Constructing the (im)perfect cover: masculinity and agency in unbreakable and the usual suspects.

Friedman, Seth

[1] The aftermath of Osama bin Laden's targeted killing raised serious concerns about the U.S. government's suppression of information related to the event, including photographic evidence confirming his death. It was peculiar, then, that among the first artifacts made public were videos showcasing the al-Qaeda leader studying and managing his media image. Even more bizarre was the subsequent decision to announce that a stash of heterosexual pornography was confiscated from his expensive Abottabad compound. These efforts were clearly an attempt to demystify bin Laden's legend as the pious, cave-dwelling commander of al-Qaeda. Such revelations suggest that government officials hoped his public persona would be reinterpreted as an intricate performance that concealed an "authentic" gendered identity aligned with hegemonic Western masculinity, characterized by a voracious appetite for wealth, fame, power, and women.

[2] The event's fallout was also highlighted by news media accounts comparing it to a Hollywood film. This link was verified when Seal Team 6's successful raid became the climax of Zero Dark Thirty (2012). The escapade, though, appeals to Hollywood for reasons that extend beyond just the chance to reenact the operation. Zero Dark Thirty's central focus--its dogged heroine Maya's (Jessica Chastain) triumphant hunt for bin Laden--illustrates how Hollywood routinely distorts history by overemphasizing tales of exceptional individuals attaining lofty objectives. Such a tendency is unsurprising because, as David Bordwell argues in Narration in the Fiction Film, the "classical" Hollywood film's focus on "psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or attain specific goals" distinguishes it from alternatives (157). Whereas other cinematic traditions often do not present protagonist-driven quest narratives, Hollywood films have mass appeal largely because formal decisions are almost always subservient to its recognizable storytelling formula. In addition to the financial rewards linked to this canonical narrative and its associated invisible style, Hollywood benefits from it by mitigating political divisiveness. Its obsession with remarkable people overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles oversimplifies complex situations by boiling them down to Manichean battles between protagonists and antagonists. Although this helps the industry avoid taking unambiguous stands on controversial issues, its recurrent practices have cultural ramifications. Classical protagonists, for instance, are disproportionately white, heterosexual men. Zero Dark Thirty thus notably features a female lead in a traditionally male role. How far it deviates from dominant ideology is debatable, however, as professional dedication results in alienation for Maya, who is denied even the joy of the compulsory heterosexual romance.

[3] These examples show how mass media functions as an ideological state apparatus by engaging in the process of hegemonic negotiation. Media conglomerates do not portray culture monolithically because they both express and produce historically situated notions of identity. Yet, to maximize profits, producers generally play it safe by ultimately supporting conventional conceptions of cultural categories like gender. In this paper, I examine how a similar representation of masculinity in Unbreakable (2000) and The Usual Suspects (1995) epitomizes how reactionary gender politics persist in Hollywood. Unbreakable seems to center on the role that African American comic book dealer Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who has a severe brittle bone disease, plays in the remasculinization of real-life superhero, David Dunn (Bruce Willis). Likewise, in The Usual Suspects, Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), an allegedly small-time crook purportedly afflicted with cerebral palsy, recounts how he helps reformed criminal legend Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) resurrect his outlaw glory. Both films' renowned twist endings, however, show that their ostensible helper characters are actually arch-villains who exploit their protagonist buddies. The following analysis of these two films, therefore, illustrates how Hollywood sustains traditional conceptions of manhood at a time when explicit mediations of hegemonic masculinity are received skeptically. In particular, even though the twist endings reveal that seemingly feminized primary male characters are more powerful than conventionally masculine protagonists, they do not suggest that multiple masculinities are a reality. I ultimately contend that their apparent defiance of established male hierarchies instead supports dominant ideology by imagining that men's primal spirit endures behind a facade of aberrant masculinity.

Masquerade Required: Preserving Male Essence in the Misdirection Film

[4] Depictions of primary male characters concealing an authentic male identity under an emasculated cover represent a significant change in ideal manhood in Hollywood. These men are a far cry from the muscle-bound male heroes, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis, that characterized Hollywood in the 1980s. For Susan Jeffords, such "decisive, tough, aggressive, strong, and domineering" male protagonists were products of the times, as they intersected with Ronald Reagan's agenda to undo the policies of Jimmy Carter's administration, which were deemed "weak, defeatist, inactive, and feminine" (11). When Reagan's excessive masculine posturing no longer seemed as necessary in the immediate post-Cold War moment, she notes, sensitive family men began replacing hypermasculine protagonists. This shift was typified by Schwarzenegger, who appeared in films blending his action hero persona with a domestic facet, including Kindergarten Cop (1990), True Lies (1992), and Junior (1994). Although such developments seem to embody vastly different masculine standards, Jeffords contends they are actually "overlapping components of the Reagan Revolution," encompassing both "a strong militaristic foreign-policy position" and "a set of social values dependent on the centrality of fatherhood" (13). In sum, her reading exemplifies how apparent transformations in gender representation back the same ideological project. How, then, do Unbreakable and The Usual Suspects extend this trend by articulating fantasies of continued male dominance that are appropriate for their contexts?

[5] Discerning the gender politics of these two films is tricky because their atypical narrative structures contain late revelations that inspire retrospective reinterpretations of a majority of narrative information. Although nothing officially links these films together, I classify them as constituents of the "misdirection film" genre. I employ the term misdirection because it expresses how these films use Hollywood conventions to encourage viewers to understand their meanings initially in one manner and subsequently comprehend them in another. As I have argued elsewhere using the discursive approach to genre, these films can be considered a distinct category because their narrative surprises are most commonly referenced as their distinguishing feature, regardless of how they are packaged (Friedman). Of course, this narrative mode is nothing new, as it predates cinema and exists throughout film history; however, Hollywood has released approximately 40 misdirection films since the early 1990s, making it the most fertile period for these films in any commercial cinema context. Some contemporary misdirection films have even been among Hollywood's most successful recent releases; films like The Sixth Sense (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), and Inception (2010) garnered both enormous box-office returns and significant Academy Award recognition. Undoubtedly, this spate of films is connected to the advent of new technologies that make complex narratives designed to be watched repeatedly and dissected online attractive to an industry that depends highly on post-theatrical markets. The recent upcropping of these films, though, can neither be explained sufficiently by changing industrial motives nor technological determinism. Misdirection films have also become more popular because they tap into the cultural fantasy that it is still possible to know what "really" occurred even though it is increasingly recognized that the "truth" is relative and unknowable.

[6] As with many Hollywood films concocted with an indie sensibility to cater to niche audiences, misdirection films often seem more unconventional than they actually are. This allows them to uphold dominant ideologies covertly, as their meanings may not become fully evident until after repeated viewings. Misdirection films most often mislead spectators by seeming to adhere to classical conventions until the revelatory evidence is exposed. The exposure of the revelation potentially destabilizes classical film standards, such as its privileging of the goal-driven protagonist, by violating preliminary comprehensions of the narrative. Many of these films thus appear to defy some traditional ways of thinking by amplifying postmodernist discourses such as relativity, subjectivity, and multiculturalism; however, in the end they typically articulate a stronger reluctance to let go of familiar epistemologies, including belief in the existence of absolute fact, faith in teleological narratives, as well as the notion that identity is static and biologically determined. Indeed, despite their atypical narratives, these films usually buttress the storytelling and representational conventions that theorists like Bordwell claim have dominated Hollywood since the classical mode of narration calcified in the 1910s. Rather than attributing narrative causality to chaos, for example, once the revelation appears, it generally shows that the actions of clearly identifiable agents, who never appeared to possess such authority, really catalyzed events. This alternative explanation provides consolation to viewers accustomed to Hollywood's narrative and formal practices that usually support the status quo.

[7] The misdirection film's typical depiction of gender exemplifies how it frequently relies on classical standards to work its deceptive magic. As Psycho (1960 and 1998) and The Crying Game (1992) have famously shown, the misdirection film is adept at making audiences aware that it is easy to misconstrue markers of identity, such as gender and sexuality, exposing how viewers draw hasty conclusions about characters' relative narrative agency. Although most misdirection films do not prompt spectators to re-evaluate a primary character's identity this drastically, many encourage audiences to understand gender as unstable. This is especially true in relation to masculinity because, in addition to Unbreakable and The Usual Suspects, misdirection films such as Adaptation (2002), Arlington Road (1999), Fight Club (1999), The Game (1997), Inception, Jacob's Ladder (1990), Memento (2000), Primal Fear (1996), The Sixth Sense, Shutter Island (2010), 12 Monkeys (1995), and Vanilla Sky (2001) stunningly reveal that male protagonists are victims of a fantasy or at the mercy of seemingly weaker male characters.

[8] Even though these films contain surprise endings that illustrate that gender is constructed, they do not ultimately show us, as Judith Butler theorizes in Gender Trouble, that masculinity is entirely performative because "what we take to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a set of acts, posited through the gendered stylization of the body" (xv). Similarly, they do not demonstrate, as Jack Halberstam does in Female Masculinity, that "masculinity becomes legible where and when it leaves the white male middle-class body" since it can be mobilized by anyone, irrespective of class, race, sex, and sexuality (2). Instead of showing the progressive potential of decoupling gender from other markers of identity, Unbreakable and The Usual Suspects exemplify how misdirection films regressively depict gender performance as a way to conceal an antiquated male core that remains intact.

[9] Although it is generally deployed in relation to women and femininity, the concept of masquerade relates to the kind of gendered deception male characters undertake in these two films. Like Steven Cohan in Masked Men, I thus use masquerade for its "theatrical rather than phallocentric implications," which is "in accordance with Butler's theorization of gender as 'performative'" (26). Masquerade is appropriate for analyzing mediated masculinity, as he contends, not because of Joan Riviere's psychoanalytically inspired conception of femininity as a way "to conceal a secreted theft of the phallus" (quoted in Cohan, 26). Instead, masquerade's theatrical dimension reveals how dramatizations that stress masculine artifice can disrupt rigid notions of biologically determined gendered identity. Yet, as Jackie Stacey suggests in her analysis of Gattaca (1997), masquerade can be difficult to apply to representations of manhood since the "impossibility of masculinity" highlights "the more general facade of 'authentic' masculinity" (1862). I grant that such logic applies to a film like Gattaca in which an inauthentic perfect masculinity is the disguise because ideal masculinity is indeed shown to be unattainable when the copy and the original are exposed as fabrications. Unbreakable and The Usual Suspects, by contrast, unveil a male essence behind an imperfect masculine cover. Masquerade, therefore, as Chris Holmlund notes, accounts for how films that reveal an authentic masculinity below the surface "reinforce hegemonic power relations" by exhibiting "that there may be something underneath which is 'real' and/or 'normal'" (224).

[10] The narrative fantasy of cloaked male quintessence appeals to a culture in which media representations of masculinity in crisis are now ubiquitous. Since the early 1990s, numerous Hollywood films have indeed focused on the difficulties that white, heterosexual, American men who perform their gender traditionally are having maintaining authority. In 1999 and 2000 alone, for instance, as Philippa Gates observes, many films "centered on male protagonists in crisis," appearing "to indicate a broader social concern that at the turn of the new millennium masculinity was, indeed, in crisis" (46). Interestingly, of the films she cites--American Beauty (1999), Fight Club, Magnolia (1999), The Sixth Sense, American Psycho (2000), The Beach (2000), Memento, and Unbreakable--all but American Beauty and The Beach are misdirection films, reiterating the narrative mode's suitability for expressing fears and desires related to gender. Of course, patriarchy is always in crisis because it contends with perpetual challenges to its supremacy. It is still valuable, though, according to Michael Kimmel, to analyze "the times when dominant masculinity is widely perceived to be under threat because there is a search for the timeless and eternal when old definitions no longer work and the new definitions are yet to be established" (3). Similarly, Nicola Rehling writes that "masculinity in crisis" troublingly "postulates a once stable, coherent, unified masculinity," making it valuable to identify "which particular forms of male insecurity are made manifest at specific historical junctures" (2-3).

[11] The reasons for the particular anxieties that many American men have recently experienced are well documented by prominent critics like Kimmel and Susan Faludi. As Kimmel summarizes, these concerns "reflect a somewhat nostalgic longing" for a time when many men naively believed that few barriers prevented them from "taking their place among the nation's elite simply by working hard and applying themselves" (221). In Stiffed, Faludi similarly contends that despite the fact that many of the structures supporting male dominance in the U.S. have been weakened, there is still pressure for men customarily in power to display their prowess traditionally. It is more difficult, or so the story goes, for these men to prove their authority conventionally because of recent developments, including the gains of minorities, a series of misguided wars, the deterioration of labor unions, the erosion of social programs, increasingly absent fathers, the outsourcing of jobs, the commodification of masculinity, and so on. These challenges prompted many men to respond in reactionary ways. In the 1990s, for example, there was a rise in men's groups, like the mythopoetic men's movement, whose leader, Robert Bly, author of best-seller, Iron John, urged men to relocate their inner wild man.

[12] These paranoid responses convey worries about diminishing individual autonomy. However, rather than address the culprits, such as neoliberal policies that have consolidated wealth and bolstered corporate power, many disenchanted men instead blame familiar scapegoats, including big government, women, and other minority groups. Importantly, the perception that individual agency is dwindling has struck white, heterosexual men hardest because of their steadfast faith in rugged individualism and the American Dream, which, in spite of their meritorious myths, historically favor the privileged. Timothy Melley labels this paranoia as "agency panic," which he defines as "an intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy or self-control--the conviction that one's actions are being controlled by someone else, that one has been 'constructed' by powerful external agents" (12). These sentiments align with films like Unbreakable and The Usual Suspects because they stunningly reveal that heroic exploits of prototypical male protagonists have been really sinisterly orchestrated by other primary male characters who are more powerful than advertised.

[13] The retroactive reassignment of narrative authority to unexpected primary male agents appeals to audiences partly because it dovetails with the classical film's protagonist-driven logic. Interestingly, the satisfaction that spectators derive from this revised comprehension of narrative events relates to the pleasures associated with other narrative practices, including conspiracy theorizing. According to Paul Silverstein, conspiracy theorizing is an interpretive tradition that "prioritizes agency and fetishizes causality in making sense of everyday incoherence" (647). Conspiracy theories provide those displeased with existing explanations of history with more satisfying alternative accounts of narrative causality. As Clare Birchall points out, however, conspiracy theorizing is typically not radical because even though it counters official accounts, it usually "does not question the basic linear premise of historical narratives" (35). Nevertheless, Birchall posits that conspiracy theories still productively challenge authority by revealing that "transcendental truth claims rely on contingent strategies of legitimation" (73). Although conspiracy theorizing and misdirection films express concerns about the status of the "truth" and potentially expose the constructedness of official accounts, they both ultimately provide assurance that it is possible to know what "actually" occurred by showing the "real" motives of the agents shockingly unmasked as being responsible.

[14] The conspiratorial logic undergirding agency panic, then, is fundamentally conservative. As Melley explains, agency panic preserves "a traditional model of the self in spite of the obvious challenges" now presented to that anachronistic conception of individual identity (15). In the 1990s, the destructive ramifications that could result from such reactionary fears were epitomized by the notorious cases of domestic terrorism committed by Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski, who believed that the supposedly "feminizing force" threatening their masculinity should be redressed by "'regeneration through violence'" (Melley 14). Melley's reliance on Richard Slotkin's theory of regeneration through violence is significant because, as Slotkin argues, it was a crucial aspect of the frontier myth that "represented the redemption of American spirit or fortune as something to be achieved by playing through a scenario of separation, temporary regression to a more primitive or 'natural' state" (12). Centuries later, this logic endures for many American men hoping to find their mythical, primal manhood, as evidenced by the aforementioned mythopoetic men's movement.

[15] In contrast to the frontier era, there is now less unequivocal acceptance of men reverting to their supposed inner wild man. After the Reagan-era backlash against second wave feminism subsided, as David Greven documents, American masculinity "became aware of itself as both monolith and joke," resulting in growing Hollywood representations of a "post-Reagan New Man," that articulate a "split masculinity, which performed traditional roles of gendered identity while also acknowledging its ironic, meta-textual status" (16, emphasis in original). Brenton Malin likewise hypothesizes that this kind of dual portrayal characterized Bill Clinton's presidency and was embodied by a simultaneously dominant media representation of "conflicted masculinity that embraces and puts aside a variety of masculine stereotypes" (8). Until the Monica Lewinsky scandal calcified his budding reputation as a philanderer, for instance, Clinton was also consistently disparaged for being obsequious to Hillary. Such contradictions in masculinity, Malin argues, are palpable in many contemporaneous Hollywood films, featuring protagonists "salvaging the disturbing traditions from which the '90s man seemed to diverge" (10). Hollywood indeed released a number of Oscar winners during the period, including Braveheart (1995), Jerry Maguire (1996), American Beauty, and Gladiator (2000), portraying broken protagonists who recapture their lost male spirit traditionally. In contrast to these depictions of explicit remasculinization, misdirection films like Unbreakable and The Usual Suspects prey on the spectator's propensity to associate narrative agency with conventional protagonists by revealing that they are ultimately impotent at a time when more surreptitious tactics are necessary to maintain male authority.

Unbreakable Masculinity: Reclaiming Men's "Rightful" Place

[16] This narrative of shrouded male power is presented in Unbreakable, writer/ producer/director M. Night Shyamalan's follow-up to his smash hit, The Sixth Sense. Predictably, the film attempts to capitalize on its predecessor's enormous success. The theatrical trailer, for example, advertises it as a reunion of Shyamalan and Bruce Willis as well as alludes to the presence of another twist ending. The pairing of Willis and Jackson was also driven by that duo's track record together, misleadingly positioning the film as a prototypical interracial buddy film. Such films are attractive to an industry that still lacks faith in the bankability of African American protagonists, but increasingly casts token minorities to inoculate itself from accusations of racism. Considering the two actors' success together in Pulp Fiction (1994) and Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995), a buddy installment in the blockbuster franchise, the casting decision made economic sense because it targeted both indie and mainstream audiences. Despite these efforts, Unbreakable grossed $95 million at the domestic box-office on its $75 million budget, a profit margin nowhere near what The Sixth Sense generated (imdb.com).

[17] As in The Sixth Sense, Willis plays a disempowered man who needs the assistance of traditionally marginalized others and supernatural forces to save his failing marriage and give him faith in his job. David's existential angst stems from his decision to become a security guard after abandoning a promising football career by faking an injury in order to marry his wife, Audrey (Robin Wright), who detests the violent sport. After miraculously surviving a train wreck, David reluctantly discovers how to reclaim his masculine prowess without jeopardizing his marriage. At the encouragement of his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), and the enigmatic Elijah, who, thanks to faith in comic book lore believes that David was the sole survivor because he is really a superhero who is impervious to most injuries, he covertly learns to harness his superhuman strength and psychic ability to see the past crimes of the perpetrators he touches. As his generically-inspired alliterative name (David Dunn) suggests, a clandestine superhero persona becomes the perfect alter-ego for a seemingly ordinary man whose spectacularly brutal talents must be kept secret from his pacifist wife.

[18] Without knowledge of the revelation, this familiar narrative trajectory looks like just another example of how Hollywood imagines that white, heterosexual male dominance still exists even though hegemonic masculinity is less universally approved. After all, it ostensibly focuses on how the protagonist's closeted revival of his authentic male identity helps him overcome feminizing forces and restore his family. Additionally, its apparent remasculinization project seems troubling because of its racist implications. Heather Hicks, for example, documents that numerous critics jumped to the erroneous conclusion that Unbreakable contains the same dangerous racial ramifications as other contemporaneous Hollywood films, such as The Family Man (2000), The Green Mile (1999), and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), which also feature stereotypically mystical African American friends, who, like Elijah, leverage their powers "toward helping and enlightening a white character" (28). As she contends, such critiques neglect how the twist ending alters comprehensions of narrative information. In contrast to conventionally altruistic magical African American sidekicks, Elijah's motives are eventually revealed to be anything but noble.

[19] Had Unbreakable been exclusively about how David's superhero identity frees his suppressed male spirit, then it would have simply ended classically, as it appears to do when David rescues helpless children by killing their captor, reconciles with his wife, realizes his job protecting people is actually meaningful, and solidifies his bond with Joseph by covertly divulging his secret identity. Although all narrative lines of action are resolved satisfactorily, the end credits do not roll. The film instead cuts to an apparent epilogue in which David visits Elijah's store to thank him. Before expressing his gratitude, David meets Elijah's mother (Charlayne Woodard), who agrees with him that her son is a "miracle" for surviving accidents that should have "broken him," suggesting that Elijah is really the film's titular character. Once Elijah and David reunite and shake hands, the revelation shows that Elijah is indeed the film's primary causal agent. As is customary in many misdirection films, the twist ending contains flashbacks exposing what actually happened. When the two finally touch for the first time, a bright light flashes and a loud screeching noise plays, signifying, as it has throughout, David's psychic ability to see the past illicit actions of touched subjects. Both David and the spectator simultaneously learn that Elijah is actually an arch-villain, and not a benevolent helper, who has committed many terrorist acts, including David's train derailment, to find his adversary. The final scene is thus not simply an epilogue, as Elijah's desire to understand his brittle bone disease is really why he mentors David. As the successive reverse zoom-outs on both characters after they release hands shows, they are most linked by Elijah's insistence on discovering a nemesis like David whose superhuman physical resilience renders the antagonist's polar opposite disorder meaningful. The narrative is only resolved classically, then, because David's belated understanding that he is a superhero confirms Elijah is an arch-villain.

[20] The revised explanation of narrative causality inspired by the revelation alters the meaning of almost all narrative information. Just as the final scene is reinterpreted to be more than an epilogue, the film's opening scene is no longer simply a tangential prologue. The pre-opening credit scene depicts a flashback of the birth of baby Elijah, who is swaddled in a purple trimmed blanket (purple, which is linked to Elijah throughout, can be retrospectively reinterpreted as signifying a threat to David) after suffering fractures during his emergency delivery. Significantly, virtually the entire scene is shot in a mirror image reflection, a recurring visual motif. In classical fashion, the technique is not just an artistic flourish because it subtly references both the paralleling of the two primary male characters and Elijah's suppressed arch-villain alter-ego: "Mr. Glass." To reiterate the unstated relationship between the two, after the prologue, the film surprisingly cuts to an image of David aboard the soon-to-derail train, and not to a grown-up Elijah. The film's misdirection has already begun, in other words, as the edit leads spectators to identify with David by misleadingly positioning him, rather than Elijah, as the primary causal agent.

[21] David's character is subsequently introduced classically because important information about his psychological traits is communicated rapidly. David first appears from a strange angle that, on reverse shot, is revealed to be from a young girl's perspective. A purple-clad stranger, Kelly (Leslie Stefanson), then asks David if he is alone. David's affirmative response, which alludes to his isolation, prompts her to sit next to him. His sexual interest in Kelly is subsequently communicated non-verbally, as the camera gaze, mimicking the child's perspective, captures him removing his wedding ring. His attempted infidelity is inspired by his imminent separation from Audrey, which is later revealed to be driven by his admission that he keeps her at an emotional distance. Rather than save the marriage, David has all but agreed to Audrey's wishes to take another security guard job in New York City and give up primary custody of Joseph. Although Joseph continues to admire David despite the impending separation, the film raises doubts about his parenting skills. For instance, when an injured Joseph demands the school nurse call his father, David reports that Audrey "usually handles Joseph stuff" and asks if he has "to rub any smelly ointment" on him. David is on the verge of abandoning his family, then, because his conventional masculinity alienates him from his wife. He thus begins to flirt with Kelly more aggressively in an awkward exchange always filmed from the child's point-of-view that never switches to the standard shot/reverse shot style of a classical conversation. In a matter of moments, therefore, David's introduction alerts viewers that the film contains non-classical and classical attributes as well as focuses on a man whose traditional masculinity is ruining his marriage and negatively influencing children.

[22] David's impropriety is further established when he offers Kelly a copy of a women's-interest magazine left onboard. Her unexpected response exposes his gender bias because she informs him she would prefer a discarded sports-themed magazine. Kelly clarifies her desire by noting that she is a sports agent traveling to meet a football prospect, making her the kind of woman who many men believe have encroached on their cultural authority by entering once all-male bastions like the professional sports industries. David chauvinistically responds to her unexpected request by joking that that he wants to become a synchronized swimmer. He quickly retracts the sexist joke about the female dominated sport, however, by admitting that he is afraid of water, information that turns out to be crucial because it is later revealed to be his kryptonite. As the train passes through a tunnel ensconcing David's placid face in shadows, he lies to her by claiming that he dislikes football. As if it was not already clear that David's behavior is inappropriate, Kelly's embarrassing rejection of his advances confirms it. Like the character most linked to Willis, Die Hard's (1988) John McClane, who at that film's outset is revealed to be economically and socially inferior to his estranged wife, David's traditional masculine ways have become outmoded and lead to embarrassing consequences when displayed explicitly. Such a reading of David's character was only amplified by off-screen events shortly before Unbreakable's release, as Willis's then wife Demi Moore shockingly filed for divorce.

[23] If David's introduction is understood in relation to Willis's prototypical onscreen and changing off-screen personas, then it is clear why Unbreakable fools spectators into thinking that its classical ending will be David's discovery of a superhero identity that provides him an acceptable way to reestablish his conventional masculinity in secret. Like the viewer, though, it is David's proclivity to pigeonhole that most results in the surprise turn of events. In addition to misreading Elijah and Kelly's true characters, David falsely accuses a man of South Asian descent, played by Shyamalan himself, of carrying drugs. As in The Sixth Sense, in which Shyamalan plays an archetypal Indian physician who misleads spectators by incorrectly diagnosing the situation, the director again uses his cameo not only to augment his burgeoning superstar image, but also to expose the audience's penchant for negative stereotyping. It is significant, then, that Elijah's disguise operates in relation to numerous markers of identity, extending beyond his race and the viewer's familiarity with Hollywood's interracial buddy film conventions, that are misconstrued as connoting weakness. His physical disability also helps him go undetected because it is misinterpreted as a flaw even though it is really the attribute that gives him the most strength by confirming he is David's foil. Indeed, the retroactive centrality of Elijah's disorder to his real identity counters cultural anxieties about disabled bodies being prisons for fully realized potential, as Vivian Sobchack theorizes in Carnal Thoughts, by transforming his supposedly debilitated body into one with "the transparent capacity for significant action and sensible meaning" (189).

[24] The importance of Elijah's disorder to his authentic identity is reiterated by a final twist again linking the two primary characters. Elijah acknowledges that he should have long realized he is a criminal mastermind because, like David, who consistently ignores his son's insights, he should have listened more closely to children, who called him Mr. Glass, the alter-ego he now presumably adopts. Importantly, it is Elijah's belief in the veracity of comic books that fuels his quest to find his superhero opposite who confirms his true identity, which justifies his permanent retreat out of adulthood. According to the film's logic, men like David and Elijah only fulfill their true promise if they are unencumbered by emasculating demands supposedly placed on contemporary adult males. Such an understanding, of course, comes at a cost for both characters, as Elijah resorts to mass murder to find David and reignites the violent fire extinguished by the hero's wife. Although the generically motivated concluding superimposed titles indicate that Elijah is sentenced to a psychiatric facility, he ultimately triumphs. Undoubtedly, Elijah's institutionalization marks him as a deviant pariah and renders him temporarily impotent; however, such places typically do not contain arch-villains for long in the superhero genre. In fact, Shyamalan has consistently expressed his desire to make a sequel featuring an actual showdown between David and an escaped Elijah, a rumor that Willis recently reconfirmed in a 2010 interview (Marshall). In the end, despite Elijah's capture, the villain wins by showing David that overcoming their malaise requires them to resurrect a stifled male essence free from feminizing constraints that is veiled by impaired alter-egos.

Misreading The Usual Suspects: Feigning Fragility to Bolster Authority

[25] Whereas Unbreakable depicts primary male characters as having to learn to deploy imperfect disguises to conceal their authentic identities, The Usual Suspects illustrates how masquerade is a powerful weapon for a man already certain of who he really is. The Usual Suspects was one of the first successful contemporary misdirection films, grossing over $23 million at the domestic box-office on its $6 million budget (imdb.com). The film's complex narrative, which director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie claim on their DVD commentary was partly inspired by John List's infamous 18-year disappearance after murdering his own family to shelter them from the shame of losing his job, was ultimately promoted as its primary draw; however, it initially scared off Hollywood. Singer and McQuarrie had to turn to Polygram Filmed Entertainment, a Dutch-owned company with ties to Universal Pictures, to finance and distribute the film theatrically (imdb.com). The gamble proved worthwhile because in addition to its profitable theatrical run, Kevin Spacey won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Roger "Verbal" Kint and McQuarrie won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

[26] The film centers on US Customs Agent David Kujan's (Chazz Palminteri) interrogation of Kint, who is about to post bail after being granted immunity by the District Attorney despite his role in the massacre associated with a purported $91 million cocaine deal at a San Pedro pier. Initially, the authorities and viewers suspect that Kint played a minor role in the crime because his riveting narration is revealed through a series of flashbacks from his perspective that accentuate his status as a crippled, small-time con artist. First, Kint's testimony to the D.A. reveals how a suspicious police line-up helped him team up with four seemingly more virile and accomplished crooks. Second, Kujan's interrogation of Kint in his friend's police station office depicts detailed flashbacks of the occurrences leading up to and during the events at the pier. In these flashbacks and the accompanying interrogation sequences, Kint presents himself as a weak lackey whose disabled body seems to inhibit his capacity to act authoritatively. Kujan and the viewer, therefore, are led to believe that Dean Keaton, the gang's most revered thug, is the film's primary causal agent. In standard heist film manner, Keaton is portrayed as the reluctant protagonist, who, despite his efforts to settle down by running a respectable business with his lawyer girlfriend, Edie Finnernan (Suzy Amis), possesses the traits to pull off the big job that will finally allow him to go legit. Classical standards are thus again deployed to trick viewers into thinking the alleged protagonist will inevitably prevail. Although Kint claims that Keaton is dead, Kujan refuses to believe it, leading audiences to presume that the con man is covering for his friend. The interrogation, therefore, seems to be building to a climax in which Kujan finally gets Kint to admit that Keaton is really behind it all and escaped the law.

[27] Kujan indeed hopes to use Kint's testimony to concoct his own furtive explanation to incriminate Keaton. As Kint effectively summarizes, Kujan's rigid theory demonstrates that "to a cop the explanation is always simple" because they just verify the suppositions they already believe. Kujan's construction of an alternative account, in other words, exemplifies how the authorities are depicted employing conspiratorial tactics to further their own agendas. To get Kint to participate in the interrogation, for instance, Kujan threatens to make up a story that, as part of his deal with the D.A., Kint ratted out Ruby Deemer, Kujan's most reliable, incarcerated informant. As Kujan also subsequently reports, during Keaton's stint with the NYPD, he was indicted seven times, including for multiple murder cases. In fact, Keaton was once involved in "New York's Finest Taxicab Service," a "ring of corrupt cops" compensated for chauffeuring smugglers. Keaton's insider-knowledge of this covert activity turns out to be valuable because he helps orchestrate a robbery of the Taxicab Service that also results in over fifty cops being busted. Ironically, the hit on the Taxicab Service only occurs because the police rely on unlawful means to rustle up the five criminals initially. As Kint claims, their "rights went right out the window" when the cops identified them as suspects. Kint's accusation that the authorities act unlawfully is verified by the police's interrogation of the five criminals when Keaton is punched in the face by a cop. Additionally, after Edie frees the five suspects, she reports that they were never officially charged.

[28] Kujan similarly relies on underhanded tactics to pin the crime on his man. To get his information, Kujan challenges Kint to "convince" him that Keaton is dead by telling him "every last detail." In turn, Kint presents a byzantine account of events, eventually revealing that Keyser Soze, a legendary Turkish crime lord, is really the puppet master. Kint's recounting of the criminal conspiracy ultimately is believable, then, because it adheres to classical narrative conventions of causality and agency by attributing everything to the machinations of a powerful individual: Soze. Kujan, of course, is convinced that Keaton, and not the mythical Soze, is the mastermind. As a result of Kint's recollection, he concludes that Keaton is actually Soze.

Consequently, when Kujan finally explains his theory about what really happened to Kint, the music on the soundtrack swells to a crescendo and the film frequently cuts to flashbacks that depict images from Kint's earlier testimony now taken out of their previous context. Kujan's acceptance of the totalizing plot of Keaton as the arch-criminal seems logical, as events that ostensibly were initially unimportant to comprehending his "true" character now make Keaton look ruthless. In short, this scene appears to be the classical resolution in which the detective identifies the individual, whom he wanted to nail all along, as the real primary causal agent.

[29] The film, though, does not actually uphold this conventional resolution by showing Keaton successfully fleeing with the money and Edie. Instead, its twist ending provokes a new way to understand narrative causality. It stunningly shows that Kint is a master storyteller who knits--hence the anagrammed surname--the fictitious tale to escape the law and further his own legend as the mythic Soze. Upon Kint's release, Kujan and the audience simultaneously realize that the confession was fictional because it is shockingly revealed that Kint both faked his cerebral palsy and used the contents of the interrogation room to create his contrived testimony. The film depicts this revelation spectacularly by cutting back and forth between Kujan's dumbfounded gaze, the objects that he observes in the office, and flashbacks of previous scenes from Kujan's explanation, which portrayed Keaton as the arch-criminal Soze, into whom Kint now transforms. Aural evidence also helps viewers make sense of what has really occurred, as earlier lines of dialogue are now associated with the objects captured by the camera's gaze. As Kujan stares at a bulletin board frame, for example, indicating its manufacture in Skokie, Illinois by the Quartet Corporation, Kint's offhanded remark that he once sang in a "barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois" replays. The new master thread of Kint as Soze reverses what both Kujan and the spectator thought they knew about who really possessed narrative agency. Of course, once Kint's story is exposed as a fabrication, it becomes difficult to determine what, if anything, from his testimony is factual. However, although the revelation shows Kint's account is untrue, it leaves no question that he actually has been self-interestedly propelling narrative events all along.

[30] The self-serving reasons for Kint's storytelling agenda become most apparent retrospectively in relation to his earlier retelling of Soze's rise to power. Before beginning the tale about Soze, Kint strategically authenticates it by informing Kujan that "One story the guys told me, the story I believe, was from his days in Turkey." Kint's disclaimer triggers the Soze flashback, which, in contrast to the other recollections that are clearly framed as such but not delineated stylistically, is shot in a dreamlike fashion, obscuring the image. These quintessentially classical techniques alert spectators that the scene should be differentiated from the other flashbacks, rendering it more believable in retrospect. After Kint finishes the story, he verifies it further by noting that few believe that Soze really exists. Kujan then asks, "Do you believe in him Verbal?," indicating that the fable has made him and the spectator let down their interrogative guards. The kind of believable details that Kint provides thus leads viewers to rely on the fable to reconstruct the narrative according to the revised logic of Soze as the primary causal agent.

[31] Kint's tale depicts Soze as a callous villain, who is especially fearsome because he commits horrific acts unfathomable to most other criminals. Specifically, during a raid on his home in which his wife is raped in front of his children, he mercilessly kills all but one member of a rival Hungarian gang as well as his own wife and kids. Soze's decisions to kill his family and spare one adversary are partly motivated by the hope that word about his exploits will spread. Accordingly, the spectator's revised understanding of Kint's true identity is inextricably linked to this legend. In a film virtually devoid of female characters and loaded with homoeroticism, doubts have been raised by Kint's feminized cover. His convincing performance as a cripple, which memorably disappears as he exits the police station, has lowered everyone's suspicions that he could be an arch-criminal by making him seem feeble and exploitable. In contrast to Unbreakable, by revealing that Kint's disorder was faked, The Usual Suspects does not depict disability as ultimately validating and enhancing masculine potential. Questions about Kint's real persona thus do not just evaporate along with his bogus cerebral palsy. To wit, after Kint is picked up outside the police station by his foreign and dandified associate, the man known as Kobayashi (Pete Posthelwaite) in his testimony, Kint smokes a cigarette effeminately. The film, therefore, does expose a few truths about Kint's authentic identity after revealing his lies, which could lead to a further interrogation of his manhood. The Soze legend, though, retrospectively secures his status as a former heterosexual family man who confects a pathetic facade to cover his ferocious male essence.

[32] As Kint claims, it is Soze's ability to commit familicide that most defines his prowess and launches him to the top of the criminal underworld. Familicide, as Elizabeth Barnes argues, uses murder as "an expression of love as well as hatred" to enable "a man to (re)gain a sense of self-reliance (by eliminating his family) without abdicating his position as a devoted family man" (54). The horrific violence of familicide disturbingly allows offenders to free themselves from the perceived shackles of domestic obligations at the same time that it sustains their belief that they are fulfilling their familial duties by protecting their vulnerable kin from worse fates. This is exactly what happens for Soze, according to Kint, because his savagery saves his family from the consequences of his wife's rape and permits him to focus myopically on his criminal empire. Such tendencies, for Barnes, make familicide a distinctly male and characteristically American transgression. As her analysis of the prevalence of the crime and its literary representations in the post-revolutionary U.S. demonstrates, during "a particular crisis in the history of U.S. masculinity, familicide perpetrators sought to exemplify manhood by asserting absolute sovereignty over their wives and children" (47). At a moment when American men were bent on distinguishing themselves from the British, the epidemic of patriarchs killing their own families to protect them from the embarrassment of having failed in a radically new economic context is especially telling. Soze's deeds are anything but foreign, then, as the actions of notorious American murderers like List reveal that familicide remains an ideal escape for men crushed by the pressure to provide for the families they so desperately want to protect.

[33] The twisted fantasy of conflicted masculinity inherent in familicide relates to how manhood is represented in Unbreakable and The Usual Suspects. Both films demonstrate that men need to flee their emasculating predicaments by relying on elaborate disguises to hide a violent male core. This veneer is necessary, the films imply, at a time when explicit displays of traditional masculinity are received with growing incredulity. These two films are thus troubling fantasies of male masquerade in which men secretly maintain their authority by flaunting their purported fragilities. Although their duplicitous narrative structures are well suited to reveal that gender is socially constructed, these films instead portray masculine performance as a way to conceal the "truth." Consequently, they effectively counter pervasive anxieties about the loss of a male essence by showing how select men are capable of strategically protecting their power. In conspiratorial and classical fashion, the two films present narratives that privilege causality and agency to make order out of chaos. These films appeal to many spectators, therefore, by transforming everyday uncertainty into familiar causal narratives that support dominant ideologies, particularly the staunch belief that hegemonic masculinity endures and still reigns supreme. Such a thematic preoccupation begins to suggest why they are attractive to viewers increasingly concerned about rediscovering who they "actually" are and reclaiming their "real" place in the world.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I would like to thank Barbara Klinger, Kevin Floyd, and the anonymous reviewer from Genders for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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Contributor's Note

SETH FRIEDMAN is Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication and Theatre at DePauw University. His essays on the misdirection film have appeared in Journal of Film and Video and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He is currently working on a book manuscript for SUNY Press entitled Are You Watching Closely?: Cultural Paranoia, New Technologies, and the Contemporary Hollywood Misdirection Film.