You Haven’t Seen the Last of Men

Abstract

The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997) is much acclaimed as a comedy film. Yet, its screenplay is based on a serious context, contemporary of its shooting—the industrial crisis in the North of England—and deals with its societal effects—a major shift in gender roles and patterns. The real achievement of the male characters is that they resolve gender conflicts adopting cultural practices traditionally reserved for women, asserting their masculinity while posing as sex objects. At a time when men–women relationships are at the heart of debates in the Western World, this article seeks to demonstrate that the movie has a quasi-universal dimension by suggesting that, rather than a reversal of gender roles, a new kind of balance can emerge, with all its attendant “contradictions.”\n