Article critique
Introduction
The body of the male, particularly the body of the white male in the article becomes a vessel of display of explosions, beauty, musculature and physical feats. This is the main direction taken by Susan Jeffords in her article, “Screening the Male”, to explore the theory of masculinity. As implied by Susan, the externality of the male body in itself confirms that the outward parameters of the white male body are primarily focused on the capturing the attention of the audience. Consequently, this present an avenue for exploring the dominance of masculinity in Hollywood cinema in line to Susan’s argument. The best way to achieve this is by critiquing Susan’s arguments and then applying her assertion to real life scenario of a movie produced in Hollywood. The most suitable movie for this exercise is “Terminator 2” since its plot features various actions prompted by masculinity.
Article Critique
In the process of writing the article ‘Screening the Male,' Jeffords is of the opinion that repetition is of importance in setting up a film. She argues that repetition is of an essence in that the film story highly depends on the repetition. The article through Terminator 2 embraces the idea of repetition by intentionally reusing the plots, the themes and the spectacles of its given predecessor that is Terminator 1. The repetition is of importance since it saves time and resources that could have otherwise been used for the scratch. However, the main setback of the principle of repetition in the film field is that it does not create room for new ideas and innovations.
This is a major setback in the article since most of its themes, the plots, and the spectacles are primarily of its predecessor, therefore there is no development in the creation of new ideas and innovation. Repetition should be used, but its use should be limited; this is to allow for the development of new ideas in the sector of the film. New inventions will attract more viewers and reader to the film. Therefore, masculinity as a repetition should be minimized to improve on the level of creativity and innovation.
Masculinity as fathering
The article describes the terminator as able to learn several activities from childhood to adulthood; this process of learning escalates as the terminator grows. It goes ahead to describe the terminator to be diverting its action from the process of killing people to that of saving them. In the article, the terminator has close contact with the human, it learns from what the human do and implements the ideal learning to real life situations such as that of saving the people. In line with this, the writer records “..the more contact I have with humans, the more I learn”, (Jeffords, pg.253).
The article supports masculinity as fathering to be an essential tool; this, however, should not be the case since in some cases the idea may be misused by other malicious parties to serve their interests. This process of learning can be misused by some people, as a machine chassis which is coated with flesh, it is important that it should not learn much in the real life. This fast process of learning can be used by some malicious people so that the terminator can serve their selfish interests. Take, for example, someone may use the terminator and reprogram it so that it acts as a weapon of destruction so as to serve the interest of other parties. Therefore, masculinity as fathering may not be appropriate as other people may use the technique to serve their interests. For a peaceful life, both in fiction and in real life, the machines developed should not be of quick intelligence, this might even surpass the intelligence of the human being, and it may cause havoc in the whole world when misused.
Application
Terminator 2 is a suitable movie example that can aid in exploring the theory of masculinity as implied in Susan’s article. Even though repetition may seem as a drawback in the article, its use in the movies is of economic importance. This is as used in the film of the Terminator 2, which embraces the idea of repetition by intentionally reusing the plots, the themes and the spectacles of its given predecessor that is Terminator 1. The repetition is of importance since it saves time and resources that could have otherwise been used for the scratch. When the idea of repetition is used, the production process of the film becomes efficient; this is because there is the reduction in the total cost both in the resources and the time taken to produce a new movie. In the film of the Terminator, doing repetition regarding plots, themes and spectacles have been of importance since it processor was very successful.
When the ideas are repeated, there is a higher chance that the film will be a hit and its success will be high, this is about the predecessor. Its predecessor Terminator was able to attract more viewers, and this is of significance to the Terminator 2 since it borrows most of the ideas of the Terminator. This increases its chance of attracting more viewers since its predecessor was also of the same trend. Therefore, the idea of masculinity as a repetition is of importance for the production of any movie. On the other hand, one must also be able to understand the flaws of the predecessor movie if the movie was not a hit, and then one should not use the aspect of repetition. This is because there is a high likelihood that the film is likely to fail if it borrows some ideas from a failed predecessor.
The idea of masculinity, as in the film the Terminator 2, is of value since it embraces the concept of being human and good hearted. This is because, in the movie, the Terminator 2 is programmed as is capable of giving help to the human society when confronted by any form of danger. Through this form of action, the Terminator is capable of protecting the future generations. The Terminator protects the human population; this is for the benefit of the society both in the real life and the fictions world.
For a better tomorrow, the human population of today must be adequately protected. This trait of individualism and human is exhibited by through the action of the Terminator in the film. In the world of today, such factious action can be of the essence since for they can convince the human mind on the form of action to take to protect both the children and the women for the humanity survival. Though the terminator that is a machine coated with flesh it represents the increasing technology in the current world. It is through these technological developments that the human population should be protected as exhibited by the protection offered by the terminator. The Terminator has close contact with the human, it learns from what the human do and implements the ideal learned to real life situations such as that of saving the people, it is throughout these learning processes that the terminator can use to save the current world. This is of the value of learning that these current changes in the technology can help bring change in the world.
Work cited
Susan, Jeffords. Can Masculinity be Terminated? In Screening the Male: Exploring masculinity in Hollywood cinema, ed Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark. London: Routledge, 1993, 245-262.
