Phd student Marcus Richey presents his essay entitled "What Ed Knows: Patriarchal Biopower and Passive Resistance in the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There." Welcome!
Abstract
This essay analyses the quiet and unassuming central character Ed Crane, from the Coen Brothers’ 2001 neo-noir film, The Man Who Wasn’t There, as a highly problematic and hostility-inducing ghost of a man whose heteronormative not-thereness strikes fear and loathing into the film’s late 40s postwar environment, resulting in a morality tale of a society compelled to police its ranks, remove the contaminating element, and restore gender coherence. I position the barbershop where Ed begrudgingly works as a Foucauldian boys-to-men grooming station of biopower’s participatory panoptic gaze, and probe to what extent Foucault believed resistance to such power was a possibility. From a theoretical hub that weaves together concerns from masculinity, queer and Foucauldian studies, I will suggest keys to understanding enigmatic moments in Ed’s odd discoveries and self-debasing behaviours, and ultimately read his transgressive journey towards death row as a container for hopeful, passive resistance.
Bio
Marcus Richey comes from Wichita, Kansas, USA. He is PhD candidate in the Department of Languages and Literatures at Gothenburg University in Sweden. With a background in English and theatre studies, his research interests include American literature and cinema, popular culture, gender and queer studies, and almost any theoretical concern with a ‘post’ in the name. He has lectured, among other places, at Karlstad University in Sweden, and The Modern College of Business and Science in Muscat, Oman. His compilation dissertation, titled Man Down: Patriarchal Unworlding in Postmodern Fiction and Film, is due to be completed in 2025.