COG: How does 'City of God' represent masculinity as aggressive?

In 'City of God', we are made to feel intimidated and uncomfortable when it comes to male aggression. The proportion between the amount of men and women we see in the film is so substantial that it makes us really concentrate on male dominance. This aggression is shown through the mise-en-scene, editing, sound, lighting and cinematography.

Despite not being an essential character, Shorty plays a part in probably the most sensitive and disturbing scenes in the film. In this scene, Shorty discovers his wife cheating on him and he takes his exasperation out by killing his wife with a shovel. The fast paced editing makes virtually impossible to sympathise with the wife as we only get a quick take of her screaming and hiding herself in the corner of the room. The camera immediately cuts to a low angled, hand-held shot of Shorty approaching his wife (the camera). The use of this cinematography emphasises male aggression and dominance and the idea of the camera being hand-held puts us right in on the action and creates a sense of vulnerability. Just before Shorty bashes his wife with a shovel, the camera once again cuts to a fixed shot outside of the room with only the audience able to visualise the movement of the shovel. The transition of the shots makes it very difficult to take in the entirety of the scene, let alone individual characters. The fact that we know more about Shorty then his wife, is implying how the director doesn't want us to have any reaction to him killing her and further emphasises this idea of male aggression and dominance. The only diegetic sound is the noise of the shovel and the two characters screaming. The fact that we can hear screams from the wife but we can't see her creates a huge amount of uncertainty for the audience and a very unpleasant feeling is placed upon us. This scene stands out from all the rest as when we have witnessed murders previously in other scenes, non-diegetic contrapuntal music can be heard which makes the mood of the scenes strangely more upbeat. However, no music is playing in this scene which clearly makes us really captivate this idea of male aggression and the director has allowed us to be independent about our emotion towards this scene. However, we all end up having the same emotion of feeling uncomfortable and distressed, so technically the director still has our emotions in his hands.


Aggressive masculinity is also strongly shown near the beginning of the film. In this scene, the "Tender Trio" are robbing a motel and they start to assault all of the guests. One of the Trio is kicking one of the guests on the floor and it is through cinematic elements that makes us empathise with the guest being victimised. In this quick shot, similar to my other example, the editing is very fast paced making it very difficult for us once again to sympathise with the victim. Also, it's a mid shot with the upper body of the Trio member being out of shot. This conveys a sense of male aggression and intimidation as we can not make out the identity of the Trio member. We are also inevitably made to empathise with the victim being kicked as the camera quickly zooms in and out in time with the motion of the action, making this scene almost intolerable to watch for the audience. Furthermore, the diegetic sound of the woman screaming gives us chills but these chills are only minor as the non-diegetic contrapuntal music abnormally enlightens the scene. In terms of lighting, it is quite dim which creates a sense of doom and suspense. There is also a red filter used on the camera to visualise this idea of blood, gore and violence without actually seeing any "literal" blood. Male aggression is shown in a slightly different way in this example as the director puts us right in on the action and we are able to take in the entire scene and centralise our focus on the Tender Trio showing complete aggression and power.


In conclusion, masculinity as aggression is presented to us in different ways. We are able to clearly visualise it but sometimes forcefully we have to take a step back and this creates a huge amount of uncertainty for the audience. The male dominance of characters in this film compared to women makes us give our full attention to the men and we can inevitably only see their point of view as we are unable to form a relationship with any women as the film does not revolve around them. The idea of male aggression would be a lot more sensitive and we would probably have a completely different opinion about this topic if there were more women in the film.