'Effeminate' Masculinity, Manliness and the Star Image

Title
'Effeminate' Masculinity, Manliness and the Star Image: Leonardo DiCaprio Over the Years
Keywords
Film; Stardom; Masculinity; Gender norms
Abstract
The representation of masculinity in films has departed from the traditional notions of
manliness that was once dominant in our culture and society. Different forms of masculinity
are emerging in Hollywood cinema in recent years. The on-screen and off-screen personas
of male film stars play a significant role in representing and analysing the prevailing diverse
ideas of masculinity. The research project attempts to explore the ways in which the film
roles played by a prominent Hollywood A-list actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, from the early days
of his career engage in the promotion of ideal forms of masculinity that homogenises with his
public figure as a humanitarian and environmental advocate. The research paper examines
the influence of the fictional characters DiCaprio play in two films and his namesake
foundation alongside extra-filmic materials on his representation of masculinity. Analysis of
DiCaprio’s on-screen and off-screen personas revealed the shift from embodying
conventional masculine attributes in his earlier acting years to exemplifying distinct
contemporary forms of masculinity as an established film star.

Star studies have been a popular branch of film studies in the film industry and the
academia in recent years since its emergence in the late 1970s (Shingler, 11). The area of
star studies is crucial in investigating the characteristics and qualities embodied by a film star
that made him or her an influential and hence admirable figure in the public eye, which
contributes in distinguishing a film star from the ‘ordinary’ public. Film critics and scholars
dedicated years of research to study film stardom on particular stars in hopes that their
research would be fruitful in revealing the star’s significance in political, social and historical
contexts or to merely understand his or her contribution to specific films, genres and groups
of films.
The research project will be conducted on Leonardo DiCaprio, one of Hollywood’s
leading A-list male actors. DiCaprio is the star selected for the research project for the
reason that he is a highly versatile actor who has taken on many film roles throughout his
acting career thus far. DiCaprio’s film roles showcased his transition as a child actor in his
earlier acting days, to a teen idol and heartthrob and lastly as the renowned, mature film star
familiar to many today. Several notable roles DiCaprio played that highlights his versatility in
acting are as William Shakespeare’s Romeo Montague in Romeo + Juliet (Lurhmann dir.
1996), Jack Dawson in the internationally acclaimed Titanic (Cameron dir. 1997), Frank
Wheeler in Revolutionary Road (Mendes dir. 2008), Dominick Cobb in Inception (Nolan dir.
2010), Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island (Scorsese dir. 2010), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby
in The Great Gatsby (Lurhmann dir. 2013) and Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street
(Scorsese dir. 2013).
In addition, Leonardo DiCaprio is the star chosen for the research project for the
reason that he has a rather unique off-screen persona. DiCaprio is one of the prominent
figures in Hollywood who actively engages in humanitarian and environmental issues.
DiCaprio’s philanthropic efforts are evidently reflected in his foundation, the Leonardo
DiCaprio Foundation. The foundation advocates for protecting tigers from extinction,

providing access to clean water and saving sharks among many other noble efforts endorsed
(Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, n.d.). DiCaprio has hosted several charity events through
his foundation, such as the first gala for his foundation recently in July held at the Domaine
Bertaud Belieu vineyard in Saint Tropez, France raising over $25 million to help protect the
earth’s last remaining wild areas (Mikelbank, 2014), where its success triumphed in attracting
attention from the media and inevitably became a highly publicised event. All in all, the
objective of the research is to analyse the ways in which DiCaprio’s roles in the films he has
acted in promote an ideal form of masculinity both on-screen and off-screen in which
corresponds with societal norms.
The research project is foregrounded by the key research question, which is “How
does the roles Leonardo DiCaprio play in films allow him to embody form(s) of masculinity
on-screen and off-screen that champion normative masculine notions in society?”. The films
that will be concentrated on in aiding the research question are namely Titanic and
Revolutionary Road, whereas the analysis of the characters in the other films DiCaprio was
in function to supplement the fundamental points made in exploring his performance in the
two main films for the research project. In addition to the particular films mentioned, extra-
filmic materials such as film reviews, movie posters and press releases and statements will
be utilised as these materials are instrumental in unveiling DiCaprio’s star persona further,
which serve to explore the various aspects of his public identity as a film star and inevitably
contribute in approaching the research question. Information on DiCaprio and his efforts in
environmental activism from the official website of his foundation will be useful in
complementing his off-screen image, thus facilitating the research significantly. After all, the
nature of star acting as proposed by James Naremore sees the “performer, the character
and the star joined in a single, apparently intact, image, so that many viewers regard people
in movies as little more than spectacular human beings” (Shingler 2011).

DiCaprio’s role in the box office hit Titanic was his stepping stone to showcase his
transformation from a child actor and teenage heartthrob to a prominent Hollywood actor. His
image as a “prototypical teen idol: angelic face, feminine features, almost androgynous at
times, with a brooding sensitivity and a hint of a rebellious spirit” presented in Romeo + Juliet
persisted and inevitably led to the “Leo-mania” phenomena that witnessed excessive female
consumption in his star image when Titanic was released in 1997 (Wright 2013). Nash and
Lahti made an interesting note in their study (cited in Wright) explaining that there is a certain
degree of degradation for male stars that has a “close proximity to both feminised
iconography and to female consumers”. Such negative association often leads male film
stars to renounce elements of their star persona that are regarded to be “not masculine
enough” or attempt to foster “overtly masculine images” such as strength and intelligence
through typical masculine pursuits in a generally male dominant environment (Wright 2013).
Applying Richard Dyer’s (1998) theory on the use of a star’s persona in films in
relation to the character he or she plays, DiCaprio can be seen to be an “ideal fit” for Jack
Dawson. There seems to be a perfect match between DiCaprio’s persona and the character
of Jack as DiCaprio’s own history as an actor enhances the “romanticised vision of the
working-class experience” (Malin 2005). His pre-Titanic film roles are reflective of such image
of the working-class. DiCaprio was casted as a somewhat working-class innocent in The
Basketball Diaries where he played Jim Carroll, a working-class youth struggling against
heroin addiction who is pulled out of the lower-class social background that foregrounded his
fate through achieving recognition as a successful writer. DiCaprio portrayed a similar
working-class image as modern-day Romeo in Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet who seeks refuge
in a deserted trailer park, smoking cigarettes and driving a dirty beat-up convertible after
fleeing to Verona to escape murder charge. DiCaprio’s intertextual history of “depicting a
tamed-down version of a working-class rebel” (Malin 2005), also known as star image as
coined by Naremore which is “an intertextual phenomenon born out of the actor’s previous

roles” (qtd. in Shingler), has served the purpose of preparing him for the romaticised vision of
the working-class experience in Titanic as Jack Dawson.
According to Wright (2013), what was at stake for DiCaprio was his status as an adult
male film star through the female attention attracted by Titanic and the fact that he was
merely 22 years old when he was casted to play Jack Dawson and had been working in the
film industry since he was a child. In Titanic, DiCaprio portrayed Jack, the young working-
class artist who won two third-class tickets in a dockside poker game to go onboard the RMS
Titanic, who is an unlikely hero for his naivety and innocence seems to be “strangely out of
place in the brutal world of masculinity that characterises the lower class steerage
passengers” (Hallam and Marshment 2000). Jack fell in love with 17-year-old first-class
passenger Rose DeWitt Bukater portrayed by Kate Winslet, who is unhappy with her forced
engagement to 30-year-old Pittsburgh steel tycoon heir Cal Hockley played by Billy Zane in
order for her and her mother Ruth to maintain their high class status after her father’s death
that left the family in debt. DiCaprio’s youthful and somewhat girlish features feminised Jack
in comparison to the overwhelmingly authoritative masculinity of Cal, proposing the male
figure as an object of display as well as reinforcing the contrast between the hero and the
villain in this context (Roberts 2000).
Jack is first introduced on screen to the audience in the form of flashback from
present day Rose’s memory through brief close-up shots of his eyes while drawing the
portrait of a younger Rose. The shots that serve to tease the viewers with glimpses of
DiCaprio at first instance highlight his standing as an “object of display and erotic spectacle”
(qtd. in Roberts). The grandiose long shot of Jack standing atop the wooden staircase in a
tuxedo before the camera cuts to a medium close-up shot of DiCaprio’s face perform the
function of distracting the audience from the narrative of the film and shift their attention to
the spectacle of the ship and the star for that particular scene. These specific scenes
mentioned are depicted to empower DiCaprio as Jack Dawson for he successfully draws the

attention of viewers to him although he embodies a slightly feminised form of masculinity in
contrast to his male counterpart Cal, who is a reminiscent of a silent screen melodrama
villain who is “dark haired, handsome and rich but with a violent streak” (Hallam and
Marshment 2000) and oozes characteristics of a stereotypical masculine male of dominance,
success and a strong physical appearance.
In spite of the fact that Jack’s status as an artist situates him in a fairly feminised
position, his character represents a “kinder, gentler version” of masculinity (Roberts 2000) in
which legitimises him within the film. Roberts (2000) argues that Cal is depicted to be
unworthy of Rose for plenty of reasons in which one of them is his inability to comprehend
with her appreciation and artistic taste for the arts. For example, Cal referred one of Rose’s
many purchases of modern art by “Something Picasso” as merely “finger paintings”. Jack, on
the other hand, is an artist himself and Rose noted that the sketches from his sketchbook are
“drawn from real life”. Through the embodiment of the American artist and his work of art, the
character of Jack can be seen to address the ideology of American realism in the visual arts,
which predates postmodernism and manages relevant issues in relation to the gender and
sexuality discourses in the film, thus placing DiCaprio as Jack the young artist in a position of
authority where he is able to renegotiate the terms for both masculinity and creativity
(Gestner 2002).
As a practitioner of realism, the character of Jack functions to keep a tight rein on the
feminine excess as Rose has control of the film for its narrative is told from her perspective
alongside the potential homosexuality that may arise from DiCaprio’s androgyny and Jack’s
avocation to be an artist (Keller 2006). The series of extreme close-up shots of Jack’s
intense glance on Rose’s body in the infamous scene where he sketched a portrait of her
wearing nothing but the Heart of the Ocean necklace demonstrate the artistic integrity Jack
possess and his ability to penetrate into Rose’s “womanly essence” (Gestner 2002).
According to Gestner (2002), Titanic complies with Whitman on the progress of America

through the de-effeminisation of culture involving the woman defining herself as “masculinely
feminine” so much that Jack’s character pioneers the masculinisation of Rose. When Rose
express her envy towards Jack by questioning him “Why can’t I be like you?” after the night
he talked her out of jumping off the ship, he taught her how to be a man in his terms –
drinking cheap beer, riding a horse like a cowboy and spit like a man – when Cal would not
have allowed his fiancée to do such things. In the words of Gestner (2002), Jack is “…direct
in his questioning, he is simple in his dress, he rejects creative excess but not creativity; he
is, in short, the romanticised version of the Ideal American man”.
After Titanic, DiCaprio’s meticulousness in his choice of film roles is probably
motivated by his desire for prolonging his acting career. As argued by Wright (2013),
DiCaprio has been successful in retaining longevity in the film industry and in the transition
from child actor and teen heartthrob to a Hollywood A-list actor through a strong association
with “the masculine” that constitutes male narratives, environments and co-stars. DiCaprio’s
post-Titanic film roles are mostly male characters with stereotypical masculine professions,
mainly as figures of law and authority, such as entrepreneur and aviation pioneer Howard
Hughes in The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004), undercover police officer Billy Costigan in
The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer Roger
Ferris in Body of Lies (Ridley Scott, 2008), and former soldier and police investigator Teddy
Daniels in Shutter Island. DiCaprio had also presented himself as an actor worthy of
recognition by working with auteur and director Martin Scorsese in five movies, that are The
Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013), The Departed, The Aviator, Shutter Island and
Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002). Nevertheless, DiCaprio’s own masculinity is
often questioned in the narratives of the films he is in. A research by Wright (2013) proposed
that this could be related to the fact that the media put a spotlight on the history of his acting
career as a child actor, his transformation from a boy to a man, and his youthful and feminine
facial features. Wright (2013) also made an interesting point on the desire of male film stars
in their twenties to portray characters in films that advocate their transition to manhood,

however this is not the case for DiCaprio as his film roles after Titanic largely represent a
typically weakened male image.
DiCaprio’s portrayal of Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road allowed him to display
and explore his precarious position as the “young man attempting to be a man” (Wright
2013). The film reunited DiCaprio with his Titanic co-star Kate Winslet who played his wife
April, where they portray the typical American nuclear family of a couple with two children
living in a quaint home in suburban Connecticut who, despite being deemed as the “perfect”
couple by their neighbour and realtor Helen Givings, struggled to overcome loneliness and
despair induced by their mundane and meaningless lives. The two scenes early in the film
significant in illustrating how Frank is belittled are the fight he had with April after her
disastrous performance in a play where she called him “pathetic, self-deluded little boy”
questioning his ability to be a man and his journey of taking the train to the city with other
men who are just like Frank in their attire of conservative suits and lifelessly traveling to work.
The reason Frank looked out of place in these scenes can be related to DiCaprio’s youthful
face and also attributed by April calling him a “little boy” (Wright 2013). His movements and
gestures also seemed laborious, as if DiCaprio did it deliberately to vividly illustrate Frank
carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. DiCaprio’s physical presence in the film is
usually in forms of intense screaming outbursts and forcing his body close to someone to
generate an intimidating presence, such as the fact that Frank’s face is always almost
touching April’s whenever he confronts her in their arguments. Also, the poster of the film
sees a shadow casted upon DiCaprio’s face and Winslet’s hand on his shoulder, and not vice
versa, suggesting that April has control and is superior over his character Frank. Hence,
DiCaprio’s performance in Revolutionary Road can be deemed as a way for him to exert the
male authority that is almost inexistent in the film’s narrative and his star persona through the
character of Frank.

Besides contributing to Frank’s emasculation, DiCaprio’s portrayal of the subservient
male is also instrumental in presenting a different version of masculinity. A particular scene in
the film where the Wheelers have Helen, her husband Howard and their son John who had
just been released from a mental institution, over for lunch put both DiCaprio’s physicality
and Frank’s masculinity to test. Before that, Frank and April were engaged in a heated
argument over her unplanned pregnancy. John refused to believe that the reason the couple
is not moving to Paris as planned is merely due to Frank’s new job offer and provoked Frank
further after failing to interrogate April for answers, accusing him of impregnating April on
purpose “as if making babies is the only way he can prove he’s got a pair of balls” that got
Frank jumping up, banging the table and leaning over to harshly warn John to keep his
opinions to himself. While Frank’s physical presence and vocal explosion come off as
menacing, there is also a hint of desperation as both actor DiCaprio and character Frank are
in dire need to be heard (Wright 2013). While Frank Wheeler failed to fulfill traditional
masculine social roles as a husband and a father, DiCaprio succeeded in promoting a new,
expressive form of masculinity by “bringing layers of buried emotion to a defeated man”
(Travers 2008) instead of the stereotypical strong masculine figure often embodied by other
Hollywood actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Daniel Craig and Bruce Willis.
In a review, Setoodeh (2012) proposed that DiCaprio distanced himself from his
teenage heartthrob image after Titanic by being in films with adult roles that were “so dark
and tortured, his character rarely survived the closing credits”. In Shutter Island and
Inception, the characters played by DiCaprio have parallels in terms of failing their wives that
eventually led to their own ruin. DiCaprio, as Teddy and Dom, failed to control his mentally
unstable wife who set their apartment on fire and killed their three children and to be strong
to save his wife from her suicide after causing her to question reality in Shutter Island and
Inception respectively. It is worth noting DiCaprio’s role as the narrator in the environmental
documentary film, The 11th
Hour (Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen, 2007) is
influential in advocating his off-screen persona as an environmental activist and promoting

his namesake foundation. Therefore, DiCaprio’s post-Titanic career has focused on
narratives that question his adult masculinity under the disguise of traditional notions of
manhood (Wright 2013).
In conclusion, DiCaprio is seen to embody distinct forms of masculinity before and
after Titanic in which the movie witnessed his transition as a teen idol to a notable Hollywood
actor. DiCaprio’s pre-Titanic film roles champion stereotypical masculine notions that support
characteristics of traditional masculine social roles, whereas his post-Titanic film roles attest
to portrayal of characters that explore and promote more diverse ideas of masculinity despite
depositing DiCaprio in positions of inferiority frequently. Without a doubt, DiCaprio’s off-
screen persona constituted by his own foundation and his role as an environmental activist
supplemented to the formation of his masculinity and his transition into adulthood after
Titanic alongside placing new forms of masculinity embodied in films like Revolutionary
Road, Shutter Island and Inception on equal footing with traditional masculine notions of
authority, virility and dominance.

References
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Manchester University Press, 2000. Print.
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