#raging bull is full of toxic masculinity

[zalrb]

Thoughts on Raging Bull? Idk, I just watched it and couldn't really get into it and wasn't awed like I was with Taxi Driver... But I know it's one of your favourite movies and I'm interested in your opinion

Raging Bull is poetry. That's really the best way I can put it. It's often discussed that it's a movie that combines realism with surrealism i.e. the unapologetic violence of Jake and of the world he inhabits coupled with dream-like boxing sequences and the fact that it's in black-and-white which Michael Chapman (who was also the cinematographer on Taxi Driver) said was liberating because it was a step away from reality. And those boxing scenes, those highly stylized boxing scenes doubly reinforce brutality/Jake's pleasure in inflicting brutality as well as this hallucinatory, romantic dance

Many movies and books and shows are about toxic white masculinity and it's very overdone (and I mean, The Sopranos is heavily influenced by Scorsese in general which is why the show had 27 actors who were also in GoodFellas) but Scorsese depicts the psychopathy of Jake LaMotta through that combined lens of realism/surrealism to create a portrait of a man consumed with violence and sexual jealousy without sympathizing with him/asking the audience to sympathize with him but also without judgements that ring false, it's a blunt depiction packaged in cinematic artistry and the psychology of Jake was something I was actually interested in because of how Scorsese presented it, from a review:

La Motta’s violence is essentially sexual; what arouses his fury toward Vickie is, above all, jealousy, the overwhelming anger at the idea of her having relations with, or even an attraction to, another man. Though he’s furiously motivated by lust, he’s also bound by the long-standing tradition that a boxer’s strength is sparked by abstinence—in effect, by sexual frustration. Yet his own self-denial also denies his wife a vigorous sex life, which she complains about—and which fuels his jealousy all the more, with catastrophic results.

It's a film that lives in dialogue, in stares, in the use of space, in long takes, it's quiet and yet full of such passionate rage because Scorsese himself was going through an angry period and was killing himself with a drug addiction and DeNiro got him clean to do this movie so he credits both Raging Bull and DeNiro for saving his life and he thought it was the last movie he would ever make so it's deliberate, precise, painstaking, poignant, it's just, it's beautiful.

Which isn't to say there isn't anything wrong with it, like 99% of Scorsese's movies, women are incidental and lack the interior lives of the male protagonists, there are hardly any Black people and when there are, there are racist undertones/overtones also like in 99% of Scorsese's movies so it's not a perfect movie but it is art.

[feminismandmasculinities]

Raging Bull : crying for lost Masculinity

I'm gonna open his hole like this. Please excuse my French. I'm gonna make him suffer. I'm gonna make his mother wish she never had him - make him into dog meat... He's a nice, a nice kid. He's a pretty kid, too. I mean I don't know, I gotta problem if I should fuck him or fight him.

This is how Jake LaMotta gets rid of his anxiety, his insecure masculinity. He is sitting there pretending to be cool and indifferent to others while he is desperately following his wife Vicki greeting and kissing other men. from his POV, every man in the room is a threat, the tougher, the worse. the scene is a complicated full of tracking shots following Vickie walking in the Hall and greeting men, slow-motion of the men looking at her, kissing her, admiring her beauty cutting to Jake’s medium shot, extremely anxious and furious.

Scorsese among other  Hollywood new wave filmmakers,  was particularly obsessed with male identity as well as masculinity. The film portrays Jake Lamotta’s life as middleweight boxer. Jake is violent, edgy, irrational, and jealous. his extreme violence which shows itself whenever he is desperately in need of others ‘affirmation makes him more pathetic and miserable. He is worried about his image in other men’s eyes; his little girlish hands, his wight, his face which is not tough enough. Even his wife Vicki’s beauty is a threat to his masculinity. Does Vicky sleep with other men? Jake knows it and when he brutally beats Vicki to confess, he cannot even afford losing Vicki. His self-destructive behaviour when he asks his brother to punch his face hard until he looks tough enough, is an evident sign of his insecure masculinity. He lives in constant desperation and self- loath. He is suspicious of his own brother (did you fuck my wife?) and again he cannot afford losing his brother’s support either. Here, the hierarchy of masculinity is at work. Jake feels not masculine enough among other men. he is miserable not only to win the boxing matches but wining other men’s affirmation. He wants to be included, to be accepted in their masculine club. He calls his opponent pretty kid who is not worth fighting but…

Jake LaMotta could be read as a portrayal of American masculinity in crisis. Jake cries for stable, secure masculinity as classic Hollywood laments for its classic heroes. But nothing saves Jake from his anxiety to prove his tough manliness to other men. Jake LaMotta is a man who cannot afford losing, clearly because he has lost himself. But is Jake’s salvation somewhere outside the domain of American toxic masculinity? Who knows!