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Full-Text Articles in Critical and Cultural Studies
“I’M Here To Do Business. I’M Not Here To Play Games.” Work, Consumption, And Masculinity In Storage Wars, Mark A. Rademacher, Casey R. Kelly
“I’M Here To Do Business. I’M Not Here To Play Games.” Work, Consumption, And Masculinity In Storage Wars, Mark A. Rademacher, Casey R. Kelly
Mark A. Rademacher
This essay examines the first season of Storage Wars and suggests the program helps mediate the putative crisis in American masculinity by suggesting that traditional male skills are still essential where knowledge supplants manual labor. We read representations of “men at work” in traditionally “feminine” consumer markets, as a form of masculine recuperation situated within the culture of White male injury. Specifically, Storage Wars appropriates omnivorous consumption, thrift, and collaboration to fit within the masculine repertoire of self-reliance, individualism, and competition. Thus, the program adapts hegemonic masculinity by showcasing male auction bidders adeptly performing feminine consumer practices. Whether the feminine …
“I’M Here To Do Business. I’M Not Here To Play Games.” Work, Consumption, And Masculinity In Storage Wars, Mark A. Rademacher, Casey R. Kelly
“I’M Here To Do Business. I’M Not Here To Play Games.” Work, Consumption, And Masculinity In Storage Wars, Mark A. Rademacher, Casey R. Kelly
Casey R. Kelly
This essay examines the first season of Storage Wars and suggests the program helps mediate the putative crisis in American masculinity by suggesting that traditional male skills are still essential where knowledge supplants manual labor. We read representations of “men at work” in traditionally “feminine” consumer markets, as a form of masculine recuperation situated within the culture of White male injury. Specifically, Storage Wars appropriates omnivorous consumption, thrift, and collaboration to fit within the masculine repertoire of self-reliance, individualism, and competition. Thus, the program adapts hegemonic masculinity by showcasing male auction bidders adeptly performing feminine consumer practices. Whether the feminine …
Expressing The Self Through Greeting Card Sentiment: Working Theories Of Authentic Communication In A Commercial Form, Emily West
Emily E. West
As mass produced vehicles of sentiment, greeting cards draw attention to the use of socially constructed codes for communicating, even feeling, emotion. This paper describes the results of interviews with fifty-one greeting card consumers, focusing on what makes greeting cards ‘personal’ for them, despite their mass-produced nature. Consumers negotiate their relationships with pre-printed sentiments differently depending on whether their allegiance is stronger to an expressive individualist understanding of authenticity or a ritual perspective, and these allegiances tend to reflect cultural capital. Specifically, suspicion of pre-printed sentiments is common among people with higher cultural capital, while this is the feature of …