Masters of the Universe tries to manage the absurd masculinity of He-Man – it should just accept masculinity is absurd

By Alexander Sergeant, Lecturer in Digital Media Production, University of Westminster

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once said that the most tragic thing about masculinity was that it had a symbol. He didn’t have He-Man in mind when he made this comment. He died in 1981, two years before the original cartoon’s debut. But he might as well have. (He was talking about the phallus, if you’re wondering).

It is difficult to think of a more quintessentially Freudian creation than Mattel’s hyperbolically muscular hero: a man who, in the words of his evil nemesis Skeletor in this new remake, draws his power from that “strong, powerful thing hanging between your legs”.

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