Mention the War: British Sitcoms and Military Masculinity
93 ANETTE PANKRATZ Mention the War: British Sitcoms and Military Masculinity 1. Introduction "Military virtues such as aggression, strength, courage and endurance have repeatedly been defined as the natural and inherent qualities of manhood" and "the soldier has become the quintessential figure of masculinity" (Dawson 1994, 1; cf. Braun 1996, 180; Connell 2005, 73, 213). Despite the assertive tone of these statements, military masculinity is fraught with contradictions and paradoxes. Soldiering, especially the killing of people in combat, can be seen as morally ambiguous (Braun 1996, 180). More importantly, the ideal type of military masculinity can never be reached and is enmeshed in a "dense web of double binds" (Belkin 2012, 4), that is, in disciplinary rituals that address soldiers as "girls" or "poofs" or in exercises that infantilise and feminise them (Belkin 2012, 33). Since the abolishment of National Service in 1961, serving in the army has become a very specialised occupation for a minority of the population in Britain and the warrior hero has been superseded by figures such as the "entrepreneurial individual" (Connell 2005, 254). (British) situation comedies featuring soldiers, from The Army Game (ITV, 1957- 1966) to Bluestone 42 (BBC, 2013-2015), broach this field of tensions with comic intent. They operate with incongruity between the exemplary figure of the warrior hero and its real-life performance, either by turning the norm upside down or by exaggerating and stereotyping it. The implicit juxtaposition of the ideal and its comic Other also puts into play different versions of masculinity, from the anxiously overt or the supposedly 'normal' to the deficient or explicitly dissident.
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