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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Quadruple Bill Mini Musings:

The World's End:
What's it about?
Terminal man-child Gary King gets his mates back together to re-attempt "the golden mile" pub crawl which bested them the last time, back when they were teenagers. However, all is not as it seems in their home town of Newton Haven - cue alien replicants and fisticuffs aplenty.
Who would I recognise in it?
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, and shedloads more.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Shaun of the Dead became an instant classic mixing romantic comedy with zombie-thwacking carnage and a poignant sense of brink-of-30 fear. Hot Fuzz was full-bore action comedy, a hyperactive shoot-em-up that threw every piece of lead at the screen ... but despite the machine-gun guffaws, it was lacking in emotional heft. The World's End - the third and final in the "Cornetto trilogy" - rediscovers the Wright/Pegg sense of English heart, combines it with gloopy-comedy-gore, full-on and non-stop laughs, and a surprisingly dark undertone. Pegg deserves considerable plaudits for making Gary King not only an entertaining character, but a sympathetic one - earning pity, laughs, and respect - in spite of the character's selfish, drug-fuelled, arrested development ways. Likewise, Frost stretches himself as a weary white collar lawyer who becomes a boozed-up, head-smashing Hulk. A sense of freshness underlines the alien invasion plot - something other recent 'alien invasion comedies' didn't bother with (The Watch, for example) - and really, the only minus-point is the threadbare arc for Pike's Sam. The World's End is a well crafted and extremely pleasing close to the Cornetto Trilogy. Great.

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