ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on screen texts where performative and cliched displays of male behaviour, so embedded in media culture, myth and fairytales, gives way to a more psychologically rich form of masculinity. It discusses shape-shifting characters of three main films namely Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Wings of Desire and The Sixth Sense to more clearly demonstrate their transitional object qualities. The characters are most clearly read as transitional objects because of their ability to facilitate individuation. From an object relations perspective, psychologist Donald Winnicott argues that infants and children adopt certain comforting, tactile or sense-stimulating objects that symbolize the transitional state of separation from the maternal, where 'mother' shifts focus from being considered part of the infant to bring a separate entity that exists as a subject in the outer world. The essential feature in the concept of transitional objects and phenomena is the paradox, and the acceptance of the paradox.
