Media Research essay

This research essay will explore the representations of Males in the war genre showing and expressing the different stereotypes that exist and how some of these may be challenged. This essay will explore the different electronic media types of film, television and of the quite popular games in the war genre.

There has always been existing that in the war genre, when you think of war it instantly relates towards males. War being full of extreme violence that can only be performed by males, as this being a stereotype of males and it being an expressive outlet of masculinity

Masculinity within the media outlet began at the start of world war 2 where Hollywood studios wanted to make war films based on the events happening on the battlefield and all the films and media that came out of Hollywood was male bound as all the people within the war where males and so males became the head of all war films due to war and violence being related to males at it shown and strengthened the idea of masculinity. In the beginning of media creation for the war genre many outlets had to be censored due to it being a rather new idea of violence and the further portrayal of males. As the idea strengthen by the mid 1950’s as many people got used to the violent portrayal of males and the strong idea of violent acts. As media outlets of this type became more popular the censorship of these outlets became to dissipate and the media started to show more content with violence that showed of the violence being masculinity and as final games started to show more violent content as the technology advanced and all most of which today is predominantly male led but in today’s worlds is there any change to what the male image has become within the war genre with representations of them becoming more than just being perceived as violent as an outlet for masculinity

First, a researcher by the Name of Matthew Sitter did some interesting research into the war genre and he quoted that: The new form of masculinity

associated with the soldier can therefore be a "highly self-conscious performance of gender

(Sitter, July 2012, Violence and Masculinity in Hollywood War Films During World War II, Page 1

Which from this quote the war genre mainly can define all future stereotypes of a genre as they are perceived to do one thing as war in general being quite a sensitive topic as its mainly involved with death and sadness. Violence of which spilled over from being in just the war genre and is now hugely present in genres such as science fiction and action genres, with electronic media being Television, film and more recently the gaming industry

The level of violence onscreen during the 1930's was limited by the Production Code with the co-operation of the major studios, and not by any squeamish or naïve audience.31 The popularity of films like Scarface attested to the fact that audiences were interested in seeing violence onscreen, and it was the Hollywood studios that were limiting violent content. Per the Code: “theatrical motion pictures... are primarily to be regarded as entertainment”. (chapter 2)

Through this, a representation that males having the war genre is that they are hero’s/soldiers/aggressive. In my research, I discovered to support this claim that in the Movie Fury (David Ayer, October 22^nd, 2014) with all the soldiers that take a huge role in the film are all males with no females being present as a part of the army but also with them being brutalist males with strong language and body language. A quote from the film to reinforce this point is: “We are here to killing fucking Kraus scum, not to play with fucking dolls so get your head out of your arse and do you fucking job of shooting the Nazi bastards” reinforcing the stereotype that all males in the army are aggressive. This points can also be shown in Battlefield 4 (EA DICE, October 29^th, 2013) as aggression is shown when one of the captured soldiers spits in the face of the Chinese commander who is holding them captive, with spitting being hugely dirty and as also as disrespectful towards the individual. Finally, to back up the above points In War Thunder (Gaijin 20^th October 2012), In one of the Cut scenes, one of the soldiers is seen stabbing an enemy soldier and then burning his dead corpse with some piece of debris which is on fire showing extreme amounts of violence and extreme aggression. A way that this point is challenged is in Fury when whilst the US soldiers where in one of the German towns a Nazi soldier is holding a surrender flag meaning that he is helpless and is being a coward showing none of the male masculine qualities, of aggression and violence but also not wanting to back down from a fight

Another point and representation I want to explain is all males being tough and not showing emotions 

A point to support this claim would be. At the beginning of the movie fury one of the main characters Norman doesn’t want to kill and his crew heavily abuse him due to that he isn’t the same as them. So, thus Norman gets angry and cries at the same time of screaming “I don’t want to Fucking be here” whilst punching the inside of the tank. Also in the middle of the Movie the tank commander wants to show Norman and teach him to kill Nazi soldiers by holding Norman in a head lock whilst he holds the gun and therefore the tank commander pulls the trigger and saying that Norman killed the Nazi soldier. Which results into Norman breaking down into a burst of anger and despair. Another example of this is in the television series Royal Marine Commando School (Channel 5, October 29th 2014) the training marines are getting grilled for doing a bad job at a training exercise and one of them is drifting asleep so one of the actual marines say to him “somewhere down your pants there is a pair of testicles, so take a grip” soon after the training marine gets very emotional and breaks into a flurry up unhappiness. In battlefield 4 at the beginning the main soldiers show little regard for the female soldier they are with, but at the end they show extreme emotion of anger when she commits suicide to save them from being killed. Before she does it you have a choice to choose who wants to sacrifice themselves and the other make soldier says “don’t give it to her wrecker, I’m a disposable piece of shit”. Whilst at the beginning he says “we should have to look after her as she doesn’t belong here” (showing total disregard for her being on the front line with them). Finally, in call of Duty Black Ops 2 (Treyarch, November 12^th, 2012) the male soldiers show heavy emotion of anger when the Militia snipe one of their friends and this translates in showing no emotion to enemy/mercy

References

Violence and Masculinity in Hollywood war films during World War 2 (Matthew Sitter)

 call of Duty Black Ops 2 (Treyarch, November 12th, 2012)

Battlefield 4 (EA DICE, October 29th, 2013)

Fury (David Ayer, October 22nd, 2014)

War Thunder (Gaijin 20th October 2012)

Royal Marines Commando School (Channel 5, October 29^th 2014)