A Different History but the Same Old Story? Rethinking Hegemonic Masculinities from the Fascist World of The Man in the High Castle (2015-2019)

Abstract

[EN] This chapter examines Frank Spotnitz’s four-season series The Man in the High Castle, an expansive adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s eponymous novel that was produced by Amazon between 2015 and 2019. To elucidate the series approach to masculinity as comprehensively as possible, the series is examined structurally, comparatively and thematically, with attention to, respectively, the peculiarities of its meta-science-fictional narration, the differences and continuities regarding the original novel and, finally, the series’ own approach to the interrelation of masculinities and fascism. In these ways, the chapter moves from the formal to the ideological dimensions of the series in a constant comparison with the novel. The main argument is that, due to its peculiar updating of the novel’s double game of estrangement, Spotnitz’s series pays close critical attention to how fascism is deeply rooted in the hegemony of patriarchal masculinities, thus responding to a contemporary anxiety with neo-fascist movements and ideologies.