“I’ll be next door if you need me”. Hotels as Male Refuge and Prison in "Barton Finklinidad en "Barton Fink"

• Main Author: Juan González Etxeberría
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 2013-01-01
• Series: Investigaciones Feministas
• Subjects: masculinidad; espacios; Barton Fink; violencia; posmodernidad.
• Online Access: http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/INFE/article/view/41135

This article analyses the link between masculinity and spaces in Foucaultian terms of power and repression in the metonymic relationship between the hotel and the main characters in Barton Fink (Cohen, 1991). The rejection of the house in the hegemonic masculinity model due to its feminization of men increases the metaphysic dimension of the hotel, a living hell where the Cohen’s violence, merging the noir and postmodernity, shows psychopathic masculinity. Barton’s mental trip inside the hotel breaks up hierarchical binaries, and sums up the original opposites in a unity, absolutely unacceptable in reality but utterly attractive as a work of fiction. The film, an obsessive metanarrative about creation, questions the boundaries between reality and art. Masculinity is also criticized for its juxtaposition and substitution of real with hegemonic fantasies..