Redesigning Men: Hegemonic Masculinity in Transition

PAR T F I VE REAIlING MEDIATEDMASCULINITY 13 Redesigning Men Hegemonic Masculinity in Transition ROBERT HANKE Culture is a struggle for meanings as soci ety is a struggle for power. John Fiske (1987a) The strugg le for meaning is here, and il is a s l ru ~ le of and for political criticis m . .. Stephen Heath ( 1990) This chapter attempts to think throug h some issues pertaining to the critical cultural analysis o f the represent ation of men and mascu linity on American prime-tim e television. There arc many pitfalls that arise in such an endeavor. and there is a need to be reflexive about the location from which one (in my case . as a while, male. hetero sexua l acade mic) speaks and writes abo ut mascu linit y, or as Tulloch ( 1990, p. 6) has pUI it. the "desires. practices, assumptions and discourses which make up one's agency as an author.vlest we reproduce the hegemon ic (masculin ist) culture we seck to interrogate, challenge, and transform. Nevertheless, AUTIlOR"S NOTE: I w"uld like 10 thank SIeve Craig. Larry Gn,,~ . and Del.ana Bro.... nin g rur Iheir help .... ilh lh i ~ chapter. 18S 186 Hegemonic Masculin ity in Transition ROBERT HANKE 187 such work is necessary and vital if we are to advance our understanding have largely been oriented towa rd "the 'depiction' (picturing) of fe of the gender regime of televisio n and questions of male power. I males on television in relation to presumed cultural realities and norm s." The main difficulty that male scholars face is similar to the one For the most par t, as Fejes's ( 1989) review indicates, most em pirical Richard Dyer has elucidated in his work on the representat ion of white ness research on men and the media utilized and was limited to the sex-ro le as an ethnic category in mainstream fil m: "White power secures its framework of functiona list sociology, addres sing the nature and effects dominance by seeming not 10 be anyt hing in particu lar," "whiteness" is of stereotyped male and female role portraya ls. Feminist theory and constructed as the norm agai nst which non-dominant groups are defined scholarship has, for obv ious rea sons, concentrated on women 's deva l as "other" (Dyer, 1988). "Masculinity," like " whiteness," does not appear uation in communica tion processes, the soc ial con struction of feminin to be cultural/historical category at all, thus rendering invisible the ity, and women's efforts and abilitie s to resist or challenge patriarchal privileged positio n from which (white) men in general are able to arti ideology, in order to account for women' s subordination or oppre ssion cuiate their interests to the exclusion of the interests of women, men and women's cultural experience (cf Brown, 1990: Rakow, 1990: Steeve s, and wome n of color, and children. 1987). While much more work on these issues remain s to be done, there Since Williams ( 1977) and Gitlin (198 7) first explored the operations is also a need for media scholars to exa mine and analyze how media of cultural hegemo ny, there has been a substantial body of feminist and institutions, through their speci fic represen tational forms and practices, nonfeminist scholarship on television and gender from a variety of theo are involved in the produ ction and re-production of mascu linity as a ret ical perspect ives and methodological approaches (for an overview, cultural category.How, in short, is masculinity itself defined and rede see Buck & Newton, 1989). While Gi tlin ( 1987) stressed that hegemo ny fined in order to sec ure a position of do minance for men within the "is reasse rted in different ways at different times, even by different sex/gender system? Is there a single, unified masculine discourse, which logics," his main goal was to examine these processes in relation to liberal construc ts masculinity in opposition to a (usua lly subordinated) fem i capitalism and consumer, bourgeoi s ideo logy. However, if we are to ninity, or, as Hall (1989, p. 5 1) suggests, are discursive systems always advance the theory of cultural hegemony, it is clear that we need to give the product of articu lations , alway s contradictory, containing possibil separate attention to questions of the relati ons between television and ities for transcoding and decod ing the dominant definitions? In this gender, to analyze the express ion of patriarchal ideology and genderl chapter, following Connell's (1987) work, I explore hegemonic, co nser sex ual politics on its own terms. Any theo ry ofcultural hegemony must vati ve, and subordinated masculinities in three areas: gender and genre, also take account of the cultural studies perspective on the aud ience, the "new view of manhood," and heterosexual ideology. Television's rep specifically, the thesis that subordinate members of the audience are able resentation of "femininized" masculi nity as well as homos exuali ty will to resist the hegemonic thru st of media cult ure. It is not my intenti on to be taken as "indic ative features of wha t the hegemonic process has in offer a synthesis of the theory of hegemony and the theory of resistance, practice had to work to control"(Williams, 1977, p. 113). but rathe r to suggest some revisions in the theory of hegemony in order to conce ptualize a "moving state of play in meanings, which is then articul ated to a state of play in the field of power" (Hall, 1989, p. 5 1). Gender and Genre This revision entails drawing upon the critical study of men and mas culinities (see Hearn & Melech i, this volume; Hearn & Morgan, 1990). According to Gi tlin ( 1987), ge nres are one of the concrete form s More specifica lly, I would like to consider whether the concept of " hege through which cultu ral hegemony operate s. Perhaps the most sophisti monic masc ulinity" can be usefu lly employed to analyze the dialectics cated treatment of the "engendering work" of television has been of domination and resistance that charac terize television culture and its Fiske 's (1987a, 19S7b) examination of ge ndcrcd genres . From an ethno discursive co nstruc tion of mascul inity. gra phically informed, structuralist-acce nted, cultural studies perspec Medi a studies has not co nsidered mascul inity as a pro blematic or tive, Fiske offers a compara tive, dialec tical analysis of the basic narra historicall y troubled catego ry until recently (Penley & Willis, 1988). tive form of soa p opera and cop adventure prog rams that includes Grossbe rg and Treichler (1987) suggest that studies of media and gender evidence from ethnographic studies of viewi ng practices. Fiske argues 188 Hegemon ic Masc ulinity in Tra nsition ROBERT HAN KE 189 that tele vision helps to produce a "c rucial categorization of its viewe rs sented but how it is represen ted"(p. 222) . However. from the point of into masculine and femi nine subjects" ( 1987a. p. 179) through particu view of cultural hege mony. Miami Vice's re-ceding of mascu linity and lar generic co nventions and the negotiated or oppositional read ings they the "pleasures of style. look . and appe arance" it offers may be less of a invite. In his view, soap operd lends itself to resistant readings by wom en, challenge to patriarchal value s. less of an opportunity for men to who occupy a subordi nate position within pa triarchy, while the co nven interrogate those value s. than a co nstruct ion of a masculine consumer tions of cop adventure shows, which are designed to addre ss men, pri subject. As Ebert ( 1988) has argued from a postmodern feminist cult ural maril y rei nforce dominant ge nder ideology throu gh the articulation of perspective: gender difference s (such as senstuvenough. domestic/professional, and so on). For example. Fiske argues that masculi nity in programs like The d ifferentiations be tween masculine and feminine increasingly collapse Magnum. P. I.• is primarily de fined along two dimensions: self-sufficiency under the pressure of capitalism. yel patriarc hy finds new ways to perpetuate and asserti vene ss. yet different subordinated groups (boys. black men. male privilege, make sure thai wages. property ow nership, conrrol ove r pro and women) will negotiate masculine ideology toward their interests. For ducnon and political powe r remain largely gender differentiated. (p. 21) Fiske . the "polysemy" of media texts and the heterogen ity of audiences thus explains why hegemonic ideology is always under "threat," why tele In Fiske's analys is. exac tly how Miami Via's co ntradictory image of vision. as popu lar culture. makes possible a kind ofsemiotic democracy. men articulates with any specific soc ial formation and the larger context Fiske does avoi d the categoricalis m of a purel y structuralis t analys is of postindustrial. tran snational co nsumer capitalism is not examined. of gende r. since he shows how masculine ideology ove rlaps with ideo l From Fiske 's perspective (and possibly that of U.S. cultural studies ogies of race and nation. Yet. further analysis within the category mascu as a whole). heg emonic ideology appears to have great difficulty insert linity seems necessary since masculinity is inflected not only by race ing itself into our everyday. cultural expe rie nces in a way that would and nationality. but also by class. etbnicity, generation. and sexual prer de fine mosl people's commonsense under stand ings of the ge nder re erence (Mo uffe.

Load more