Document Type

Thesis - University Access Only

Award Date

2008

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department / School

English

Abstract

In this thesis, I examine some of the most pervasive representations of masculinity in American popular television and film that have appeared in the last decade. In particular, I explore the ways in which the media have redefined the ideal manly type in response to events such as the installation of a conservative government that reveres and promotes traditional masculine values, the attack on the World Trade Center, and the Iraq war by analyzing films such as The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and 300, the situation comedy Will & Grace, and the reality show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Television and cinema in particular, I claim, have used a return to traditional manly attributes such as toughness, autonomy, and heroism within a context of heterosexuality to construct the archetypal hegemonic male. To identify and describe this figure, I also scrutinize those modes of representation that the media employ to portray the male Other; i.e., the man who, due to race, class, or gender prejudices, is placed in opposition to the dominant male. In such representations, I argue, the media employ a series of rhetorical tropes that recycle modes of representation of the Other such as eroticization, feminization, and hyper- or hyposexualization among others. This thesis ultimately intends to demonstrate how media images essentialize both the archetypal male and the male Other, arrest people's capacity to imagine alternative masculinities, ostracize those who do not measure up to traditional notions of masculinity, and, as a consequence, foster prejudice.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Masculinity on television

Masculinity in motion pictures

Men in mass media

Mass media -- United States

Format

application/pdf

Number of Pages

174

Publisher

South Dakota State University

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