Having it both ways: Two and a Half Men,Entourage, and televising post-feminist masculinity

This article explores representations of juvenile post-feminist masculinity across two television texts: Two and a Half Men and Entourage. These programs exhibit a contradictory continuum of masculine performances allowing men to “have it both ways,” or to be both sensitive and casually sexist within contemporary culture. By detailing how similar kinds of masculinity exist across two seemingly disparate channels and television programs, this analysis also decouples automatic assumptions about representation as being primarily linked to notions of “quality” or “complex” TV emerging from cable and pay cable channels, and instead demonstrates the importance of looking for representational similarities as much as differences and distinctions across channels in order to fully understand the relational shifts between constructions of masculinity and post-feminist illogics.     

Sexual Orientation as a Peripheral Cue in Advertising: Effects of Models’ Sexual Orientation,Argument Strength,and Involvement on Responses to Magazine Ads

This study examines how sexual orientation of couples featured in magazine advertisements affects heterosexual viewers’ responses using the elaboration likelihood model as a framework. A 3 × 2 × 2 × 3 experiment tested effects of sexual orientation, argument strength, involvement, and attitudes toward homosexuality on heterosexuals’ attitudes toward the couple, advertisement, brand, and product, purchase intentions, and recall. Results indicate that consumers were accepting of ads with lesbian portrayals. Participants showed more negative attitudes toward gay male portrayals, but attitudes toward heterosexual and lesbian ads were similar. This effect was moderated by participants’ attitudes toward homosexuals. Low-involvement consumers showed more negative attitudes toward homosexual portrayals than toward heterosexual portrayals, indicating that sexual orientation may have served as a peripheral cue negatively impacting attitudes toward the couple and ad under low elaboration. These effects were not observed for attitudes toward the brand and product, purchase intentions, or recall.     

Discursive manoeuvres and hegemonic recuperations in New Zealand documentary representations of domestic violence

This article examines the production and promotion of A&;E's Rollergirls (2006), a US docu-soap featuring the Texas Roller Derby Lonestar Rollergirls (TXRD), the league that revived roller derby as a sport for female amateurs. Focusing on the representation of TXRD skaters in Rollergirls, as well as A&;E's promotional campaign for the series, this analysis is contextualized in relation to the role of female athleticism in contemporary US commercial culture. Relying on practices long used to trivialize women sports figures, Rollergirls' portrayals of TXRD skaters suggest ambivalence towards female athleticism as well as a desire to contain the gender-bent and sexually agential performances at the heart of women's roller derby. In addition to revealing the challenges television producers face in the representation of female athletes and other nonconformist women, the research offered here hopes to expand feminist television criticism beyond its conventional focus on fictional texts while also broadening feminist studies of sports media, which have centered primarily on news coverage.     

City Branding and Social Inclusion in the Glocal City

Abstract

This article begins with a re-assessment of city branding that focuses on the marketing strategies routinely employed to promote a competitive identity for the contemporary ‘glocal’ city, before moving on to the issue of social inclusion. Combining a socio-semiotic approach with recent insights from urban studies, it explores a sample of 12 British city council websites to discuss to what extent web-mediated communication, within the modernisation agenda espoused by local authorities, may effectively help to represent and give voice to today’s multicultural and migrant urban communities. The article adopts a critical reading of municipal websites with the aim of understanding how a social inclusion agenda can be incorporated into the authoritative and functional discourse typically used by the sites and proposes that the onset of new interactive technologies, such as blogs and social networks, do have significant democratic potential in this respect, even though their incorporation into the sites is still at a preliminary stage. As such, the article is concerned with how flows of information and people are coming together in the early twenty-first century and transforming what began as a static textual/discursive space into one that is responsive to the flux of the contemporary city. At the time of writing, this is very much a communication revolution in the making, with the new interactive portals sitting somewhat awkwardly alongside information-based web pages and links. In addition, the article investigates the ways in which the sites attempt to present their cities as diasporic, cosmopolitan and ‘glocalized’ spaces, paying particular attention to the subjugated discourse of migration and the way that the cities’ non-white population is fixed and bounded by aesthetic and discursive means.     

Something Else Besides a Father

While heterosexuality has long been the assumed ideology of reproduction, the material existence of over thirty-three thousand US children a year born from sperm donation alone attests to a radical disjuncture between our conceptions of conception and how a good many children are actually conceived. Reproductive technologies, ranging from the aforementioned sperm donation to the more complicated processes of egg harvesting, surrogacy, and IVF, can thus be read as subverting our notions of the heteronormative family. As such, assisted reproductive technology evokes widespread cultural anxiety, especially for how it challenges notions of gender, sexuality, and parenthood.

Not surprisingly, popular culture has stepped in to allay some of these anxieties, and as such it is a productive site through which to examine debates around gender, sexuality, and parenthood. At the very least, the wide market of Hollywood cinema is evidence of the discursive pull of these debates. In an examination of three recent and representative Hollywood films, Baby Mama (2008), The Switch, and The Back-Up Plan (both 2010), I will analyze how they both challenge and reinforce the “socially foundational status of the male–female couple.” Through their (re)deployment of a variety of cinematic conventions, these films attempt to yoke the radical potential of reproductive technology to a conservative ideology incorporating post-feminism and new masculinity that insists on the emotive primacy of the heterosexual couple and its “language of naturalness.”     

Pills,Periods, and Postfeminism

Since the English translation of Elsimar Coutinho's Is Menstruation Obsolete? in 1999 and the introduction of cycle-stopping birth control pills in 2003, US women are increasingly advised that menstruation is not necessary for good health. The most widely distributed source of such messages is direct-to-consumer advertisements for birth control pills. The most recent television ads for Seasonique, the leading brand of cycle-stopping contraceptive in the US, minimize the pill's contraceptive function and focus instead on their effectiveness in reducing the frequency of menstruation. A close reading of these commercials reveals them to be an integral part of an emerging postfeminist media culture that attempts to solidify a new, neoliberal subjectivity for women. This subjectivity imposes an idealized, docile, non-menstruating feminine body, ready for full-time participation in the neoliberal economy.     

The Real Housewives,gendered affluence,and the rise of the docusoap

In this paper we position gendered affluence as a representational trend in dramatic comedies (e.g., Sex and the City [SATC]) and docusoaps (e.g., The Real Housewives [TRH]) that coalesces around themes like hyper-femininity, nouveau riche values, and conspicuous lifestyle. Through our analysis we suggest that institutional practices (identity politics, cybernetic commodification, and post-feminist technological interactivity) situated in a neoliberal context and a remediated environment enable the systematic reproduction of gendered affluence in the broader landscape of women’s television. The process of remediation is used as a lens to examine how the docusoap differs from (the immediacy of mediated self-performance) and resembles (the hypermediacy of mediated irony and post-feminist interactivity) the fictional portrayals of gendered affluence found in dramatic comedies like SATC. Our case analysis of TRH demonstrates the specific way non-fictional portrayals of gendered affluence are transforming genre (via an ethos of affluence and a consumerist ethic) and artfully maintaining the status quo in terms of gendered, raced, and classed intersections. Ultimately we argue that the docusoap is accomplishing this in a remediated environment that promotes a neoliberal agenda via affective engagement grounded in mediated self-performance and rational disengagement grounded in mediated irony.     

Patriarchy,Power, and Female Masculinity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the place of “butch” within the women's movement. The political potentials of butch in both her refusal of patriarchal constructs of femininity and her transmutation of masculinity will be explored. It will be argued that the butch lesbian threatens male power by severing the naturalized connection between masculinity and male bodies, by causing masculinity to appear “queer,” and by usurping men's roles. However, for “butch” to truly have feminist potential, it also needs to be accompanied by a feminist awareness and a rejection of aspects of masculinity that are oppressive to women. Hence, “butch feminist” need not be an oxymoron, but a strategy for challenging male domination and power.     

#wheresRey: feminism,protest, and merchandising sexism in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The blockbuster film Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) earned over $2 billion dollars at the box-office worldwide and became a cultural phenomenon. Produced by media giant Disney, The Force Awakens also generated huge merchandising sales and earned over $9 billion within a year. The film’s main protagonist, Rey, was heralded as a strong, feminist-influenced heroine that capably carved her own space within the male dominated Star Wars universe. Unfortunately, the inherent sexism of the film’s marketing strategy meant that Rey was excluded from the merchandising line. Consumers protested Rey’s absence and demonstrated the importance of popular culture within the realm of political protests about gender equality and commercialization, ultimately leading to industrial and social change.     

Women's Responsibilities,Freedoms, and Pleasures

In the building of the Swedish welfare state, men and women have been seen as equal in their roles as parents, breadwinners, and citizens. This conception is not confirmed by the images produced by advertising. The article presents an analysis of alcohol-related advertisements published in Swedish women's magazines from the 1960s to the 2000s. The advertisements are approached as representations of gendered performances in which gender is made visible “here and now” by placing women in particular subject positions that are related to private or public spheres and associated with specific kinds of gender norms reflecting women's shifting responsibilities, freedoms, and pleasures. The article asks what kind of drinking-related subject positions have been portrayed as desirable in women's magazine advertisements over the past few decades and how those positions have changed as we move closer to the present day. The analysis reveals both continuity and variability in alcohol-related subject positions in Swedish women's magazine advertisements. It shows how women's responsibilities, freedoms, and pleasures have expanded from the traditional domain of the private sphere to multiple new areas as Sweden has developed from a modern welfare state to a late-modern competition state. However, this does not mean that the traditional gender norms have disintegrated and been replaced by equal gender norms. Rather, it seems that traditional gender norms continue to be reproduced in alcohol-related advertising.     

An Interrupted Postcolonial/Feminist Cyberethnography: Complicity and Resistance in the "Cyberfield"

Informed by Foucault's theorisation of the docile body, the gaze, and the Panopticon, we analyse how the gaze is operationalised in the popular makeover show How to Look Good Naked (HTLGN). We explore how a regime of discipline is (re)produced through the drawing of boundaries constructing the feminine/masculine and straight/queer binaries. We analyse the delineation of rules and the performance of practices to maintain these boundaries, which support emphasised femininity and hegemonic masculinity. Whilst HTLGN claims to challenge the “body fascism” prevalent in the fashion, beauty, and advertising industries and rid women, and more recently men, of the shame associated with not meeting these ideals, we argue that the show's resistance is far from radical, functioning instead as a mediated ritual of rebellion, endorsing and sustaining key elements constituting prevailing constructions of femininity and masculinity.     

“How Big is Big Enough?”

This article examines the representation of masculinity in Sex and the City through an analysis of the characters Big and Steve. Although the show is unique in that it presents female characters as the primary subjects of identification and presumes a female audience, it participates in the patriarchal project of measuring men, especially Big and Steve, against each other. At first, Big represents classic old-style phallic male character, the hero of both fairy tale and Hollywood romantic comedy. Steve, on the other hand, represents the new man, a flawed hero of modern relationship myths. However, throughout the course of the series, the illnesses of these two characters shift these representations. The series ultimately opens space for new representations of masculinity.     

Cohort Succession in the US Housing Market: New Houses, the Baby Boom, and Income Stratification

Federal housing policy in the US across the postwar period supported the construction of new houses more than public provision or renovation of older structures as a means of ensuring a sufficient supply of quality dwellings. Understanding trends in new housing in particular is thus crucial to understanding the housing regime. Following Myers (Housing demography: Linking demographic structure and housing markets. University of Wisconsin Press, 1990; Housing Studies, 14, 473–490,1999), this paper conceptualizes historical change in the housing stock within a demographic framework as the movement of cohorts of households through cohorts of housing stock. Recent evidence suggests that a new cohort of houses arose in the 1980s and 1990s (larger with more amenities than past vintages), and that buyers of those new houses were increasingly affluent. In this paper, I link the succession to a new cohort of houses to household cohort succession and examine the increasing affluence of new house buyers by age and cohort, focusing especially on the entry of the Baby Boom generation exactly when the new cohort of houses arrived. I use US Census microdata for 1960–2000 to develop a cohort longitudinal dataset, and analyze historical change in stratification in new house ownership. I find significant shifts between cohorts in income inequality among new house buyers, with implications for the capacity of the housing regime to meet the future needs of an increasingly diverse population.

“It Is What It Is”: Masculinity,Homosexuality, and Inclusive Discourse in Mixed Martial Arts

In this article we make use of inclusive masculinity theory to explore online media representations of male homosexuality and masculinity within the increasingly popular combat sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Adopting a case-study approach, we discuss narratives constructed around one aspirational male MMA fighter, Dakota Cochrane, whose history of having participated in gay pornography became a major talking point on a number of MMA discussion/community Web sites during early 2012. While these narratives attempted to discursively rescue Cochrane’s supposedly threatened masculinity, highlighting both his “true” heterosexuality and his prodigious fighting abilities, they also simultaneously celebrated the acceptance of homosexual men within the sport that Cochrane’s case implied. Thus, we suggest that these media representations of homosexuality and masculinity within MMA are indicative of declining cultural homophobia and homohysteria and an inclusive vision of masculinity, as previously described by proponents of inclusive masculinity theory.     

Location shooting in “the Wild East”: risk and masculinity in Hollywood productions in the Philippines

This essay argues that risk has become a crucial part of Hollywood’s transnational media productions, revealing these productions’ links to various forms of masculinity. Entailing the deliberate confrontation of uncertainty, the concept of risk connotes rational decision-making, territorial exploration, economic investment, and, more implicitly, the kinds of masculinities associated with these practices. As such, risk becomes a means of understanding how the older forms of white masculinity associated with empire map onto newer geopolitical contexts, gendering production narratives that seek to mythologize filmmakers as auteurs, businessmen, and danger-seekers. Focusing on American productions in the Philippines, the essay examines risk and white masculinity in three cases of filmmaking: 1970s exploitation cinema commemorated in Machete Maidens Unleashed!; Apocalypse Now and Coppola’s subsequent tourism ventures; and the blockbuster The Bourne Legacy.     

The specter of the black fag: parody, blackness, and hetero/homosexual B(r)others

This essay investigates the ways in which three African American heterosexual males-Eddie Murphy, Damon Wayans, and David Alan Grier-appropriate signifiers of gayness to parody, stereotype, and repudiate black gay men. These performances are also attempts to circumscribe the boundaries of blackness, ultimately suggesting that "authentic" blackness is lodged within hegemonic black masculinity. Contrary to this desired effect, the essay demonstrates how these performers, in the act of repudiation, ironically and unwittingly queer heteronormative black masculinity, securing further the dialectic between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Finally, the essay argues that these performances manifest the black heterosexual male's melancholia, his refusal to grieve the loss of his sexual B(r)other.     

Icons,Itinerary, and Identity: Associations of Boundary and Mobility within the Contemporary US Passport

Regulatory shifts in US border policy set in motion through implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative are concurrent with recent formal and functional changes to the US passport. This article examines these modifications interweaving themes of boundary, mobility, and identity. The study focuses on the tripartite means by which the state employs the passport: as the primary affixer of national identity; as a mediator of contact and mobility across national boundaries; and as a mode for the projection of a certain territorial discourse to its citizenry and ‘others.’ These concepts are developed through an analysis of the narrative and iconic representations contained within the new book itself; material sources from government archives; as well as discussions and interviews with US State Department functionaries closely associated with the design and distribution of the new e-passport. Through the latter examination, a view is afforded into the process by which key state documents are crafted and an inherent tension revealed within an agency charged with establishing a particular unifying ‘brand’ for the preeminent instrument of national identification, whilst dutifully acknowledging the diverse constituency of a nation that historically fashions itself as one constructed from the many. In conclusion, the study suggests that the new passport is the handiwork of a plethora of state actors and a servant of many masters, for it is not only a facilitator of mobility and a vouchsafe for the identity of the bearer, but also, a tiny but significant piece of US property, itself an agent of border maintenance and boundary construction that enables the state to lay claim to its citizenry.     

Marketing and Quality of Life: A Model for Improving Perinatal Health Status

Introduction: A marketing/business model using non-traditional Quality of Life measures was developed to assess perinatal health status on a micro-geographic level. This perinatal health status needs assessment study for Georgia South Central Region was conducted for the years 1994–1999. The model may be applied to any geographic unit in the U.S. – from a block group level to a state or a region. Methodology: An Infant Health Risk Score was created for each county and census tract by calculating the Z-scores of various Medical, Lifestyle, and Access variables so as to construct a Quality of Life Index. The scores identified the areas in the region that were at high risk for certain medical, lifestyle, and access variables (i.e., high risk for preterm births, low education levels, and poor access to perinatal services). A marketing tool, Claritas PRIZM Clusters, was used to identify a specific cluster and associated marketing information for each census tract within the region. Results: The Infant Health Quality of Life Risk Scores were linked with the PRIZM cluster marketing data to target areas in the region that exhibit high risk medical, lifestyle, and access scores. Health promotion and disease prevention strategies were developed using a marketing/business model. Specifically, media usage and consumer behavior purchasing patterns were identified and processed for every high risk area in the region. The categories for media usage were television, radio, and magazines and the categories for consumer behavior included restaurants, food items, and shopping locations. Discussion: The Perinatal Region is developing strategies to implement the media usage and consumer behavior marketing information to focus their prevention efforts to the high risk areas in the region based on the Quality of Life Measurements. Linking marketing business tools with a Quality of Life health status needs assessment has significant potential for improving the planning, the evaluation, and the focus of prevention efforts.     

Seeing double,thinking twice: the Toronto drag kings and (re-) articulations of masculinity

Through a close reading of the performances of masculinity by the Toronto drag kings, this chapter argues that drag king shows parody the hyper-masculine star at his most contradictory and dialogic. Given that drag king performances parody both the contradictions of masculinity on stage, and the productive technologies of the star, king performances are essentially both meta-theatrical (performances about performing where lights, music, body language, dance all make the man) and meta-performative (performances which are at once conditioned by the performative reiterations which enable a fiction of identity in the first place). Finally, I explore the rather abstracted question of what cultural work the category of "drag king" does. I argue that it is a term which articulates a series of productive but necessary slippages in and through the contradictory and dialogic practices of identification. The bottom line is this: drag kings are situated in and play with the ironic no man's land between "lesbian," "butch," "transman" and "bio-boy" where the sell evident is neither.