the damaged male and the contemporary american war film

So far, we have the essential elements of masochistic aesthetics delineated as the performance
of pain, the portrayal of a suspenseful moment before the infliction of violence, the
fetishization of the accoutrements of the masochistic scenario, and a crucial self-regard in
bearing witness to the victim’s own victimized status. It is useful at this point to bring in
Steven Shaviro’s theories of masochism and film studies in order to flesh out our conception
of masochistic aesthetics.
In discussing Fassbinder’s Querelle, 89 he argues that ‘we are seduced and initiated into the
secret pleasures of abjection.’ 90 The point is that masochism is not analogous to abjection, but,
according to Shaviro, its stylistics, and the masochistic scene, makes abjection curiously
pleasurable. This pleasure is due to the tactile qualities of the films. By this, what is meant is
that in our visual interaction with the film, our consumption of the image and the narrative is
rendered pleasurable by our intimate connection to the affective, emotive pleasures of
revelling in the intimate details of the mise-en-scene, editing, and sound design. The pleasures
offered up by this affective corporeal response to spine-tingling sounds, compelling images,
and satisfying spatial configurations make the aesthetics of masochism gratifying, hence our
‘seduction’ into it.
Obviously, this is a radically passionate account of the textual and visual pleasures of cinema,
and is one that is very personal to Shaviro, who describes his specific reactions to films and
his revelling in their details as part of his philosophical intervention into Deleuzian
masochism. However, it is still useful in examining the stylistics of contemporary war films
89 A differentiation is required here; Querelle’s abjection is rooted in gay male sex, scatology, and the
eroticisation of corporeal waste, whereas in the films under discussion in this thesis, the abjection on display is
located in the destruction of male bodies, nightmare sequences, and traumatic memory.
90 Shaviro, The Cinematic Body, 197
28