ABSTRACT
Whereas the representation of Britishness and class in the Potterverse has been traditionally challenged, Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them also posits some serious issues concerning national discourses, masculinity and eroticism. Although the film criticizes the surge of (magical) xenophobia that ambushes civil liberties, and the dread that many wizards have of losing their freedom and citizenship, it also problematizes sexual otherness and emasculating gendered practices, with the delineation of mutually exclusive categories: us vs. them, Maj vs. No-Maj, American vs. British, heteronormative vs. homonormative. This chapter seeks to open a debate about masculinity taking into account the audiovisual representation of the masculinities of Newt Scamander, Jacob Kowalski, Gellert Grindelwald and Credence Barebone. Fantastic Beasts enacts these masculinities in a culturally approved manner, which is marked according to their nationality in the context in which they are produced: the Brexit and Trump eras. In the end, masculinity, Americanness and the politics of fear will combine in one of the most evidently articulated discourses in the film.
