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Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film

Paul, Daniel E
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563390733741339

Abstract Details

2019, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, French and Italian.
“Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film”, pushes against the generally accepted classification of teen film—with its romantic narratives and its classification as popular culture—as a feminine/feminized genre. I argue instead that such films privilege male protagonists and their coming-of-age experience and thus make central the masculine struggle of growing into adult- and manhood. Through close analysis of ten filmic texts, I demonstrate how Italian teen film proposes innovative forms of masculinity through its male protagonists, ones which often appropriate aspects of femininity such as caretaking and emotional availability. These forms of masculinity at once code the young men as inherently damaged, yet also allow the genre’s stereotypically female audiences to mourn the wounded men so that they can subsequently be recuperated into normative society. In that the films I discuss often centralize teenage romance, they are quite easily labeled as melodramas, or even romantic comedies. A common, though not constant, trope of the melodramatic mode is its tendency to depart from a space of innocence which is often characterized by hearth and home. For a melodrama to end happily, it typically does so by centralizing the heterosexual couple or the heteronormative family consisting of husband, wife, and child(ren) in an apparent return to the space of innocence from which it departed. In the dissertation, I contend that Italian teen film subverts the traditional heterocentric happy ending of melodrama by privileging male-male bonding, the surrogate father, and queer desire. By so doing, the male protagonists find new avenues for happiness and fulfillment, ones outside the heteronormative model. I thus argue that, despite its popular address, its consideration as a feminized genre, and its reliance on sentimentality, Italian teen film merits increased attention as a site of negotiation for contemporary notions of masculinity.
Dana Renga (Advisor)
Jonathan Combs-Schilling (Committee Member)
Linda Mizejewski (Committee Member)
Catherine O'Rawe (Committee Member)
219 p.
Film Studies; Foreign Language; Gender Studies; Motion Pictures
masculinity; Italian cinema; teen film; melodrama; male melodrama; Riccardo Scamarcio; gender

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Paul, D. E. (2019). Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563390733741339

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Paul, Daniel. Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film. 2019. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563390733741339.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Paul, Daniel. "Redefining a Gendered Genre: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Italian Teen Film." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1563390733741339

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.