Men in Crisis Christopher Nolan, Un-truths and Fictionalising Masculinity

• Published in: The Cinema of Christopher Nolan pp. 85 - 98
• Main Author: Deakin, Peter
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: New York Chichester, West Sussex Wallflower Press 04.08.2015; Columbia University Press
• Subjects: Anthropology; Applied anthropology; Artists; Behavioral sciences; Capitalism; Central nervous system diseases; Comedians; Cultural anthropology; Cultural studies; Diseases; Economic disciplines; Economic theory; Economics; Employment; Epistemology; Fictionalism; Film studies; Gender identity; Gender studies; Health sciences; Heroism; Human behavior; Human populations; Insomnia; Jesters; Labor economics; Masculinity; Medical conditions; Men; Movies; Nervous system diseases; Neurological disorders; Occupations; Performing artists; Persons; Philosophy; Population studies; Prestige; Psychology; Reputation; Sleep disorders; Social perception; Social psychology; Social sciences
• ISBN: 9780231173977
• DOI: 10.7312/furb17396-009

Slavoj Žižek has suggested aboutThe Dark Knight(2008), one of Christopher Nolan’s most critically and commercially celebrated films, that the ‘undesirability of truth’ and within that space, the fragility of control, may appear as Nolan’s most dominant theme (2011: 61). Indeed, the concealed identities of ‘masked men’, narratives that require the unravelling of perverse truths and lies, all aggravated by ruptures in chronology, are each pertinent components of Nolan’s cinema. But also latent in Nolan’s films is an implicit play with gender. His films are loaded with desperate men and the moments that drive them to extremes; visceral representations