A Masculinity Study: Call me by Your Name, A Sociological Study on Identity and Belonging

Class Privilege, Cultural Capital and Melancholy

The existential anxiety and melancholy in the film are a direct result of the class privileges that the characters have. When we look at it from Pierre Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” is an accumulation that takes time and is transferred from object to body free from economic necessities. Elio and his family have this isolated cosmopolitan world in 1980s Northern Italy. Endowed with intellectual privileges that “don’t have to worry about making ends meet.” With a Bourdieu reading the multilingualism of the characters, their reading of classical literature and their interpretation of music show that a habitus has been created in which economic concerns are nullified.Economic security enables desire to emerge as a process of aesthetic and existential self-discovery.

The Dismantling of Hegemonic Masculinity and Emotional Openness

The relationship between Elio and Oliver harbors a serious internal tension through R. W. Connell’s “hegemonic masculinity”. Hegemonic masculinity demands the suppression of feelings perceived as “feminine” such as compassion and sensuality. At first, Oliver kind of covers up his feelings by doing a surface level, stereotypical hyper masculine routine like giving a rude shoulder massage or flirting with girls. He gets the advantage of being older too. Meanwhile Elio seems a lot more delicate, and he does not really hold back when it comes to living his emotions. The movie then looks at how these two guys, over time, end up shaping caring, non violent “emotional masculinities”, not through force but through the tenderness and emotional connection they keep showing each other.

The Discourse of Silence and Ancient Queer Desire

The confession in the piazza unfolds through pauses, hesitation and indirect language. Rather than expressing desire openly, both characters rely on coded speech and silence. This reflects Michel Foucault’s argument that sexuality is not merely repressed but produced through discourse and the limits of what can be spoken. Foucault argues, sexuality and desire are not suppressed by mere “silence” or prohibitions. On the contrary, that silence itself. It is the real place where power, discourse and bodily pleasures are built. In the film, Elio’s frequently asked dilemma “Is it better to talk or to die?” shows how bodily and silent forms of communication come into play when words are insufficient. Rather than showing sexuality outright on the screen (like when the camera kind of pans toward the trees during the lovemaking part), Guadagnino leans on that quiet tension just beyond the frame. It is this quite radical aesthetic decision, that kind of pushes back against the objectification of desire, and it keeps everything in a mysterious heterotopic sort of space, that you can almost feel but not quite see. On top of that, the bronze statue that is uncovered from the lake makes the silence start talking, with a very long echo, thousands of years long. The statue’s timeless ambiguity and that perfectly sculpted male form, bridge the present with the bodies of today, to Elio, as if it were evidence of homosexual desire in Roman times. In other words it does not just frame the mood it encourages the characters to want.

Postponement of Identity

The Queer “Comfort Zone” As Judith Butler’s, gender and identity are not a pre-existing fixed essence. It is a fluid process that is culturally and performatively constructed. Elio and Oliver do not define their sexuality with precise labels. If we think with Sara Ahmed’s queer emotions and comfort zone; Normative heterosexuality is like a comfortable chair that takes the shape of the bodies that sit in it. Queer subjects, feel a constant discomfort and discomfort because they cannot fully “settle” in these heteronormative spaces. In the film, this state of not being able to settle and being the other is handled in parallel with both the homosexual desires of the characters and the Jews of discretion identities that they share and tend to hide.

Fear of Belonging

Responsibility in Fluid Modernity In Zygmunt Bauman’s Fluid Love, individuals carry the practices of the consumer society into relationships. Commitment tends to be short-term and temporarily encoded. In long-term belongings closing options is avoided. In Anthony Giddens’ pure relationship and fluid sexuality model, relationships are a state of continuous negotiation based entirely on emotional and sexual equality. The structural constraints of the outside world and homophobic reality do not allow this utopia to continue. Oliver’s return to America and a hetero marriage is the egalitarian negotiation that Giddens talks about hitting the norms of social acceptance. Oliver’s decision does not necessarily indicate a lack of love. Rather, it illustrates how social recognition often carries greater security than emotional authenticity.

The Ghostly Impending Disaster and the Radical Family

The fact that the film takes place in 1983 is not ordinary nostalgia. The eighties were just before the HIV/AIDS crisis. Although illness or death is not clearly visible on the screen, the historical reality of the period descends on the film like a specter. It symbolizes the end of a period of great sexual freedom. Also carries the melancholy of the word later and the foreclosure of their relationship, which is constantly used by the characters. Most effective move of the film is Elio’s father’s speech by the fireplace. The father transforms Elio into a healing force rather than a traditional, oppressive institution, saying that he should not suppress the pain he feels.

Scenes in Details:

The Volleyball Match (Connell & Hegemonic Masculinity):

During that volleyball game, Oliver’s aggressive heavy-handed shoulder rub at Elio kind of works like a shield for hegemonic masculinity. He’s doing this ‘confident, older American male’ thing as a way to cover up the vulnerability that’s quietly growing. Elio’s stiff, uncomfortable response points at the tension, between Oliver’s performative hyper masculinity and this more fragile emotional reality that seems to be forming between them.

The Piazza Confession (Foucault & Silence):

That confession scene at the war monument in Pandino really, like, somehow nails Foucault’s discourse of silence. Instead of a straight out, I love you, declaration, the whole exchange stays coded and a bit elliptical, like “Because I wanted you to know” . The wide shot then keeps them physically apart, so the quiet and that space between them ends up saying more than any explicit confession ever could. It feels almost indirect.

The Peach Scene (Butler & Ahmed): is one of the few moments where Elio’s desire becomes entirely private. Without Oliver’s presence, the fruit becomes a temporary substitute for intimacy rather than merely a sexual object. The scene is deliberately awkward and vulnerable; Elio is not performing masculinity but experiencing desire in its most uncertain form. Judith Butler’s understanding of identity as something continuously performed helps explain why this moment feels so intimate. Elio is not “discovering” a fixed identity but experimenting with ways of inhabiting his own body. At the same time, the scene reflects Sara Ahmed’s notion of queer discomfort, as desire can only be expressed indirectly through an object rather than openly within the social world.

Early in the film, Oliver casually waves at Elio using the raised hand of an ancient statue instead of his own. Although the gesture lasts only a few seconds, it quietly foreshadows the emotional distance that characterizes their relationship. Oliver hides behind an object, allowing the statue to “speak” in his place before he is emotionally capable of doing so himself. The ancient sculpture also links contemporary desire to a much older history of male beauty and homoeroticism. Rather than presenting desire as something modern or exceptional, the film suggests that it has always existed, even if it often had to be expressed indirectly.

Conclusion

In the closing scene of the film, Elio’s tears who cry for minutes while looking at the fireplace fire to the song of Sufjan Stevens. His sadness not about just the mourning of a summer love. Elio and the audience cry for that alternative future that will never actually be lived, the possibilities lost by heteronormativity, and the ghosts of the approaching dark period. Rather than presenting queer desire as a simple coming-of-age experience, Call Me by Your Name reveals how privilege, history and social norms shape the possibilities of intimacy. The film ultimately suggests that melancholy emerges not only from personal loss but also from the social conditions that determine which futures can be lived and which remain impossible.

References:

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