Esperanza Miyake is Lecturer in Digital Media and Communications at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research involves the critical analysis of gender, race and queerness in relation to a wide range of subjects in cultural and media studies, especially surrounding technologies and everyday life. ‘Esperanza Miyake’s The Gendered Motorcycle: Representations in Society, Media and Popular Culture marks a significant contribution to the areas of gender and cultural studies. Miyake’s comprehensive erudition and broad swath of referenced sources in popular culture, cultural theory and motorcycle studies make this work both novel and impressive.’ Steven Alford, Professor Emeritus and Suzanne Ferriss, Professor Emeritus, Department of Literature and Modern Languages, Nova Southeastern University, Florida ‘This highly original and groundbreaking book is destined to become a classic within the area of motorcycle studies in the way that it cleverly combines theoretical awareness with some very articulate and gifted close reading, providing a rich tapestry and a set of profound reflections on an impressive range of cultures, practices and phenomena.’ David Walton, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, University of Murcia, Spain Library of Gender and Popular Culture From Mad Men to gaming culture, performance art to steam-punk fashion, the presentation and representation of gender continues to saturate popular media. This new series seeks to explore the intersection of gender and popular culture, engaging with a variety of texts – drawn primarily from Art, Fashion, TV, Cinema, Cultural Studies and Media Studies – as a way of considering various models for understanding the complementary relationship between ‘gender identities’ and ‘popular culture’. By considering race, ethnicity, class, and sexual identities across a range of cultural forms, each book in the series will adopt a critical stance towards issues surrounding the development of gender identities and popular and mass cultural ‘products’. For further information or enquiries, please contact the library series editors: Claire Nally: [email protected] Angela Smith: [email protected] Advisory Board: Dr Kate Ames, Central Queensland University, Australia Prof Leslie Heywood, Binghampton University, USA Dr Michael Higgins, Strathclyde University, UK Prof Åsa Kroon, Örebro University, Sweden Dr Niall Richardson, Sussex University, UK Dr Jacki Willson, Central St Martins, University of Arts London, UK Published and forthcoming titles: The Aesthetics of Camp: Post-Queer Gender The Gypsy Woman: Representations in Literature and Popular Culture and Visual Culture By Anna Malinowska By Jodie Matthews Ageing Femininity on Screen: The Older Woman Love Wars: Television Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema By Mary Irwin By Niall Richardson Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction All-American TV Crime Drama: Feminism Cinema: Cyborgs, Troopers and Other Men and Identity Politics in Law and Order: of the Future Special Victims Unit By Marianne Kac-Vergne By Sujata Moorti and Lisa Cuklanz Moving to the Mainstream: Women On and Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies: Sex, Performance Off Screen in Television and Film and Safe Femininity By Marianne Kac-Vergne and Julie Assouly (Eds) By Gemma Commane Paradoxical Pleasures: Female Submission Beyoncé: Celebrity Feminism in the Age of in Popular and Erotic Fiction Social Media By Anna Watz By Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs Positive Images: Gay Men and HIV/AIDS in the Culture of ‘Post-Crisis’ Conflicting Masculinities: Men in Television By Dion Kagan Period Drama By Katherine Byrne, Julie Anne Taddeo and Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality James Leggott (Eds) and Masculinity at the Margins By Darren Elliott-Smith Fathers on Film: Paternity and Masculinity in 1990s Hollywood Queer Sexualities in Early Film: Cinema and By Katie Barnett Male-Male Intimacy By Shane Brown Film Bodies: Queer Feminist Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema Steampunk: Gender and the Neo-Victorian By Katharina Lindner By Claire Nally Gay Pornography: Representations of Sexuality Television Comedy and Femininity: and Masculinity Queering Gender By John Mercer By Rosie White Gender and Austerity in Popular Culture: Television, Technology and Gender: Femininity, Masculinity and Recession in New Platforms and New Audiences Film and Television By Sarah Arnold ’ By Helen Davies and Claire O Callaghan (Eds) Tweenhood: Femininity and Celebrity in The Gendered Motorcycle: Representations Tween Popular Culture in Society, Media and Popular Culture By Melanie Kennedy By Esperanza Miyake Women Who Kill: Gender and Sexuality in Post-Feminist Film and Television Gendering History on Screen: Women Filmmakers By David Roche and Cristelle Maury (Eds) and Historical Films By Julia Erhart Wonder Woman: Feminism, Culture and the Body By Joan Ormrod Girls Like This, Boys Like That: The Reproduction of Gender in Contemporary Young Women in Contemporary Cinema: Youth Cultures Gender and Post-feminism in British Film By Victoria Cann By Sarah Hill The Gendered Motorcycle Representations in Society, Media and Popular Culture Esperanza Miyake To my father Published in 2018 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2018 Esperanza Miyake The right of Esperanza Miyake to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Library of Gender and Popular Culture 23 ISBN: 978 1 78831 354 4 eISBN: 978 1 78672 425 0 ePDF: 978 1 78673 425 9 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Minion Pro by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Contents List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgements xv Series Editors’ Foreword xvii Introduction: Why the Motorcycle? 1 Book Outline 3 1 A Mobile Technology of Gender 9 Surveying the Terrain: Tracking the Field 10 A Mobile Technology of Gender 16 PART I FILM 2 Too Fast or Too Slow: Ideological Constructions of Speed and Gender 23 Slow and Steady: Easy Rider and the Male ‘Time Out’ 26 Fast and Furious: Beating just about Everything and Anything 33 Conclusion: Gearing Up and Slowing Down ... to Average Speed? 44 3 Tribute to the Pillion: Seating Bodies upon the Heterosexual Matrix 47 Male Rider and Female Pillion: Seating Gender upon the Heterosexual Matrix 50 The Female Rider with the Male Pillion: Carnival, Freedom and Containment 53 Third ‘Seat’: Petrol Tank as a Bed 58 Queer Riders: Same-Sex Rider and the Pillion 62 Conclusion: The Burden of the Pillion 65 vii The Gendered Motorcycle PART II ADVERTISING 4 Girl on a Motorbike: Technology of Youth, Subculture and Rebellion 69 Bikerchick: Enter Kate 74 Conclusion: Static Mobility and the Stylisation of Apathy? 85 5 Luxury as a Gendered Discourse: Chanel’s Ducati and Davidoff’s Triumph 89 Mind/Body 93 Subject/Object 97 Wilderness/Urbanity 103 Conclusion: ‘Escaping’ on a Post-Feminist Motorcycle 107 PART III TELEVISION 6 Gastro-Motorcyclism: Culinary Gender and Class 113 The Rise of Gastro-Motorcyclism 113 Normative Discourses of Culinary Gender and Class: Chef or Home Cook? 115 New Culinary Masculinities 118 Conclusion: The Paradox of Meals on Two-Wheels 132 7 The Techno-Metrosexual: Guy Martin and the Motorised Discourse of Hybrid Masculinity 135 Techno-Metrosexual Body: Motorised Discourse of Masculinity 138 Feeling the Vibrations: Homosocial Techno-Love and the Queering of Technology 147 Ideology of Dirt I: The Mark of Class 152 Ideology of Dirt II: Unpretentious Anti-Celebrity 157 Conclusion: Techno-Metrosexual or just Metrosexual 2.0? 159 viii Contents PART IV ANIME/MANGA 8 Nuclear Dreams: Dis-Orienting the Human/Machine in Akira 163 The Machine-Body: Escape or Eviction of Human Identity? 165 Nuclear Flesh: Containing the Uncontainable 169 Technostalgia: Future is Back Then 176 Conclusion: An ‘Old’ Future? 182 9 Bosozoku and Japanese Subcultural Masculinity: Thunder, Lightning and Everything Frightening in Bad Boys 185 Theorising Bosozoku 187 Bad Boys: Bosozoku Masculinities 190 Thunder and Lightning 191 ‘I want to be like Eiji’: Japanese ‘Bad Boy’ 199 Conclusion: Women and Bosozoku ... Kamikaze Girl? 205 Conclusion: A Typology of Motorcycle Meanings: Gender and Technology 209 Freedom and Independence 210 Travel, Adventure and Transformation 213 Design, Technology and Performance 215 Speed, Danger and Risk 217 Deviance, Rebellion and Crime 219 Final Rev 222 Notes 225 Bibliography 235 Filmography 256 Index 259 ix List of Illustrations Figures Figure 2.1 Light Cycles in Tron (1982) materialise from the handlebars and eventually engulf the rider. Directed by Steven Lisberger. USA: Walt Disney Productions/Lisberger/Kushner. 35 Figure 2.2 Anne Hathaway as Catwoman riding the batpod in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Directed by Christopher Nolan. USA: Warner Bros. 44 Figure 3.1 Accompanying forum post states: ‘Whichever facilitates proper passenger body position: D’.49 Figure 3.2 UK Natwest TV advertisement (2016), a contemporary example of the child-like female rider with worried male ‘parent’ pillion. Directed by Steve Reeves. UK. 54 Figure 3.3 Cameron Diaz on the ‘third seat’ with Tom Cruise in Knight and Day (2010). Directed by James Mangold. USA: Twentieth Century Fox. 61 Figure 3.4 Rider Wez gets struck by an arrow as his pillion, the Golden Youth, looks on in Mad Max: The Road Warrior (1981). Directed by George Miller. Australia: Kennedy Miller Productions. 63 Figure 4.1 Static mobility: Kate Moss on the BSA Firebird Scrambler as a studio prop in Bikerchick (2005).