Irish Masculinity on Screen

Examining images of gender and violence, this book analyzes selected works of three influential artists of the Irish cinema—Ford, Sheridan and Greengrass—whose careers, taken together, span the period from 1939 to the present. These three explore fundamental questions about identity, patriarchy and violence within Irish and Irish-American contexts, and in the process upset conventional notions of masculine authority. Furthermore, Ford’s later films interestingly depart from the egalitarian ideals that distinguish his pre–World War II films.

Joseph Paul Moser is an assistant professor of English and film studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Joseph Paul Moser

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 216
Bibliographic Info: 20 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7416-5
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0245-5
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments ix
Preface 1
Chapter 1. A Fragile Liberalism: Gender in John Ford’s Pre–World War II Cinema 21
Chapter 2. The Persistence of Patriarchy: Gender and Politics in John Ford’s Later Films 49
Chapter 3. Assimilation, Integration, Continuity and Critique: Gender and Genre in the Hollywood Irish Cinemas of John Ford and Jim Sheridan 83
Chapter 4. Jim Sheridan: Reconstructing the Family, Redefining the Nation 113
Chapter 5. Alternative Masculinity and Irish Historical Trauma in Paul
Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday and Omagh 139
Conclusion 165
Chapter Notes 175
Bibliography and Filmography 187
Index 197

“well-written…entertaining academic”—DVD Talk.