The uncastrated man: the irrationality of masculinity portrayed in cinema.

In the margins of the cinematic and video film cultures one finds genres which the serious and more intellectual moviegoer usually will regard with scorn. These films are often dismissed on the ground that they merely indulge in violence, totally lacking psychological profundity and credibility. To this group belong cop films like Dirty Harry, science fiction thrillers like Alien, war machine films like Rambo, and the whole row of gore, splatter, and horror films. Unrestrained violence, dismemberments, gushes of blood and studied horror effects are commonplace. Produced in large numbers, they often display stereotyped and predictable dramatic effects and the psychological story seldom reaches deeper levels. Presumably most of these films are items for quick consumption, while a few attain the status of "cult movies."

"Cultishness" goes further than that, however, for in themselves these films seem to be a kind of ritual where a seemingly identical dramatic structure is reiterated many times over, but of course always within the thematic boundaries set up by each genre. I find such ritual repetition of dramatic themes to express an epoch's need to explore an experience that as yet has not been adequately formulated and thematized. As a consequence of fundamental changes in the social sphere, the individual finds himself standing before the unknown, demanding a response in the form of new attitudes, new explanations, or new social forms. The yet unformulated is at this stage a sort of enigma or mystery. Surely, the dramatic form can only retain the ungraspable nature of the mystery, but the manner in which it fascinates and captures the senses testifies to the presence of a connection between a deeper experience in the audience and the themes being repeated. And as long as the decisive issue remains merely staged as a dramatic scenario and not elaborated into a discursive form, repetition will be inevitable.

One genre that in particular has caught my interest is what we might call the "psychopath films." American cinema's obsession with the father-son dyad seems to have undergone a displacement from the classical Oedipal drama of the fifties and sixties, which portrayed a son more or less successfully struggling with his father to win a place in life and a measure of masculine dignity. The psychopath film, a genre whose beginnings could be seen in the seventies, undoubtedly has a thematic likeness to the classical Oedipal struggle in that it is played out between a younger man and one who could be his father. But the similarities go no further than that: here we are dealing with a considerably more "primitive" conflict.

The elder man in the psychopath film is no benevolent father, setting limits for his child with the good intent of ushering him along the path to becoming a grownup. Instead, he will typically draw the young man into his own warped orbit, attracting and fascinating him with his brutality, his strength, his attempts to corrupt him, and not seldom with perverse or homosexual temptations. The young man's world threatens to shatter as a result of the elder's boundless ruthlessness and destructivity, and the drama will lead up to the inevitable finale when he must kill before order can be reinstated. Often the implication is that the innocent youth through his action is transformed into a grown man.

My hypothesis in the following will be that in this kind of scenario a nostalgic wish to find a way back to ritual forms for becoming a man long since abandoned lingers on. The 1986 film The Hitcher, written and directed by Robert Hartman and with Rutger Hauer (as John Ryder) and Thomas C. Howell (as Jim Halsey) in the leading parts, will illustrate very well this kind of scenario.

"I want you to stop me"

Jim Halsey drives through the night in the desolate and monotonous landscapes of Texas. To help him stay awake he picks up the hitcher John Ryder. As soon as Ryder has told Halsey that the last person who gave him a ride got his head and limbs cut off, and that now the same will happen to him, the meaning of the uncanny feeling immediately surrounding Ryder's presence is clear.