196)." This is what we see during the 1980s to throughout the 1990s cinema with films like Fatal Attraction (Lyne, motion picture film), Predator (McTiernan, John (dir), 1987, motion picture film), the Terminator film and sequels (Cameron, James (dir), 1984, 1991, and 2003, motion picture film), the Mad Max (Miller, George (dir),1979, 1981, and 1985, motion picture) series, and the Lethal Weapon (Donner, Richard (dir), 1987, 1989, 1992, and 1998, motion picture film) series. There is a shift away from the female leading character in film, to the masculine characters, or what Susan Jeffords calls the "hard body" films, or the leading man who woos the women viewers, kills them with kindness, and the focus of the film is all about male masculinity and the male body (Ayers, Drew, 2008, 41).
The hard body films, and ultimately the focus of the feminine perspective is what Carl Plantinga calls hypermasculinity, and it is satirized using a fictional band called Spinal Tap in a fictionalized documentary (Grant, Barry Keith, and Sloniowski, Jeanette, 1998, p. 318). The satire to which Plantanga is referring to surrounds the male genitalia, which becomes the focus of the satirical joke in the film, but, as Jeffords said, it would take a sophisticated viewer to make the connection between the way in which masculinity was being portrayed in film and This is Spinal Tap's depiction of a cucumber in one of the rock star's pants. The selection of the rock video to make this satirical was no coincidence, and Plantanga quotes Lisa Lewis as arguing that,.".. that rock videos draw on ideologies of adolescence and masculinity, creating a "male preferred address" which supports a social system of male privilege (35) (Plantanga, p. 319)."
The insights offered by Jeffords and Plantanga only serve to summarize what is evidenced by these films. They, like This is Spinal Tap, become the documentary of the evolution of masculinity in film. Only rarely, as is the case of actress Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3 (Scott, Ridley (dir), 1979, 1986, and 2007, motion picture film) do we see a lead female portraying herself as emotionally strong, capable, and possessing and demonstrating an IQ greater than her bra size. That Weaver's character is surrounded by men, and hard bodied men, does not go unnoticed; but Weaver's character, Ripley, is 1) unmoved by the masculinity, 2) the equal of the male characters portrayed in that she can handle weapons, and even a large mechanical loader (Aliens), and, 3) she is the problem solver even when the task of solving the problems initially rests with her male counterpart.
Even with the outstanding traits displayed by Weaver's character, and the storyline that is tightly wrapped around Ripley, it is the male presence that makes these films a great success beyond the initial box office. It is no coincidence that actor Michael Biehn, from John Cameron's Terminator films is Ripley's mental and physical...
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