#susan jeffords

[writing101decodingdisney-blog]

The Curse of Masculinity

Susan Jeffords’ writing, “The Curse of Masculinity,” changed the way I view male leaders in film and society. She starts her introduction using a real world example of men focusing more on their work or their family. Her example focused on the differing agendas of Republican candidates during the Reagan Era. President Ronald Reagan and Vice President Dan Quayle focused on family vales and moral principles during their campaigns, while President George Bush emphasized his list of achievements and experiences in politics. I believe she chose a good example to start the introduction because most Americans are familiar with the Reagan Era, and can relate to that example. However, I don’t think her hook is strong enough to capture the interest of readers who aren’t fascinated by politics. Also, when I first read the piece I didn’t understand how her introduction related to the Beauty and the Beast and society’s ideas about masculinity. I had to read the entire piece to understand how the two related. 

Jeffords’ thesis is that men in film are depicted as victims of their work and masculinity, and are saved by their families and women. In addition, until men are freed from their masculinity, everyone else around them suffers. I thought her thesis was easy to find, and it is restated throughout the piece. Also, she did an excellent job of taking examples from different films, relating it back to the thesis, and following the M.EA.L. plan for her body paragraphs. 

Jeffords’ first example is Leonard Reitman’s 1990 film Kindergarten Cop starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. She starts by summarizing the plot of the film, and sates how Schwarzenegger’s character changes from a tough and violent police officer to a loving father and teacher due to the help of his family. Like other 80’s heroes, John Kimball did his job too well, at the expense of his family. These men are depicted as the victims, and it is the job of the people around them to change their ways and to love them. Towards the end of the piece, she relates the Beauty and The Beast to the same idea. I never realized how heavily the film focuses on the Beast’s dilemma. Belle’s main role in the film is to change the Beast. Similar to the 80’s film, the Beast is the victim of his own masculinity, and it’s the fault of the people around him who didn’t teach him how to behave properly.

[querygallimaufry]

“Why this interest in Vietnam? Why would students who were not even in grade school when the war was over want to so much to take this class? Would over a thousand students sign up for a class on World War II? the Korean War? the Civil War? Certainly such interest did not exist immediately following the war, or any time soon after. What has taken place in the U.S. in the years since the war that has led to such a response? 

This book is an attempt to answer these questions, though not through the political, military, economic, religious, or even ethical paradigms that have often been put forth as interpretive frames for the war in Vietnam. Instead, this study suggests that an important way to read the war, perhaps the most significant way when we think about the war itself, is as a constructed of gendered interests. Although war might at first seem to be a ‘man’s world’ and therefore of little relevance to a discussion of relations between women and men, the arena of warfare and the Vietnam war in particular are not just fields of battle but fields of gender, in which enemies are depicted as feminine, wives and mothers and girl friends are justifications for fighting, and vocabularies are sexually motivated. But more than this, the representational features of the Vietnam War are structurally written through relations of gender, relations designed primarily to reinforce the interests of masculinity and patriarchy.” 

- Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (1989)