Formations of Masculinity in Post-Communist Hungarian Cinema: Labyrinthian Men

by György Kalmár

Overview

This book investigates the formations of masculinity in Hungarian cinema after the fall of communism and explores some of the cultural phenomena of the years following the 1989 regime change. The films explored offer a unique perspective encompassing two entirely different worlds: state socialism and neoliberal capitalism. The films suggest that Eastern Europe is somehow different than its western counterpart and that its subjects are marked by what they went through before and after 1989. These films are all remembering, interpreting, picturing, marketing and trying to come to terms with this difference—with the memory and effects of state-socialism.  In looking closely at the films’ male figures, one may not only get a glimpse of the dramatic changes Eastern European societies went through after the fall of communism but also see the brave new world of global neoliberal capitalism through the eyes of the Eastern European newcomers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319636641
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	09/18/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	164
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

György Kalmár is Reader in film and cultural studies at the Department of British Studies of the University of Debrecen, Hungary.  His main teaching and research areas include literary and cultural theory, contemporary Hungarian film, gender studies, and British literature. He has published extensively in the above mentioned fields.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“By examining a number of key films produced in Hungary by directors such as György Pálfi, Kornél Mundruczó and Szabolcs Hajdú in the period following the fall of state socialism, Gyorgy Kalmar attempts to discover what happened to Hungarian men in this period. He argues that their protagonists are trapped in a ‘labyrinthine’ history of their country. Rather than taking this state of affairs for granted, Kalmar attempts to open up this labyrinth, drawing on the history of Hungary and its cinema, as well as his own experience as someone who grew up in the last period of state socialism and bore witness to Eastern Europe’s painful transition to the market economy.” (Ewa Mazierska, Professor of Contemporary Cinema at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, UK)

Editorial Reviews

This study of New Hungarian Cinema provides an interesting outline of important films from the new millennium and will be of interest to those interested in film as well as in recent Hungarian social and cultural studies.” (Clara Orban, Hungarian Cultural Studies, Vol. 13, 2020)

From the Publisher