Thursday 17 October 2024

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 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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Tuesday 8 October 2024

V/H/S/Beyond (Various, 2024) Review

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That's why everyone likes filming spooky things with VHS cameras.” A few years ago the terror-fuelled streaming service Shudder took over the portmanteau horror franchise V/H/S, one that has always produced mixed results, from soaring heights of inventive and gore-drenched scares to crushing lows of misplaced fumbling for direction. Now onto their fourth entry in the long-running series, does Shudder's alien-themed V/H/S/Beyond deliver the gruesome, gruelling goods?...


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Sunday 15 September 2024

In A Violent Nature (Chris Nash, 2024) Review

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Animals don't get too hung-up on reason.” Taking the typical story of a slasher movie and inverting the POV to instead focus on the monstrous killer, debut feature writer/director Chris Nash sets out with a bold hook, but can it be sustained over 90 minutes?...


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Wednesday 28 August 2024

Flavours of the Month: July & August 2024...

Seventies sauce, humorous horror, and seeing how far the rabbit hole goes is just some of what's been setting the tone of my July & August 2024...


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Monday 15 July 2024

Mosquito (Gary Jones, 1994) Review

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My God – this looks like a proboscis!” Your common or garden mozzies have sucked the blood of an alien lifeform that has crashed to earth, and now they've mutated into giant man-killers and they've got a mad thirst on for some juicy human haemoglobin. So who's gonna save the world? A park ranger, a meteor hunter, and a chainsaw-wielding bank robber, that's who!...


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