man. The dialogue by the cashier states that, Sometimes all you could hear were the flap, hard packing sounds over the yelling, or the wet choke when aboutone caught their breath and sprayed (Fight Club). The soundtrack consists of a few notes restate over and over again in a steady rung to the serve that is happening on the screen. The camera focuses on a close-up of the demonstrate of the man on bottom as he contorts into an expression of some(prenominal) pain and pleasure and moans loudly. Finally, the two men get up later on the action is finished and embrace. Panting and moaning, the last shudders of pleasure leave their bodies as the characterisation fades out and begins again with ano ther couple struggling on the cold concrete floor. The scene described above sounds as if it should be found in a pornographic video displayed on the shelves of a sex shop located in the back alleys of Soho in London. However, this scene is taken from director David Finchers widely popular drive Fight Club. Even though the scene has an intense air of the homoerotic, the characters in the film are actually fighting and not having sex. Steve Neale addresses this phenomenon in his term mannishness as Spectacle. He upholds the view of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey by maintaining that the spectatorial feeling in mainstream cinema is always male. A problem arises when the look of the spectator is forced upon an erotic shot of a male figure. The article states, that in a heterosexual and patriarchal society, the male body cannot be marked explicitly as the erotic object of another male look that look must be motivated in some other way, its erotic component oppress (Neale 14). The erotic component is repressed with violence or with mutilation of the male body. This repression is often found in the action genre in such films as Gladiator and Fight Club where the female object of the spectator gaze is replaced with male figures.