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Masculine Jealousy and the Struggle for Possession in The End of the Affair

This paper uses the representation of masculine jealousy in The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan, 1999) as a case study to explore the ongoing crisis of Western hegemonic masculinity and its depiction in mainstream cinema. Male jealousy is concerned with feelings of loss and wounded narcissism and so provides a useful focus to explore the emotional conflicts and losses of contemporary masculinities more generally. The End of the Affair is valuable to the exploration of affect and masculinity, for it provides a fluid and nuanced interpretation of male jealousy and rivalry whilst evoking the ambiguities of contemporary masculinities more generally. It also shows the potentiality of such representations for more nuanced interpretations of emotional masculinities within contemporary cinema. The paper employs a psycho‐cultural method to explore issues of emotional spectatorship and the affective relationship between the film text and its cultural reception in the press. It is significant that the less defensive quality of masculinity in the film was countered and potentially closed down in its cultural reception by hegemonic discourses within the UK press. Press responses to the film were shot through with anxieties about the potential failure of masculinity, the loss of mastery and the fear of otherness. Jealousy and betrayal were central themes of these press reviews in which anxieties about the depictions of masculinity and difference were encoded through the discourse of nation and Englishness.