by Nick Thomson © 2024
N.B. The following is a tweaked version of an essay that I wrote in November 2004, titled “From the idealised homosociality of Swingers to the problematic male bond in Shaun of the Dead”, for a third year course called 'Gender & Genre in Contemporary Cinema', during my BA degree in Film & Television Studies at the University of East Anglia. Considering that 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of Shaun of the Dead, I figured it was worth revisiting.
Do also note that the following contains SPOILERS for the films discussed.
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“For boys, the male gang is more important than one-on-one friendship, but the gang members require little closeness and rely on their abilities for membership”i. This essay will explore the idea of homosociality – or male friendship – as it is represented in film; most specifically in Swingers (Doug Liman, 1996) and Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004). The former is an American film, part of what could be called the 'friendship movie' or 'hang out' genre, while the latter, a British film, was sold as a 'rom-zom-com' (romantic zombie comedy), underneath which lies a potent subplot concerning male bonding.
Both films depict homosocial behaviour differently, yet also similarly. As Wyatt explains, gay male friendship is more inclusive of emotional intimacy, unlike the typical heterosexual counterpart; there has been a softening of this exclusivity in the past twenty years, but broadly speaking the status quo remains. The very idea of homosociality, of the male bond, denotes at least a certain level of intimacy shared between straight men – indeed, as Wyatt notes in his title, this 'straight intimacy' can be interpreted as “queerness”. However, to analyse these films, we must first consider what 'homosociality' means...
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Adolescent boys are much less interested in the prospect of one-on-one male/female emotional intimacy, so the male group is viewed with higher importance. On one hand this single-sex group can be fickle; membership is gained by having a skill in a certain area, e.g. 'the sporty one' or 'the funny one', as opposed to providing any substantive support network. Should a member fall foul of favour, they can be replaced with another male waiting in the wings, or just simply excised. But by late adolescence, the “male group diminishes in importance as interactions with the opposite sex fill the void”ii. Despite a natural progression towards mixed-sex groups, the male troupe still remains fundamentally important, perhaps growing more intimate as the members grow older and become more world-wise. For example, Kathryn Ann Farr speaks of the so-called 'Good Old Boys Group' – essentially what is on display in Swingers. A group of straight men, most of whom are popular with women and who, most interestingly in concern to dialogue, “adopt the form and style appropriate to their gender, even when playing among themselves”iii. Ritualistic mockery, group-specific catchphrases and, in a sense, man-to-man emasculation play key roles in the male social context. In Swingers, the male characters have their own vocabulary: “You're so money” is a form of praise, while “baby” is either a female or a term of endearment to one's friend.
As is common with the notion of homosociality, women are kept on the outskirts of the male group as merely an object of exchange, competition, or even as a cause of depression. But what of the representation of homosocial behaviour in Swingers?
While the comedy film, since the release of Animal House (John Landis, 1978) was perhaps more focused on 'gross out' adolescent humour, Diner (Barry Levinson, 1982) depicted a different collection of college students assessing the prospect of moving into the adult world. In fact, the representation of male friendship and the comedy film is closer than one might initially consider. American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) saw a group of high school graduates getting together before they all head in their own directions – college, the Vietnam war, or sticking around town. Within the realm of the comedy, the issue of friendship amongst men is an important one. For instance, Joel is often given advice by his best friend Miles in Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), urging him to throw caution to the wind and live his life beyond the confines of a textbook, while the centrality of 'the guys together' in American Pie (Paul Weitz, 1999) pertains to one of a series of considerable rites of passage in the male world: losing one's virginity, similar territory having been explored in countless films, including Porky's (Bob Clark, 1981) and The Last American Virgin (Boaz Davidson, 1982).
These movies display a movement through the teenage years towards impending adulthood, the first step of which is the adult-adolescent twenties. American Pie 2 (J.B. Rogers, 2001) sees the core group from the first movie gather for the first summer back home from college, an important but often undervalued transitionary period before the inevitable crumbling of the once rock solid group dynamic of one's heady and fumbling teens. Inevitably, the introduction of the opposite sex leads to considerable change in the social hierarchy of the group.
“From Animal House on, many of the comedies influenced by it have a male duo, occasionally a trio, at the centre of the group”iv, a pillar of most 'core group' dynamics, and with Liman's Swingers we continue to view the cinematic 'growing up' of the modern man. Depicting a group of mid-twenties 'young and hip' actors in Los Angeles, we open on Mike (Jon Favreau) and Rob (Ron Livingston) sat in a restaurant discussing Mike's ex-girlfriend, who is still causing him a great deal of anguish. As Rob dispenses advice, Mike notes that he couldn't talk about these things with any of his other friends; from the first scene we see the male support network, or what exists of it in a semi-clandestine manner, in operation. While Mike is conservative and relatively incompetent, at least when it comes to women, Trent (Vince Vaughn) is the liberal, risky, and confident counterpart, and then there is the young and irrational member of the group 'Sue' (named after the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”), played by Patrick Van Horn. Within this dynamic we witness a strong definition of homosociality on screen.
From the offset, women are peripheral beings essentially viewed in two roles throughout the majority of the film. The first role is that of competition: see Trent, who makes a game out of getting a woman's phone number at a slew of parties; as soon as the trophy has been acquired, he tears up the slip of paper – it's not about gaining sex or a relationship, it is a matter of group-based competition. The second role is that of a figure who creates no end of misery and anguish, exemplified by Mike pining for his ex while Rob tries to coach him through it. It could be argued that Swingers is the 'idealised' version of male friendship, focusing on the positive (yet fickle) traits of bonding. “Conventional middle-class western masculinity tends to suppress emotion and deny vulnerability”v and while this can be seen in Swingers, it is also not necessarily the case.
On one hand, embarrassing confrontations, such as Sue pulling out a gun on another group of men in a parking lot is quickly ironed-out by playing videogame hockey together, which typically descends into ritualised banter – calling each other “bitch” and play-fighting. On the other hand, though, Trent cries openly with his arm around Sue (instead of the girl he is with) as they watch Mike, having moved on from his ex, dance with new girl Lorraine (Heather Graham) at the end of film – as if a mother and father watching their son 'all grown up'. But could this, beyond the end credits roll, threaten the male bond?
Women, it seems here, can leave men depressed – and therefore emotionally reliant upon their friends – or take members away from the group. “Masculinities are often in tension, within and without. It seems that such tensions are important sources of change”vi, which is indeed the case in Liman's film. The male friendship film illustrates emotional development, moving between the psychology of the boy and the psychology of the man. But while the twenty-somethings in Swingers appear to still come together as an exclusively male mass by the end of the film (regardless of a new female presence), the prospect of turning 30 in Shaun of the Dead sets up another avenue of emotional change for the modern man.
Shaun (Simon Pegg) “lives with his best friend, who is the kind of spectre of apathy in a way, his old mate Ed who is just a complete waster”vii and is stuck in a dead end job. At 29 years old he's knocking on the door of his thirties, and it is ostensibly 'last call' for drunken all-nighters and lock-ins at the pub, particularly for his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), who yearns for a more exciting life – or just something, anything, different to break out of their dull routine. At the very least she'd like to spend more time together with just Shaun, away from Ed (Nick Frost), his best friend since childhood, who is little more than a messy layabout. Indeed, in Shaun's house it is only Shaun and Pete (Peter Serafinowicz) who are making any financial or organisational contribution – Ed merely dosses about playing videogames, scratching himself, and selling a bit of weed to the local teenagers. While Pete is moving forward in life – he has a good job and a car, a professional man in a suit who has left his hedonistic days in the rear view mirror – Ed has been stalled since his mid-teens and is consequently dragging down Shaun, trapping him, albeit not maliciously, in an eternal adult adolescence. This state will persist and only get worse, lest something drastic happen to change the course of Shaun's life.
Returning to Wyatt's observation of the 'queer' elements in male friendship, this can be viewed in the Pegg/Wright/Frost team-up prior to Shaun of the Dead – the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced. Here, we see a representation of children in adult bodies – Tim and Mike (Pegg and Frost respectively) – both obsessed with movies, comics, videogames, and a child-like romanticising of war. In the latter example, Tim performatively weeps over Mike's 'dead body' while paintballing, and throughout the series Tim refers to Mike as “babe”, who becomes hurt when Tim finds a new girlfriend and begins to spend less time with his old friend. Again, this exemplifies the struggles in male friendship when outsiders – particularly of the opposite sex – are introduced into the mix.
Shaun of the Dead is, however, inherently different to Swingers. The latter depicts an idealistic image of male bonding and the surrounding support network, while the former says that the heyday of boys-only escapades is over. Much like in adolescence, when the boys start chasing the girls, in adulthood the men will eventually fly away and nest with the women. In Liman's film the bond is still strong and surviving (at least for the next few years), despite Mike meeting Lorraine, but in Wright's film we see Shaun realising he has to move on. However, it is the woman who must initiate the change as Liz, after several years of stasis in her relationship, dumps Shaun. Typically, a drunken lad's night out soothes the initial pain, but also comes before Shaun's realisation that he must 'sort out' his life and 'get Liz back' – and that something drastic that helps change the course of his life? A zombie apocalypse.
By the end of the film, Shaun not only grows emotionally, but regains some part of the “true or deep masculinity”viii lost to 'boy psychology' or, in the case of Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999), the distractions of rampant commercialism, which is like feathering one's bachelor pad. While Swingers is specifically a male friendship comedy, Shaun of the Dead, with its blend of horror and comedy (and romance) “creates both distance and proximity”ix which allows the protagonists (and the viewer) to 'dance through the minefield of life' as Annette Kolodny has suggested. In this mix of comedy and horror, the viewer can see both the humour involved in the study of homosociality – allowing social tensions and taboos to be broached – as well as the reservations that men hold when taking that next big step in their lives. It is also generally accepted that “males tend to report greater enjoyment of horror films than do females”x, so does the use of the horror genre, in this respect, increase the importance of the male friendship plot line within Shaun of the Dead?
Perhaps even the time at which Shaun was released (2004) can be related to the position of masculinity. Victor Seidler discusses masculinity in relation to post-9/11 feelings; it is arguable, but he notes that fear of terrorism and war have made a generation of previously secure-minded men fall into a pit of fear. And it is fear which is seen as “something that does not belong to masculinity”xi – a sign of weakness, which in some ways means not to be a man. Even if you do not agree with the first part, the second part holds some relevance, especially as Shaun of the Dead sits comfortably in the realm of the horror comedy film. Shaun is the young male who is “unsure of who they are and what they want to become”xii, and who must make that step forward into 'real manhood' (turning 30), but in Shaun's case he must do it whilst simultaneously battling legions of flesh-eating ghouls. Indeed, this issue of the insecure male in society has only become more potent in the last twenty years, with further extensions to 'adult adolescence' for a whole host of reasons, some of which include: poor job prospects, limited personal funds, an inability to set foot on the housing ladder, cultural defenestration, and diminishing social skills in-tandem with lower quality of mental health, decreasing educational prospects, and a crisis of confidence within the global context of increasingly venomous and divisive arguments over 'what a man should be'. With clarity and certainty snatched from one's grasp, retreat or surrender is inevitable.
The relationship between Shaun and Ed can quite easily be read as a continuation of the bond shared between Tim and Mike in Spaced, two similar characters now on the verge of really growing up. Shaun is the perfect example of 'boy psychology', which “dominates men who have not had the initiations necessary for the important transition from boyhood to manhood”xiii. Indeed, it's important to note that in the story Shaun's father died when he was twelve and never really accepted his mother's new husband Philip. At a crucial point in his development, Shaun found himself without an accepted guiding male hand, and perhaps this aided in trapping him within a continual sense of adolescence. It can be difficult to escape such a dramatic change in one's familial structure, one that wields a significant emotional impact. The result of this leads to “passivity and weakness, the inability to act effectively and creatively in one's own life”xiv, which is certainly the case with Shaun.
Earlier in the film Shaun, who is practically sleepwalking through his existence, expresses that he has “things I want to do with my life”, only to be cast as inferior to a taller 17 year-old subordinate come the withering one-word response: “When?”. Has Shaun been working in this shop, seemingly staffed only by baby-faced teenagers, since he was their age? In the film's opening scene in the Winchester pub, Liz expresses her disappointment at the dull, dead-end lives that they are living, and his fumbling attempt to show he can change (booking a table at a restaurant) immediately meets with failure. Although he is essentially a working, independent male (albeit one who, much like a teenage boy, cannot remember to bring flowers on Mother's Day), it is Shaun's flatmate Pete who represents what Shaun must become sooner or later. Although aggressive and unwelcoming towards the slobbish Ed (who can't even manage to close the front door), Pete is (other than Shaun's parents) the only real grown up in the film prior to Shaun's transformation, and is disgusted to be living 'like a student' because of Ed – the childish and immature figure of Shaun's apathy. As Pete says: “all he ever does is hold you back. Or does it make your life easier having someone around who is more of a loser than you are?” However, over the course of the film we watch Shaun go from the boy stuck in an adult's body to a fully-fledged man and, through great stress and personal loss, become a leader.
As the zombie invasion worsens, Shaun begins to accept his passage into 'real' masculinity, having assumed (albeit awkwardly) the mantle of 'group leader', much to the consternation of wannabe rival leader – and lover – David (Dylan Moran). Having started the movie frequently defending his best friend, this blind kinship and, perhaps, crutch of a friendship is dealt a staggering blow when even Shaun becomes overtly dismayed by Ed's negative qualities (failing to help during the garden zombie attack, mindlessly texting on his phone like a teenager etc). “I've spent my entire life sticking my neck out for you, and all you ever do is fuck things up; fuck things up and make me look stupid! Well, I'm not going to let you do it any more, not today!” bellows Shaun, even to the surprise of his friends and own mother. In the somewhat ironic journey to the safe and all-too familiar territory of the Winchester pub (Shaun's wince-inducing suggestion of going there instead of the failed date to the restaurant was only the day before), we witness Shaun's almost complete transformation from loser to leader, but even his best efforts lead to disaster.
In the climactic passages of the film, Shaun loses his mother to a zombie bite (on top of already losing Philip, their reconciliation brief and all-too-late) before fighting through torn emotions, exacerbated by a technically correct but morally bankrupt David, to kill her when she reanimates – the last vestiges of her humanity melting away, as if a beloved parent fallen victim to dementia. With this major rite of passage, through the ringer of a horror movie scenario, Shaun finds himself truly in the driver's seat of adult life with no elder to defer to. To cement this transition, David – the snivelling, spineless grown-up male Shaun does not want to become – is torn asunder and, most importantly, Ed is bitten by an undead Pete – Shaun's abstract fear of growing up made literal: a looming ghoul hungry for his flesh. However, the delicate balance between bitter admonishment and lifelong friendship comes full circle as the previously passive and pliant Shaun, who whined like a child upon hearing step-father Philip had thrown his toys away and acquiesced to Pete's stern complaints, defiantly avenges Ed: “I said leave him alone!”
Descending into the pub cellar, now hopelessly surrounded by zombies, we see the strongest elements of the male bond come to the fore. There is no future for Ed – death is imminent – and so Shaun says a tearful goodbye to his friend, but the showing of true emotion, and typical of heterosexual male friendships, necessitates an undercut – with a methane-laced callback joke and a gentle mocking of Shaun's expression of love towards Ed. True to his adolescent character, “Love you” from Liz receives a humorously flippant “Cheers” from Ed, while the tearful same from Shaun elicits another callback – “Gay”, cementing the notion of just how often already rare displays of heartfelt affection between heterosexual males causes immediate discomfort and a leap for the escape hatch of a dismissive joke.
In the closing moments of the film, now six months later, we find Shaun and Liz happily living together, even if notions of adventures and excitement have been usurped by domestic comfort and cosy, tidy familiarity – their plans for a lazy Sunday peak with a pub lunch and a night in front of the TV. In a dark sense, killing or losing the people that were holding Shaun back, or giving him an excuse to underachieve, has allowed him to take the next step in life and enter his thirties appropriately as a more rounded individual, in-part because of Liz. But has he really moved that far forward? Could Liz, with her comfortably sedate plan for their Sunday, wind up “becoming an Ed”xv? Maybe, or maybe not, as the final shot suggests that, yet again, despite a woman entering the homosocial sphere, the male bond will live on – even if it's a sneaky hobby to enjoy, almost illicitly; entering the garden shed, Shaun plays a videogame with Ed, who is now a zombie. Despite turning thirty, a considerable threat to the male bond in itself, these two best mates can still be together every once in a while as Queen's “You're My Best Friend” plays us out.
Both Swingers and Shaun of the Dead represent male friendship as central. The former is more 'Hollywood', with the male support network seen as overtly positive and rarely dysfunctional, with its more glamorous notes – be it the Rat Pack fantasy of Las Vegas, the referencing of the 'cool guys walking' opening credits of Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), or the retro hip nature of dancing to swing music. Despite its grounding in reality, Swingers nonetheless carries a degree of idealisation, despite leaving its protagonist in a position that could just as easily cycle him back to the sorry state we found him in at the beginning of the film. Looking back to Seidler's discussion of post-9/11 masculinity could lead us to consider pre-2001, comparatively speaking, as a simpler and more carefree time. Indeed, with the War on Terror, a major global financial crisis, the increasingly rancid state of political discourse, the multitude of downsides inherent in Social Media, the widening chasm between rich and poor, the erosion of the middle class, and a global pandemic – among many other systemic and fundamental problems facing individuals, nations, and the world at large – the 21st Century has failed in its promise and just brought more of the same, only doing so much faster and far more intensely. Could Shaun of the Dead be considered some form of antithesis to Swingers? It is British, post-9/11, essentially 'realistic' (despite it's clearly fantastical genre elements), and far from 'glamorous' in the overcast setting of suburban London. It is also a sign that the cinematic young adult male has to grow up sometimes, but, in the realm of comedy at least, transformation does not have to lead to absolute conclusion; we can still go back at the end of both of these films to play videogames and have some time with 'just the guys'.
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iWyatt, Justin, 'Identity, Queerness and Homosocial Bonding: The Case of Swingers' in Peter Lehman (ed) Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture, (London, Routledge, 2001), p54
iiIbid, p54
iiiIllich, Ivan, Gender (UK, Marion Boyars, 1983), p132
ivPaul, William, 'The Impossibility of Romance: Hollywood Comedy, 1978-99' in Steve Neale (ed), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (London, BFI Publishing, 2002), p119
vConnell, R.W., The Men and The Boys (UK, Polity, 2000), p5
viIbid, p13
viiSimon Pegg, Shaun of the Dead EPK Featurette, DVD supplementary material
viiiIbid, Connell, p5
ixPinedo, Isabel Cristina, 'Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film' in Stephen Prince (ed), The Horror Film, (USA, Rutgers University Press, 2004), p111
xOliver, Mary Beth and Sanders, Meghan, 'The Appeal of Horror and Suspense' in Stephen Prince (ed), The Horror Film, (USA, Rutgers University Press, 2004), p242
xiSeidler, Victor, 'Transforming Masculinities: Bodies, Power, and Emotional Lives' in Anne Boran and Bernadette Murphy, Gender in Flux, (UK, Chester Academic Press, 2004), p18
xiiIbid, p29
xiiiMorris, Larry A., The Male Heterosexual, (USA, SAGE Publications Inc., 1997), p190
xivIbid, p190
xvSimon Pegg, Shaun of the Dead Audio Commentary, DVD supplementary material
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