After watching Burning, I can’t help but comment on how the movie reflects the intersections between classism and hypermasculinity, and how displays of harmful masculinity appear to be different depending on one’s socioeconomic status. This can be seen throughout the movie. Hypermasculinity is the term for exaggerated forms of masculinity, virility, and aggression. Ben reflects South Korea’s hegemonic masculinity: wealthy, charming, well-spoken, and handsome. However, less apparent are his more malignant traits: manipulative, narcissistic, and displaying traits of antisocial personality disorder, including deceitfulness, superficial charm and manipulation, a complete lack of empathy or remorse, and a fascination with causing harm to people or property (in this case, setting fires to “greenhouses” and possibly being connected to the disappearance of Hae-mi).
On the other hand, Jong-su is low-income, working multiple jobs, and tending to a farm while his father is incarcerated. He feels the need to prove his masculinity more than Ben; as one of the key elements to hegemonic masculinity is financial success, Jong-su is at a disadvantage and is considered less “masculine” by these standards because he belongs to a lower socioeconomic class. Therefore, Jong-su must use other avenues to prove his masculinity. Such is an example of J. Edward Sumerau’s concept of compensatory masculinity, in which men belonging to one or more subordinate social groups (race, socioeconomic status, non-cisheterosexuality, etc.) signify their masculinity by emphasizing the elements of hegemonic masculinity that they can still embody (Sumerau 2012). In this case, since Jong-su lacks the upper-class sophistication that Ben has, he overrepresents his cisheterosexuality and physical dominance (i.e. intimidation through threat or acts of injury or bodily harm). For example, he is very sexually driven, exemplified in numerous scenes in which Jong-su is having sex with Hae-mi or masturbating to her photos. He also stabs Ben to death in what appears to be a violent fit of rage.
Neither of these men appear to have a genuine stake in Hae-mi’s wellbeing, with Jong-su objectifying her and wanting to possess her, and Ben lacking empathy and possibly having something to do with her disappearance. Both provide harmful displays of masculinity which endanger those around them and attempt to bolster their own status higher than the other. Hegemonic masculinity is the pattern of practice (i.e., things done, not just a set of role expectations or an identity) that has allowed men’s dominance over women to continue (Connell 2005). Jong-su and Ben assert their dominance over Hae-mi in different ways due to their different displays of masculinity: Jong-Su by objectifying Hae-mi and being possessive over her, and Ben by being manipulative and using his money and charm to accomplish his ulterior motives.
Jong-su, the anti-hero of the film, is very expressive of the emotions deemed “acceptable” for mainstream masculinity: anger, jealousy, lust, and possessiveness, driven not by love but by desire to sexually possess Hae-mi, and he ends up killing Ben after his anger explodes. Such traits are overemphasized since he lacks access to the more “passive-aggressive” and manipulative nature of the middle-class cisheterosexual man and therefore must display a louder, more aggressive, more performative version of (toxic) hypermasculinity.
Sources:
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891243205278639
- https://thescratchcinema.com/burning-the-two-sides-of-toxic-masculinity/
- https://www.dapperq.com/2018/04/masculinity-is-not-a-gender-nor-is-toxic-masculinity/
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891243212439748
- https://www.psi.uba.ar/academica/carrerasdegrado/psicologia/sitios_catedras/practicas_profesionales/820_clinica_tr_personalidad_psicosis/material/dsm.pdf
- https://theconversation.com/the-real-problem-with-toxic-masculinity-is-that-it-assumes-there-is-only-one-way-of-being-a-man-110305
- Christa
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