In Zack Snyder’s filmography, there is fertile ground for subversive deeper reads on top of the highly-aestheticized text. These films often deal with hyper-gendered subjects who project strong secure identities. In their presentation, this security is found in the aesthetic but below that is less secure, conflicted, messaging. It is entirely possible, neigh probable, to find contradictory ideas in his films. Such as the case for his first original film, Sucker Punch (2011), whose theatrical cut was critically pilloried for its sexist and fetishistic portrayal of its female cast. After going over a brief survey of texts I will be using and applying them briefly to another film as example, this paper will examine the character of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as it relates masculinity and his struggle with what Freud termed reflexive sadomasochism.  

In her book, Men's Cinema: Masculinity and Mise-en-Scene in Hollywood, Stella Bruzzi proposes a critical framework of thinking about masculinity in film, specifically what she terms “men’s cinema”, male centric genre films, it is in her own words “cobweblike” whose various motifs and generic ticks gain significance in this context not in and of themselves. By emphasizing how mise en scene, or how the various filmmaking tools used individually or in synchronicity, work to construct and convey masculinity for the audience, Bruzzi proposes a way of considering masculinity in film beyond more normal representational terms. When examining the Burj Khalifa sequence from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) Bruzzi writes of the sequences effect on the viewer who is placed

"in a position of quasi-identification, not so much with the hero as with the films visual style … These adrenalin-driven emotions are not simply the result of more conventionalized identification with the muscular male hero, the figure of idealised masculinity on the screen; they are also responses less intellectual, more instinctive, physical, visceral; shaped by a noticeable conjunction of stylistic elements. Frequently (but by no means exclusively) spectacular, men’s cinema; uses style and mise en scene to convey masculinity, not merely to represent it."[1]

This framework is highly compatible when considering Zack Snyder’s work, his styling is predicated on more than pure imagery it is reliant on the synchronicity of filmic elements to emphasize his often, hyper gendered subjects. Without this cohesion individual elements can dominate and muddle the message he was trying to convey. This can also contribute to such polarizing reactions, as in the case of Sucker Punch a film derided as a straight forward sexist genre picture initially. It is the elements of mise en scene that allow Snyder to defend his movie as subversive critique of male centric sexist geek culture “It’s funny because someone asked me about why I dressed the girls like that and I said, ‘Do you not get the metaphor there? The girls are in a brothel performing for men in the dark. In the fantasy sequences, the men in the dark are us. The men in the dark are basically me: dorky sci-fi kids.’”[2] Since the films home video release with a director’s cut, it has developed a cult following who emphasize the more subversive elements Snyder claims to be aiming towards.



 In the film’s director cut a musical sequence was restored, set to cover Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug”. The critique of male dominated geek culture becomes clearer as everything in the film works together implicating the gauche behavior of the male audience’s mindless arousal at vapid titillation. Actors Carla Gugino & Oscar Isaac, preform as the phantasmic burlesque club’s Madame and emcee, respectively, their vocal and physical performances creating narrative cohesion for the music video styled sequence. The camera documents a night at the club as an unnamed man, among many, partakes in hedonistic ogling of performers, gamble, and otherwise give in to debauchery. Champagne bottles orgasmically pop off at the sight of one of the female performers. “Love”, or what passes for it in this commoditized form, is shown to be the product of one sided and minded pursuit for a singular audience. The sequence is simultaneously an evocative, sensual, and pleasurable, viewing experience and statement against the environment and conditions that allow it to flourish.