Reading the Bromance: Homosocial Relationships in Film and Television (Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Studies) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814338984 ISBN 13: 9780814338988

Publisher: Wayne State University Press, 2014

Synopsis

In the middle of this century's first decade, "bromance" emerged as a term denoting an emotionally intense bond between straight men. Yet bromance requires an expression of intimacy that always toys with being coded as something other than "straight" male behavior, even as it insists that such intimacy must never be misinterpreted. In Reading the Bromance: Homosocial Relationships in Film and Television, editor Michael DeAngelis has compiled a diverse group of essays that address the rise of this tricky phenomenon and explore the social and cultural functions it serves.

Contributors consider selected contemporary film and television texts, as well as the genres that historically inspired them, in order to explore what needs bromance attempts to fulfill in relationships between men-straight or otherwise. Essays analyze films ranging from I Love You, Man to Superbad, Humpday, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, The Hangover, and the Jackass films, and include studies of representative examples in international cinema such as Y tu mama tambien and classic and contemporary films of the Bollywood genre. The volume also examines the increasingly prevalent appearance of the bromance phenomenon in television narratives, from the "male bonding" rituals of Friends and Seinfeld to more recent manifestations in House, The Wire, and the MTV reality series Bromance.

From historical analysis to discourse analysis, sociological analysis, and queer theory, this volume provides a broad range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the phenomenon in the first booklength study of the bromance genre. Film and television scholars as well as readers interested in pop culture and queer studies will enjoy the insights of Reading the Bromance.

About this title

Book Description:

Explores the popular cultural phenomenon of "bromance" in film and television and its oppositions between homosexual and homosocial behavior.

About the Author:

Michael DeAngelis is associate professor of media and cinema studies at DePaul University. He is also the author of Gay Fandom and Crossover Stardom: James Dean, Mel Gibson, and Keanu Reeves.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0814338984
• ISBN 13: 9780814338988
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328
• Editor: DeAngelis Michael