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Shadows of Doubt
Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films
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Book Presentation:
In Shadows of Doubt: Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films, Barry Keith Grant questions the idea that Hollywood movies reflect moments of crisis in the dominant image of masculinity. Arguing instead that part of the mythic function of genre movies is to offer audiences an ongoing dialogue on issues of gender, Grant explores a wide range of genre films, including comedies, musicals, horror, science fiction, westerns, teen movies, and action films.
In ten chapters arranged chronologically according to the films discussed, Grant provides a series of close analyses of such disparate films such as Broken Blossoms, The Fatal Glass of Beer, Red River, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Night of the Living Dead, and The Hurt Locker to demonstrate that representations of masculinity in the movies involve a continuous process of ideological testing and negotiation. While some of the films considered offer important challenges to dominant representations of masculinity, others reveal an acceptance or capitulation to them.
Always attentive to the details of individual film texts, Grant also places the genre films he discusses within their historical contexts and the broader contexts and traditions of popular culture that inform them, including literature, theater, and music. Scholars of film and television studies as well as readers interested in gender studies will appreciate Shadows of Doubt.
About the Author:
Barry Keith Grant is a professor in the Department of Communications, Popular Culture, and Film at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. He is the author or editor of many books, including Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology, 100 Documentary Films (with Jim Hillier) and Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video (Wayne State University Press, 1998) and has served as editor-in-chief of the four-volume Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film.
Press Reviews:
The clear strength of this book is Grant's all-encompassing knowledge of film history and theory, which allows him to deal with a wide-ranging group of films and apply his theory and expertise in determining how the films approach masculinity…And he uses theory in a surprisingly approachable way…Summing up: highly recommended."
-G. R. Butters, Jr.
Grant's Shadows of Doubt is a collection of two decades of the author's work on Hollywood masculinity and popular genre. With individual case studies broadly corresponding to a century of Hollywood representation, Shadows of Doubt is a sweeping overview of the relationship between gender, American culture, and film genre from the birth of classical cinema to present day.
-Martin Fradley
In Shadows of Doubt, Barry Keith Grant moves through virtually the entire history of American cinema, from the silents to the new millennium. His knowledge is encyclopedic without being pedantic and he moves sure-footedly through other terrains of the popular culture landscape, especially music. In ranging so widely, Grant demonstrates both the ubiquity of masculinist ideals in American cinema and some key texts that challenge these notions within mainstream genre forms."
-David Desser, Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Despite the current interest in masculinity in film studies, there have been surprisingly few books published on the subject. Barry Keith Grant's Shadows of Doubt is a welcome-if not long overdue-contribution to both genre and masculinity studies in film."
-Philippa Gates, Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University
See the publisher website: Wayne State University Press
> From the same author:
Voyages of Discovery (2023)
The Cinema of Frederick Wiseman, revised and expanded edition
Subject: Director > Frederick Wiseman
Comics and Pop Culture (2019)
Adaptation from Panel to Frame
Dir. Barry Keith Grant and Scott Henderson
Notions of Genre (2016)
Writings on Popular Film Before Genre Theory
Dir. Barry Keith Grant and Malisa Kurtz
Subject: Film Analysis
Documenting the Documentary (2013)
Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, New and Expanded Edition
Dir. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski
Subject: Genre > Documentary
New Zealand Cinema (2011)
Interpreting the Past
Dir. Alistair Fox, Barry Keith Grant and Hilary Radner
Subject: Countries > New Zealand
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (2010)
Subject: One Film > Invasion of the Body Snatchers
American Cinema of the 1960s (2008)
Themes and Variations
Dir. Barry Keith Grant
Subject: On Films > Per period
Five Films by Frederick Wiseman (2006)
Titicut Follies, High School, Welfare, High School II, Public Housing
Dir. Barry Keith Grant
Subject: Director > Frederick Wiseman
> On a related topic:
Sexualised Masculinity (2025)
Men's Bodies in 21st Century Media Culture
by John Mercer and Clarissa Smith
Subject: Sociology
Clicas (2024)
Gender, Sexuality, and Struggle in Latina/o/x Gang Literature and Film
by Frank García
Subject: Sociology
White Cottage, White House (2023)
Irish American Masculinities in Classical Hollywood Cinema
by Tony Tracy
Subject: Sociology
Constructions of Masculinity in the Middle East and North Africa (2021)
Dir. Mohja Kahf and Nadine Sinno
Subject: Sociology
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