The film Don Juan DeMarco and the construction of the ‘seductive man’

Abstract

The present article analyzes scenes from the film Don Juan DeMarco (1995), directed by Jeremy Leven, one of the works that constitute the ongoing research “Lições de masculinidades no cinema em quatro filmes” (Masculinity lessons in cinema in four movies), to investigate the hypothesis of a man as a seductive individual, a form of masculinity evidenced in the plot, through knowledge transmitted by the protagonist to the other characters. That said, it is assumed as a research problem the pedagogical capacity of cinematographic productions, having as general objective to analyze the teachings about masculinity in the work examined. Preliminarily, it deals with the pedagogical character found in cinema. The masculinity found in this cinematographic production is examined and the intersection with the educational research field, starting from theoretical references such as Michel Foucault's studies on sexuality (1984, 1988) and the contributions on gender by Luciana Gruppelli Loponte (2010) and Anneke Smelik (2016a, 2016b), among other authors. One of the possible conclusions is the hypothesis that the theme of the man who becomes a seducer, a fundamental part of the plot of the film Don Juan DeMarco (1995), is one of the ways of exercising masculinity, persevering even today in great American cinema productions, a subject that is aimed at being developed in future investigations.