David Greven 
Ghost Faces 
Hollywood and Post-Millennial Masculinity

Finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Nonfiction category presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation




Ghost Faces explores the insidious nature of homophobia even in contemporary Hollywood films that promote their own homo-tolerance and appear to destabilize hegemonic masculinity. Reframing Laura Mulvey’s and Gilles Deleuze’s paradigms and offering close readings grounded in psychoanalysis and queer theory, David Greven examines several key films and genre trends from the late 1990s forward. Movies considered range from the slasher film
Scream to bromances and beta male comedies such as
I Love You, Man to dramas such as
Donnie Darko and
25th Hour to Rob Zombie’s remake of the horror film
Halloween. Greven also traces the disturbing connections between torture porn found in such films as
Hostel and gay male Internet pornography.

Table of Content

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Disrecognitions



1. Ghost Faces, Genre Bodies



2. The Murderous Origins of Bromance: Genre, Queer Killers, and
Scream



3. “I Love You, Brom Bones”: Beta Male Comedies, Bromances, and American Culture



4. Apparitional Men: Masculinity and the Psychoanalytic Scene



5. Trick-or-Treating Alone: Rob Zombie’s
Halloween



6. Torture/Porn:
Hostel, Homophobia, and Gay Male Internet Pornography



Coda

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the author

David Greven is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina and the author of many books, including
Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin and
Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush.