Exacerbated Adolescence: The Heterosexual Male Bond in 'Swingers' and 'Shaun of the Dead'

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 20^th 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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Wonder Woman - in review...

What's it about?
The original superheroine finally gets her day in the realm of big budget blockbusters. This is the origin story of Diana, Princess of the Amazons, the warrior birthed of the Gods, who encounters mankind for the first time against the horrifying backdrop of World War I as she seeks to put an end to Ares, the God of War.
Who would I recognise in it?
Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Connie Nielson, Lucy Davis, Ewen Bremner, and others.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
It triumphed at the box office and was a critical success story (almost predictably so after the orchestrated clickbait bullying that Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad both received, pitched like some kind of Damascene conversion for DC) - but how does Wonder Woman sit outside all of the initial media interest and flash-in-the-pan obsession with box office numbers? The answer to gaining more female superheros in the genre is to create new, female superheros, not to lazily do an arbitrary bit of stunt writing to ask "what if this guy was a gal?" - because, if you really think about it, how insulting is that to everyone?

Newcomers to comics are disappointed to find that new releases aren't reflective of the hugely popular Marvel movies, while swapping the sex of an established character is a slap in the face to everyone. Not only is it a lazy move on the part of the writers and head honchos of the franchises, it also makes the suggestion that women aren't worthy of having their own custom-made superheroes. Furthermore, the binary sex-swap makes the insulting suggestion that women are incapable of enjoying male superheroes and that men are incapable of enjoying female superheroes, and that both can't find role models in the opposite sex - quite simply, that is utter bullshit.

Wonder Woman's history is a long one that pre-dates a vast swathe of rival Marvel's line-up of household names. Gal Gadot wowed in Batman v Superman (with a spine-tingling soundtrack riff to accompany her), and with DC getting a handle on their 'Expanded Universe', it was likely that Diana Prince's solo flick would turn out to be a cracker - and it certainly is. The film finds the perfect balance between DC's ability to 'go dark' (the merciless slaughter of World War I) and a sense of humour, warmth, and compassion...

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