While it is true to say that Campion's work has been ‘predominantly focused on forensic investigations of the female psyche’ (Rooney 2021, n.p.), the director's films have arguably always been as much about men as they have been about women. Indeed, undercurrents of homosocial tendencies can often be found in Campion's works, which have a nuanced approach to the subtle power dynamics that exist between men, often upheld by the culture and institutions of the societies in which they live and love. Much has been written about female agency and subjectivity in Campion scholarship. My chapter, however, engages with the central male figures in Campion's Bright Star (2009) and The Power of the Dog (2021). The Oscar-winning The Power of the Dog, Campion's first film released post-#MeToo, provides an opportune moment to consider those aspects of Campion's work that address men and masculinity, in light of her perceived role as feminist auteur intent on championing women's stories. Campion's work provides a rich tapestry of male figures and contentious masculinities alongside her female protagonists. The portraits Campion paints of these male figures often reveal the networks through which hegemonic masculinity operates and how it underpins the delimitation of women's self-exploration, their articulation as speaking subjects, and their creativity (via institutions of family, society, and heterosexual romance). Therefore, Campion's works often speak not only to the past but also to the present, not least in her latest film, which addresses post-#MeToo discourse around so-called ‘toxic masculinity’.

Campion's sustained address to the problem of men's masculinity can be seen in early works like A Girl's Own Story (1984), in which burgeoning female sexuality is placed side-by-side with ambiguous and threatening sexual attention from adult males, or in Osmond's (John Malkovich) gaslighting of Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) in The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and in In the Cut (2003) which involves the brutal murder of women by a man whose modus operandi ironically includes courtship rituals. In Campion's television series, Top of the Lake (2013) and Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017), the director explores similar configurations of problematic masculinities which involve racially inflected femicide, sex-trafficking, and incest, in a world controlled by the narratives’ various male authority figures.