What is the Pride of a Man? A Boogie Nights Analysis
by Isabelle Lacross
Senior, Psychology Major
Boogie Nights, the 1997 film that put auteur Paul Thomas Anderson on the map, is notable in its direct analysis of the toxic masculinity that has men in a chokehold to this day. This movie is not a subtle one: when displaying the impacts of sexuality on masculinity, it is represented with literal dicks and plenty of fucking. Anderson’s decision to dissect toxic masculinity in a story about 1970’s porn stars and how necessary their literal and metaphorical dicks are a smart one. The directness makes the story transcend into universality about the pressures men place on themselves to perform in all contexts, as a sliver of public doubt of one’s manhood has the potential to make a man spiral into nonexistence.
In the movie, we first meet Eddie (Mark Wahlberg) as a young man of not quite 18, as he is trying to find where he fits into the world. The only time he ever receives any kind of praise is in his sexual conquests: we learn he lets men pay him to look at his mythically big dick, and his semi-girlfriend is obsessed with his sexual abilities, uncaring about any feelings of his outside of that. Meanwhile, his mother, the antithesis of sexuality, constantly tells him he is a failure and always will be, never showing him the totally non-sexual love he needs. Eddie learns the only way he will ever be accepted is if he fulfills this role of a “man”-strong, big-dicked, and charismatic. So, after he is spotted by a porn director, he does just that.
He plays the role of the ideal man to the extent of merging his pornstar “ideal man” persona with his actual self, asking to be called his porn name, Dirk Diggler.
This movie is notable in the way it portrays sex and masculinity as something Dirk learns only in the context of a sexual script. The sexual script he adheres to is one which permeates our culture: it defines how men and women (heterosexually, of course) need to interact within their sexual encounters, which translates to their lives outside of sexuality (Gagnon and Simon). His own father is someone he sees as subordinate to his mother. His parents work outside of the sexual script which he adheres to. So, the only type of relationship he can see as acceptable in his life is those that are sexual. The character of Dirk he plays in the hyper-gendered world of the porn industry becomes all he knows of himself, and in becoming him, he is gaining the power to not just double down on the sexual script and control he can get from it, but also the power to spread it. Dirk doesn’t just fulfill his own idea of what a man should be. Now, he’s passing it down to any man (or boy) viewing his performances. He is always putting on a show. The minute he feels he might be failing at that performance, he breaks down.
When pushed outside of this masculine ideal, Dirk begins to slip away, eventually falling into a state of total loss. The first thing that shakes his idea of being seen as totally masculine is when one of his cameramen, Scotty (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), attempts to kiss him.
When Dirk refuses, Scotty says, “You look at me sometimes; I wanted to know if you like me.” This implication that Dirk could be seen as gay is devastating to him, and in the next following scenes, the viewer can see him lashing out in aggression, making big claims about his big dick and how in control he is. He loses himself into drugs and finds he is unable to get hard. His dick, which is his whole identity, fails. Lacan’s idea of the phallus not literally being a penis comes to mind (“The Dangerous Maybe”). However, in Dirk’s view, the two are equated. His literal dick is his entire pride. He fails, and he loses everything.
The end of the film finds Dirk reclaiming his masculinity by succumbing to emotional vulnerability. After he reaches his lowest point of drug addiction, crime, and violence, he finally admits to his former found father, the porn director, that he needs help. He interacts with his former co-workers no longer like lovers or sexual partners, but like family. His separation of sexuality from self is what allows him to grow. Embracing the potential femininity of emotion is what makes him a real man to himself in the end. And in the last shot of the film, we finally, at long last, get to see his big dick to prove it.
