“What will your verse be?”: identity and masculinity in "Dead poets society"

Abstract

Peter Weir’s popular classic “Dead Poets Society” (1989) has been considered a movie dealing with masculinity, especially with the evolution of a group of teenage boys from boyhood to manhood, along with their quest for their identities. Both the masculine traits and the pursuit of the characters’ voices are represented in the four sites analysed by Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumin in “You Tarzan” (1993). These four sites – the body, action, the external world and the internal world – are applied in this paper to “Dead Poets Society”, paying especial attention to the portrayal of masculinity and identity in the three main protagonists of the movie.