Our Side of the Mirror: the (Re)
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inolo rim gy C : d O n p a e n y King, Social Crimonol 2013, 1:1 g A o c l c o i e c s DOI: 10.4172/2375-4435.1000104 s o Sociology and Criminology-Open Access S ISSN: 2375-4435 ReviewResearch Article Article OpenOpen Access Access Our Side of the Mirror: The (Re)-Construction of 1970s’ Masculinity in David Peace’s Red Riding Martin King1* and Ian Cummins2 1Department of Social Work and Social Change, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK 2Department of Social Work-University of Salford, UK Abstract David Peace and the late Gordon Burn are two British novelists who have used a mixture of fact and fiction in their works to explore the nature of fame, celebrity and the media representations of individuals caught up in events, including investigations into notorious murders. Both Peace and Burn have analysed the case of Peter Sutcliffe, who was found guilty in 1981 of the brutal murders of thirteen women in the North of England. Peace’s novels filmed as the Red Riding Trilogy are an excoriating portrayal of the failings of misogynist and corrupt police officers, which allowed Sutcliffe to escape arrest. Burn’s somebody’s Husband Somebody’ Son is a detailed factual portrait of the community where Sutcliffe spent his life. Peace’s technique combines reportage, stream of consciousness and changing points of views including the police and the victims to produce an episodic non linear narrative. The result has been termed Yorkshire noir. The overall effect is to render the paranoia and fear these crimes created against a backdrop of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Peace has termed his novels as “fictions of the facts”. This paper will examine the way that Peace uses his account of Sutcliffe’s crimes and the huge police manhunt to catch the killer to explore the society that produced the perpetrator, victims and the police. The police officers represent a form of “hegemonic masculinity” but one that is challenged by the extreme misogyny, brutality, misery and degradation that surround them. This deconstruction of the 1970s male police officer is contrasted with the enormously popular figure of Gene Hunt from the BBC TV series Life on Mars. Keywords: Hegemonic; Masculinity; Nineteen seventies; Police; Carrigan et al. [10] were the first to introduce the concept of hegemonic Reconstruction masculinity, drawing on the work of Gramsci [11], arguing that dominant conceptualisations of masculinity were reproduced through Introduction key institutions such as the state, education, workplace, the family and This article will explore, via the works of Peace and Burn, the the mass media. Carrigan et al. [10] explain how hegemonic masculinity literary portrayal of the impacts of investigating violent and sexual is not just about men in relation to women but is a particular type of crime on the police officers and those around them. There are no masculinity. They characterise hegemonic masculinity: “not as ‘the heroes in these novels, only the morally corrupted. The article argues male role’ but a variety of masculinity to which others – among them that characters such as the police officers in Peace’s work reflect wider young and effeminate as well as homosexual men – are subordinated” [10]. problems in terms of the construction of masculinity. They are forced A key feature of hegemonic masculinity is that it is explicitly to confront extreme misogyny and violence. They are overwhelmed by heterosexual [12]. Carrigan et al. [10] see hegemonic masculinity as the brutality, misery and degradation that surround them. However, the way in which men reproduce their dominance, through particular they share many of the attitudes that are at the root of the hideous groupings of powerful men. The importance of this theoretical crimes they must investigate, the attitudes being embedded in the development cannot be underestimated. It is their introduction of institutions in which they operate. Similar themes, significantly apart Gramsci’s [11] cultural-Marxist perspective which examines notions from the issues of race, are explored, for largely comic effect, in the TV of class and power along with gender that is particularly important. series Life on Mars [1]. The main character, Gene Hunt became a huge Gramsci’s [11] concept of hegemony is summarised by Bocock [13] as: populist and media success, a representative of a world not dominated “… when the intellectual, moral and philosophical leadership provided by political correctness and bureaucracy. Red Riding [2] represents a by the class or alliance of class factions which is ruling successfully dark contrast to this nostalgic vision of 1970s’ policing and masculinity. achieves its objective of providing the fundamental outlook of the whole society.” Men and masculinities Carrigan et al. [10] discuss how “particular groups of men” As Hearn [3] has stated “studying men is, in itself, neither new (emphasis in original) come to hold power and this is important in nor necessarily radical”. Hearn and Kimmel et al. [4] provide a comprehensive guide to the development of gendered work on men, what Collinson and Hearn [5] refer to a “naming men as men”. This *Corresponding author: Martin King, Principal Lecturer, Department of Social idea, originally advanced by Hanmer [6], refers to the way in which an Work and Social Change, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, Tel: 0161- excavation of how masculinity operates within wider society takes place. 2472541; E-mail: [email protected] July 25, 2013; August 27, 2013; August 29, 2013 The multi-disciplinary nature of this work often transgresses Received Accepted Published traditional academic venues [7] and the study of men in the arts has Citation: King M, Cummins I (2013) Our Side of the Mirror: The (Re)-Construction developed as an emergent area of study in its own right [8]. Much of of 1970s’ Masculinity in David Peace’s Red Riding. Social Crimonol 1: 104. doi: 10.4172/2375-4435.1000104 this work has focused on the ways in which men in popular culture, particularly through their representation in the mass media, have Copyright: © 2013 King M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted either colluded with or provided a challenge to dominant versions of use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and masculinity at work in Western society in particular. Connell [9] and source are credited. Social Crimonol Volume 1 • Issue 1 • 1000104 ISSN:2375-4435 SCOA, an open access journal Citation: King M, Cummins I (2013) Our Side of the Mirror: The (Re)-Construction of 1970s’ Masculinity in David Peace’s Red Riding. Social Crimonol 1: 104. doi: 10.4172/2375-4435.1000104 Page 2 of 7 starting to unpack the grand narrative of patriarchy, for example, and media is “always a construction, never a transparent window”, while begins to unravel the complexities at work where gender and class Kellner [27] argues that within media culture “existing social struggles” intersect. It is a concept which encompasses the notion of power being are reproduced and that this has a key impact on the production of contested between groups [11,14] and Connell [15] builds on this identities and the ways in which people make sense of the world. idea and advances the notion of resistance and change. He argues that Gripsrud [25] argues that the media plays a crucial role in the self “many men live in some tension with, or distance, from, hegemonic perception or identity of individuals and groups, creating imagined masculinity” [15] and that hegemonic masculinity is supported by the communities and presenting new ideas, new (and old) “stuff” from collusion of dominant forms of femininity. Whitehead [16] advances which: “we simply have to form some sort of opinion about where we the view that it is the “nuanced account” offered by the debate around are located, so to speak, in the complex landscapes presented to us” [25]. hegemonic masculinity and its ability to signal the contested nature of male practices within a gender structure that distinguishes it from, and This idea incorporates Berger and Luckman’s [28] notion that makes it a more useful concept than, patriarchy. “he (sic) who has the bigger stick has the better chance of imposing his definitions of reality” and there would, of course, be no body of The debate around hegemonic masculinity then has become central work on representations of men and masculinity had it not been for to the field of critical studies of men [17]. Hearn [8] has argued that, feminist analysis of the ways in which women’s representation in TV as definitions of hegemonic masculinity have developed, they have and film played out in the reality of oppression [29-31]. Much of this come to incorporate a relationship between “the cultural ideal and the work examined the stereotyping of men and women into traditional institutional power as in state, business and corporate power.” Earlier and widely accepted roles/positions on the screen, seeing stereotyping critiques such as those by Donaldson [18], who saw the concept as as a way in which power relations could be reproduced. Hearn [8] obscuring economic and class issues, and Whitehead [16] who saw it as acknowledges a change in writing on men and masculinities with an unable to explain “the complex patterns of inculcation and resistance increasing emphasis on the role of representation of masculinities: “If which constitute everyday social interaction”, or the different meanings one is interested in social change in men and gender relations, it is attached to “masculinity”, have been absorbed into an ever changing necessary to attend to changing images of men which appear to have conceptualisation of hegemonic masculinity.