Masculinity, Violence, Resistance: A New Psychoanalytic Reading of Raging Bull
- Autores: Leighton Grist
- Localización: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, ISSN 0210-6124, Vol. 29, Nº 1, 2007, págs. 11-17
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
Long regarded as a canonical text of recent Hollywood cinema, Raging Bull has enjoyed not inconsiderable critical attention. The film's particularized representation of violent masculinity would correspondingly appear to invite psychoanalytic consideration. However, the influential analyses of Pam Cook and Robin Wood excepted, Raging Bull has received little detailed or sustained psychoanalytic examination. Attempting to rectify the situation, this article embeds psychoanalytic discussion within a close formal expounding of the text. In part the article builds upon the work of Cook and Wood, but it also significantly addresses the connotations of the seeming masochism of the film's protagonist, Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro): a masochism that in discussions of Raging Bull has too often tended to be assumed as axiomatic. Taking a Freudian/Lacanian approach, the article ultimately contends that while Raging Bull can be considered, ideologically, as potentially progressive, the film reaches a conclusion that can be regarded, psychoanalytically, as radical.
