From Melancholia to Machismo:

Cinematic Construction of Masculine Identity and Emotional Socialization in the Malayalam Film Marco (2024)

抄録

This study analyses Marco (2024), as a cinematic site where masculinity is constructed through the transformation of grief into hypermasculine performance. Employing qualitative textual analysis, it examines emotional socialization processes and situates the film within youth mental health discourse, demonstrating how contemporary cinema normalizes emotional displacement and aggressive modes of coping. The present study explores how masculinity is constructed through emotional restraint, bodily discipline, and sanctioned aggression. The analytical focus is placed on patterns of emotional expression, narrative conflict resolution, and the moral framing of violence as a response to psychological distress. Findings suggest that, Marco (2024) reinforces a model of masculinity that values emotional suppression while legitimizing controlled aggression as an appropriate coping strategy. These patterns are significant from a human services and public health perspective, as they intersect with ongoing concerns related to emotional literacy, gender norms, and mental health stigma of younger generation. By situating popular cinema within the broader context of emotional education, this study contributes to interdisciplinary discussions in human services, social welfare, and public health education. It highlights the importance of critically engaging with media representations of gender and advocates for the inclusion of media literacy within gender-sensitive mental health promotion and preventive intervention frameworks. The study advocates for coordinated interventions by filmmakers, educators, and mental health policymakers to mitigate the social impact of hypermasculine narratives. emotional socialization reveals in fragments, allowing violence to emerge less as an impulse and more as a learned emotional grammar. Such a depiction resonates with public health policy debates that stress how unprocessed trauma and affective deprivation shape harmful social behaviors. Marco (2024) unsettles viewers into recognizing cinema as a quiet but potent site where emotional habits are formed, contested, and made visible for preventive health discourse.