Logan (2017) and the lost object of masculinity, or the trouble with Shane | Intellect Skip to content
1981
2-3: Lonely Are the Brave
  • ISSN: 1466-0407
  • E-ISSN: 1758-9118

Abstract

James Mangold’s 2017 film, , offers up a future world in which the X-Men are no more. All that remains are a few old and ravaged mutants, including Logan and Xavier whose worsening dementia is having a catastrophic impact on his psychic abilities that is becoming increasingly dangerous for others. Both of these former X-Men become roped into assisting a group of synthetic mutant children as they run from those who attempt to subdue and destroy them. Principal among these children is X-23, Laura, who has been created from Logan’s DNA. By staging this potential daughter along with a suggested queerness of the other mutant children the film seemingly offers up a critique of patriarchal ideologies often at the heart of the superhero genre. However, this article is concerned with the way the film intertextually references the 1953 Western film , which creates an ambivalence in meaning. The presence of , the article argues, disturbs the surface gender critical storyline offering up instead the sense of a redemptive heroic masculinity that wrangles patriarchal ideology in through the backdoor.

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/content/journals/10.1386/ejac_00103_1
2023-10-24
2024-05-03
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