Masculine Jealousy and the Struggle for Possession in The End of the Affair

Abstract

This paper uses the representation of masculine jealousy in The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan, 1999) as a case study to explore the ongoing crisis of Western hegemonic masculinity and its depiction in mainstream cinema. Male jealousy is concerned with feelings of loss and wounded narcissism and so provides a useful focus to explore the emotional conflicts and losses of contemporary masculinities more generally. The End of the Affair is valuable to the exploration of affect and masculinity, for it provides a fluid and nuanced interpretation of male jealousy and rivalry whilst evoking the ambiguities of contemporary masculinities more generally. It also shows the potentiality of such representations for more nuanced interpretations of emotional masculinities within contemporary cinema. The paper employs a psycho‐cultural method to explore issues of emotional spectatorship and the affective relationship between the film text and its cultural reception in the press. It is significant that the less defensive quality of masculinity in the film was countered and potentially closed down in its cultural reception by hegemonic discourses within the UK press. Press responses to the film were shot through with anxieties about the potential failure of masculinity, the loss of mastery and the fear of otherness. Jealousy and betrayal were central themes of these press reviews in which anxieties about the depictions of masculinity and difference were encoded through the discourse of nation and Englishness.

Notes

1. For further discussion of the distinctions between modernist and postmodernist masculinities, see Minsky (1998).

2. On the one hand, it’s often argued that changes in contemporary culture have opened up new hegemonic spaces that enable the emergence of more fluid, less defensive masculinities (Frosh 1994; Minsky 1998; Yates 2000; Segal 1990). Yet on the other hand, it is argued that the changes and uncertainties of contemporary culture have provoked a more defensive response, contributing to a paranoid cultural ‘backlash’ in the media (Faludi 1991, 1999). For further discussion, see Bainbridge & Yates (2005).

3. A psychocultural approach, as defined here, combines psychoanalysis, cultural and film theory to explore the interrelation between culture, gender and unconscious fantasy.

4. These press reviews were taken from The End of the Affair (1999) press pack at the British Film Institute, London.

5. For a similar approach and an in‐depth discussion of the methodology used, see Croft’s (2000) analysis of The Piano (1993), where he traces the continuities between the film’s unconscious mode of address and the discourses of gender and desire contained in the press reviews.

6. As for example, in the renewed interest and influence of evolutionary psychology (Buss 2000). Segal (2000) critiques the renewed interest in evolutionary psychology and its gendered assumptions. The equation of ‘real’ feelings with the discourse of ‘real’ men can be back to the essentialist philosophy of the ‘men’s movement’ in the UK and the US, inspired by Bly’s (1990) Iron John.

7. There are certain parallels here between what is being described in terms of affect and spectatorship and Williams (1999) work on ‘Body Genres’, in terms of the power to induce a physical response in spectators.

8. The application of Winnicott’s (1971) idea of a ‘transitional space’ to these cultural forms suggests that they point to a shift in the representations of masculinity and the kinds of identifications that are being opened up for audiences (Bainbridge & Yates 2005).

9. To quote numerous press reports, Fiennes’s star persona also helps to convey a ‘brooding intensity’, that also adds to an aura of hidden depth and emotional suffering (Johnson 1999, p.7; Sutcliff 2000, p.19).

10. Thus the depiction of Bendrix’s jealousy appears to reflect two modes of being and experience associated with traditional and postmodern emotional sensibilities (Frosh 1994; Minsky 1998).

11. There was an earlier film adaptation of the book made in 1955 and Moore does not bring to her performance of Sarah the same neurotic edge, as Deborah Kerr’s portrayal of Sarah in the 1955 version of the film, who, true to the novel, appeared to be more flawed and worldly wise and seemed to possess a troubled psychological edge that Moore’s Sarah lacks. In the earlier version, Sarah’s character is given greater recognition throughout as we watch her wrestle with a number of theological dilemmas about the value of rationalism and the nature of Christian belief. This aspect of her struggle is ignored in Jordan’s film. However, although God may have been played down in Jordan’s version of the story, at times Sarah appears to have been deified instead.

12. From a Lacanian perspective, male jealousy is about the impossibility of ever knowing or possessing the mysterious feminine other (Lacan 1991, p.15) Lacan’s account of male jealousy is apt when applied to the story of Bendrix and Sarah, whose enigmatic presence evokes Lacan’s description of the unknowable mystical woman, and Bendrix, of the endless desiring jealous subject, in love with the object a that is forever out of reach.

13. These uncertainties are also expressed through the ambiguities of the film’s jealous mise‐en‐scène, where the authentic period details are contradicted by strange dream‐like lighting, flashbacks and the circular, music of Michael Nyman. The film’s expressive lighting is often reminiscent of paranoid film noir detective films of the 1940s, a genre, which is associated with masculinity in crisis (Spicer 2001).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Candida Yates

An earlier version of this paper was first presented at the Literature and Psychoanalysis Conference, at Greenwich, London, 2003. The proceedings from that conference are available at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/2003/index.html