Boyhood Studies

These are ripe times to study boyhood in cinema. Even though male characters have undoubtedly dominated cinema roles from the start, boys’ stories have not been consistently produced or appreciated. Since the publication of Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth, a collection edited by Murray Pomerance and Frances Gateward in 2005, there has been increasing academic interest in boyhood representation through movies, as demonstrated by the articles collected here. This interest follows the expansive concerns of pop psychology texts at the turn of the century that took up the political and emotional consequences of boys’ behavior, such as Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood by William Pollack (1999), Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson (2000), and The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Sommers (2001).As is evident in their titles, this research joined the chorus of a prevailing masculinity in crisis theme that has permeated gender studies in recent years: boys have been troubled by the pressures of patriarchy, the demands of feminism, and the culture of capitalism, and thus are in need of rescue and protection from these influences.

This article explores the representation of youth masculinity in contemporary Hollywood comedy. By focusing on the intersection of gender and generation, it emphasizes the importance of relationality in a consideration of representations of boyhood. Using Superbad as a case study, this article reveals the nuanced ways in which the crisis of masculinity is represented in popular culture in a postfeminist context. Foregrounding issues of homosociality in coming-of-age narratives, it emphasizes the tensions between generational expectations and performances of gender. Themes of loss and nostalgia are explored through analysis of the juxtaposition of adult and adolescent male characters in Superbad, providing insight into and understanding of the complexities of boyhood. Superbad is contextualized in relation to teen comedy more broadly, highlighting the important cultural space that contemporary Hollywood comedies play in (re)constructing discourses of masculinity.

On the cinema screen, boyhood has often been depicted as a period of freedom, rebellion, and energy, a pre-cursor to manhood in which young boys are able to negotiate their identity and place within the world. In 1990s Hollywood, however, a wave of films turn to depicting the death of young boys on screen. As a result, boyhood becomes a site of vulnerability and weakness. This article seeks to examine the implications of these deaths, framing them within the context of a wider negotiation of masculinity and fatherhood politics. In addition, it questions the extent to which the deaths of these young boys can be read queerly, subverting the drive towards the future inherent in the figure of the child.

Offering a captivating exploration of seven-year-old Ludovic Fabre’s struggle against cultural expectations of normative boyhood masculinity, Alain Berliner’s blockbuster Ma Vie en Rose exposes the ways in which current sex and gender systems operate in cinematic representations of nonconforming gender identities. Using transing as our theoretical framework to investigate how gender is assembled and reassembled in and across other social categories such as age, we engage in a close reading of the film with a focus on Ludovic’s gender performance. Our analysis reveals three distinct but interrelated discourses—construction, correction, and narration—as the protagonist and Ludovic’s family and larger social circle attempt to work with, through, and against transgression of normative boyhood masculinity. We conclude by exploring the implications of transing boyhood gender performances.

The representation of adolescent same-sex love in Daniel Ribeiro’s Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho (2014) and Aluizio Abranches’s Do Começo ao Fim (2009) stands out from other treatments of adolescence and homosexuality in Brazilian/LatinAmerican cinema. The movies’ setting within an urban upper-class environment allows for a conception of adolescence as a prolonged period of carefree exploration. By intertwining the experience of adolescence with the discovery of emergent sexuality, the movies develop a model of sensual, gentle masculinity and a reciprocal concept of homosexual love, thus undermining the paradigmatic juxtaposition of active masculinity and passive femininity that has dominated cinematic representations of homosexual characters and same sex-encounters in Latin-American cinema.

Representations of the boy in Dutch educational literature shift considerably during the twentieth century while educational goals remain importantly unchanged. Optimism in education seen before the Second World War diminishes after the war as a result of social changes. While representations of boys take on increasingly negative tones, boys themselves may be changing little. This is suggested by the goals of education that remain constant during the entire century, goals which aim to free the boy as much as possible from troublesome behavior as mischief. Pedagogical aims to have boys adopt desired behavior, like courteousness, change during the 1970s and stress those of care and emotional strength. However, boys’ adoption of caring behaviors progresses so slowly the boy, often embraced as the hope of the fatherland in the first half of the twentieth century, is increasingly seen as a problem at the end of it.

Melissa Bingmann. 2015. Prep School Cowboys: Ranch Schools in the American West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 256 pp. ISBN 978-0826355430

Julia Grant. 2014. The Boy Problem: Educating Boys in Urban America, 1870-1970. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. 240 pp. $45.00 (hb) ISBN: 9781421412597 (hb) 9781421412603 (e-bk)

Christina Hoff Sommers. 2013. The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men. New and revised ed. New York: Simon & Schuster. 288 pp. ISBN: 9781451644180 (hb), 9781501125423 (pb, published 2015) 9781439126585 (e-bk)

Edward Fergus, Pedro Noguera, and Margary Martin. 2014. Schooling for Resilience: Improving the Life Trajectory of Black and Latino Boys. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. 296 pp. ISBN: 978-1-61250-675-3 (cloth) 978-1-61250-674-6 (pb)

Faye Z. Belgrave and Joshua Brevard. 2015. African American Boys: Identity, Culture, and Development. New York, NY: Springer, 2015. 174 pp., $129.00 (hb) ISBN: 9781493917174.

Kirkland C. Vaughans and Warren Spielberg, eds. 2014. The Psychology of Black Boys and Adolescents. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. 2 Volumes. 615 pp. ISBN 978-0-313-38198-0 (hb) 978-0-313-38199-7 (e-bk)

Boyhood: Twelve Years on Film, photographs by Matt Lankes, texts by Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Cathleen Sutherland, and Matt Lankes. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014. 200 pp. ISBN 978-1-4773-0541-6 (pb)

Katie Knowles. 2014. Shakespeare’s Boys: A Cultural History. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137005366 (hb) 9781137005373 (e-bk)

Deirdre Fishel (dir). 2012. The Boy Game. [videorecording]. [Harriman, NY]: New Day Films. Mind’s Eye Productions. 16 min.

Steven Brion-Meisels and Maura Clarke. The Boy Game: A Look at Bullying Through the Lens of Masculine Gender Norms. A Study Guide to Accompany the Film. N.d., PDF, 65 pp.