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Big boys hiding in their bedrooms: Exploring representations of men’s arrested development in post-millennium Hollywood cinema
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Child and Youth Studies.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3605-8664
Number of Authors: 12025 (English)In: The forgotten realities of men: Critical reflections on masculinity in contemporary society / [ed] Jean-Martin Deslauriers; Gilles Tremblay; Pauline Hoebanx, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2025, p. 315-330Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

This chapter discusses how the big-boy bedroom has been depicted in Hollywood cinema since 2000 and how adult men still living with their parents are portrayed. Developmental psychologists and rearing experts have long argued that the teenage bedroom is necessary for proper gender and sexual development, but in Western – and, particularly, North American culture – it is also considered a place that adolescent males need to leave behind lest they be considered immature or even a moral threat. These concerns have been echoed by contemporary pundits across the political spectrum. Drawing on a queer temporality perspective, I call into question normative assumptions pertaining to personal development by demonstrating how some life trajectories may be bent by diverging from the expected life course. Rather than seeing cinematic representations of grown-up men living with their parents as an expression of men’s juvenility, irresponsibility, or avoidance of long-term relationships, I argue that the pathologization of big boys in their bedrooms may be masking broader economic patterns that disadvantage young men and their opportunities for social mobility. Understanding the obscurantist nature of these bedroom anxieties helps us illuminate young men’s forgotten realities and their economic struggles in a neoliberal age.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2025. p. 315-330
National Category
Cultural Studies Gender Studies Child and Youth Studies
Research subject
Child and Youth Studies; Gender Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-245200DOI: 10.59962/9780774871648-016ISI: 001501254400015ISBN: 9780774871624 (print)ISBN: 9780774871631 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-245200DiVA, id: diva2:1986507
Available from: 2025-07-31 Created: 2025-07-31 Last updated: 2025-11-10Bibliographically approved

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Gottzén, Lucas

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