The Man Inside: Trauma, Gender, and the Nation in The Brave One

Abstract

This essay argues that The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007) treats 9/11 and its aftermath, including America's controversial wars and culture of surveillance, as cultural traumas and, in response, attempts to manage disruptions to American master narratives, particularly in relation to gender. A vigilante film that features a cinematically anomalous female vigilante, Jordan's film positions its hero-villain (Jodie Foster) as a post-traumatic subject whose “female masculinity” and brand of vindictive justice function both to assuage anxieties about American emasculation on September 11th and to atone for the “sins” of a warring nation. By coding its vigilante as disturbed and melancholic, The Brave One figures America as a battered woman who must become a man and, thus, offers a framework for understanding, and even justifying, America's post-9/11 performance of vigilante justice.

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