Oldboy and Hypermasculinity

One thing that really struck me about Oldboy as being hypermasculine was the way in which it granted male characters with multiple sources of sexual power. Though we commonly associate male sexuality with the penis, in Oldboy the tongue takes on a distinctly male sexual connotation. Woo-jin tells Oh Dae-su something to the effect that it was "Oh Dae-su's tongue and not Woo-jin's dick" that impregnated his sister. In this sense, when Dae-su cuts off his own tongue as an act of submission and repentance, he effectively castrates himself. This link between the penis and the tongue seems to grant males with greater sources of power - both sexual and non-sexual - with which to act upon the female. It is then easier for the male to render the female a victim.

In Joyrich's article, I had difficulty grasping this relation between consumerism and femininity. She distinguishes between the role of a producer and the role of a consumer, identifying the former as typically male and the latter as typically female. While I understand that television is more consumer-based than cinema - given commercials and the lack of commitment to a linear narrative - I had a hard time grasping cinema as something other than a product to be consumed. While Third Cinema is a clear exception, isn't classic Hollywood cinema produced primarily for the sake of consumption? Isn't commercial success a huge factor with film production and distribution? To me, it seems very complicated and ironic that the consumption of a classic Hollywood film depends upon that film's ability to appear masculine, to provide the male spectator with a male character, with whom to identify, and a female character to be an object? This seems somewhat contradictory.