When Birds Fily

Joe Demock

Word Count: 1794

A study of the representation of males within British crime films focusing on Ill Manors (2012) and Illegal Activity (2012)

It could be argued that in today’s film industry, the idea of masculinity within males is being lost. There has been a huge rise in the idea of the female-imposed ‘new man’ ideal according to Claire Monk (1997), which involves males acting a lot more feminine and losing their masculinity status. I am going to be discussing the representation of males today within British Crime films and how masculinity within these films is constructed, along with the dominant ideology of men within these films.

“Monk (1997) has characterised ‘new laddism’ as a ‘male backlash’ against the media – and – female-imposed ideal of ‘the new man’ and a regressive escape from the demands of maturity – and women. It is, she argues, reactionary in its attitude to both gender politics and social policy.” She argues that the expectations of males within films today is changing from the old dominant ideology of strong, dominant, masculine males to the idea of the ‘new-man’, a male who’s not as masculine and shows more feminine characteristics. However, my films go against the views of Monk, and the male characters within the film are represented as masculine, and follow the dominant ideology of most males within British crime films. The British crime genre is typically seen as a masculine male dominated film genre and go against most other films in this sense within today’s film industry.

Within both of the films that I studied, there are no major roles that are given to women. All of the major roles are given to men. This fits in well with part of my research where I discovered that the most popular demographic for British crime films is specifically male viewers aged between 18 and 24, who of which these types of films are usually about. In the film Ill Manors (2012), all of the main roles are given to men and women feature little in the...