Arts and Humanities Commons^™

More Than Representation Heartstopper: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, Tracyann Josephine Harmer

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis is a multimodal critical discourse analysis of Netflix’s Heartstopper, written with the goal of understanding its methods of representation and queer world creation. Through analysis of the ideology of heteronormativity as it relates to masculinity, internalized homophobia, homophobia, and mental health, I expand upon the significance of queer representation for queer audiences, heterosexual audiences, and producers of queer media. Through a nuanced analysis of these themes, I display how and why Heartstopper has had enormous success and expand upon the cultural phenomena surrounding this media. Finally, this thesis places these nuanced analyses into the real-world reaction to …

Right Turn At Reality: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Right Wing Negotiations On Race And Masculinity In Online Spaces, Andrew R.J. Hart

MSU Graduate Theses

The effects of right wing politically charged violence are more visible now than at any other point in recent American history. The Internet, and social media more specifically, has become a crucial nexus point in the dissemination of decentralized Alt-Right propaganda. The visual nature of social media has increased the importance of images a means of communication. Through this thesis, I analyze artifacts coming out of these spaces representing a conversation between creators and audiences, and how they work dialogically to introduce and reify symbols of white masculine supremacy within this subgroup. Through this process, I find multiple recurring patterns …

Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman (2020): A Psychoanalytic Review Of Masculinity And Rape Culture, Marjorie A. Briones

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

TW: mentions of sexual violence and rape

When it comes to the subject of sexual violence, there are systemic and cultural effects that prevents assaulters from being properly prosecuted. In the U.S., perpetrators of sexual violence largely consists of heterosexual, white men (RAINN, 2022). So, we begin to question the ways in which sexual violence and masculinity are interconnected. By conducting a psychoanalytic analysis of Emerald Fennell’s 2020 film Promising Young Woman, the ideas of toxic masculinity and “rape culture” will be deconstructed in regard to Cassie’s–the protagonist–story. Theories by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung will be connected to real-life …

"Because It’S 2015!": Justin Trudeau’S Yoga Body, Masculinity, And Canadian Nation-Building, Jennifer Musial, Judith Mintz

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters he chose a gender-balanced cabinet “because it’s 2015,” a sentiment that resonated with Leftists and feminists. Trudeau showed he was a different kind of male politician through his yoga practice. Through candid yoga photographs, Trudeau represented himself as a sensitive new age guy who challenged hegemonic masculinity through wellness, playfulness, and a commitment to multiculturalism. Using discourse analysis, we examine visual, print, and social media texts that feature Trudeau’s connection to yoga, masculinity, and nation-building. We argue that Trudeau’s yoga body projects a “hybrid masculinity” (Bridges 2014; Demetriou 2001) that constructs …

Hemingway Drunk: A Study Of Prohibition, Medico-Legal Rhetoric, And The Autonomy Of Masculinity, Graham P. Studdard

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis uses a combination of medical humanities, queer public theory, and literary analysis to showcase the uniquely American connections between alcoholism and masculinity in the literature of Ernest Hemingway. By situating both Hemingway and his characters within the medico-legal rhetoric of modernism’s famous Parisian Jazz-age, which occurred at the same time as American prohibition, I reveal changes in white American men’s relationships with gender, bodily autonomy, and the patriarchy that are often overlooked due to Hemingway’s publicly constructed masculine persona. My work provides new queer interpretations of The Sun Also Rises (1926) and the posthumous Garden of Eden (1986) …

God Of War: Masculinity And Fatherhood Through Procedural Rhetoric, Andrew A. Morgan

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Video games and academia have a long history with one another. Academic researchers have continued to debate the extent to which video games can materialize real world effects. In this thesis, I employ procedural rhetoric and feminist scholarship to analyze the rhetorical power of God of War. I focus on the game’s immersive procedures and the performances of masculinity from Kratos, Atreus, and Baldur. These three characters all perform different masculinities, and their interactions with one another inform the game’s portrayal of masculinity and fatherhood. By engaging in violence and depicting nuanced performances of masculinity, God of War positions the …

#Representationmatters: A Study Of Masculinity In The Avengers Movies, Lauren F. Cooke

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

The Masculine Mystique, Michael W. Chancellor Jr.

Master's Theses

This textual analysis explores the rhetoric of exclusion among homosexual men by analyzing DouchebagsofGrindr.com. The rhetoric of exclusion is used by some homosexual men in order to achieve hegemonic masculinity based on performance of gender, age, race, and physical characteristics to conquer stereotypes of femininity. The gay community utilizes civil rights rhetoric in order to create a dialogue about equality; unfortunately a disturbing number of gay community members frequently discount homosexual male minorities, perpetuating the notion that homosexual minorities are unattractive because they violate heteronormative gender performances. Analyzing the artifact DouchebagsofGrindr.com allows for a glimpse into the self-deprecating online behavior …

Feminine Purity And Masculine Revenge-Seeking In Taken (2008), Casey Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

The 2008 film Taken depicts the murderous rampage of an ex-CIA agent seeking to recover his teenage daughter from foreign sex traffickers. I argue that Taken articulates a demand for a white male protector to serve as both guardian and avenger of white women's “purity” against the purportedly violent and sexual impulses of third world men. A neocolonial narrative retold through film, Taken infers that the protection of white feminine purity legitimates both male conquest abroad and overbearing protection of young women at home. I contend that popular films such as Taken are a part of the broader cultural system …

Signs Of Wildness: Codes Of The “Primitive” In Masculine Commodity Culture, Matthew P. Ferrari

Doctoral Dissertations

This project broadly examines articulations of the “primitive” emerging from various sites of popular cultural production, considering their operation within the wider “semioscape”– defined by Thurlow and Aiello (2007) as “the globalizing circulation of symbols, sign-systems, and meaning-making practices.” Taking my lead from Kurusawa (2002, 2004), Torgovnik (1991, 1998), Chow (1995), and Di Leonardo (1998), who have demonstrated the importance of the “primitive” as an interpretive discourse, I add to this body of thought by extending its scope into the realm of popular media and cultural production, examining cases within film, television, advertising, sports, and associated lifestyle commodities. I pose …

Take Off Your Masc: The Hegemonic Gay Male's Gender Performance On Grindr, Duncan Shuckerow

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The hegemonic Grindr clone is a gay male Grindr user who enforces the privileging of traditional masculine gender performance and condemns effeminacy. Through this project’s own field work along with the website “douchebagsofgrindr,” the hegemonic Grindr clone is here within analyzed. Drawing upon the theory ofhegemony articulated by Gramsci, a historical analysis of the 1970s urban gay male clone, and contemporary analysis and research, the project argues that the hegemonic Grindr clones, while only a minority group of Grindr users, rules over the cyberspace as sexual gatekeepers. Hegemonic Grindr clones maintain their privileged status on the application through depicting and …

Feminine Purity And Masculine Revenge-Seeking In Taken (2008), Casey R. Kelly

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

The 2008 film Taken depicts the murderous rampage of an ex-CIA agent seeking to recover his teenage daughter from foreign sex traffickers. I argue that Taken articulates a demand for a white male protector to serve as both guardian and avenger of white women's “purity” against the purportedly violent and sexual impulses of third world men. A neocolonial narrative retold through film, Taken infers that the protection of white feminine purity legitimates both male conquest abroad and overbearing protection of young women at home. I contend that popular films such as Taken are a part of the broader cultural system …

Beauty-Ful Inferiority: Female Subservience In Disney’S Beauty And The Beast, Jeremy Chow

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

The ubiquity of Disney movies has certainly transformed the American cultural landscape. The Disney zeitgeist manifests itself as generations of children actively seek Prince Charmings, unrealistic fairy tale relationships and the omnipotent, happily-ever-after. One such Disney favorite, Beauty and the Beast (1991), reveals typical Disney themes such as the power of altruism, the transformation of the anthropomorphic, and the catharsis of true love. Yet, under these benevolent-seeming Disney themes lurk more sinister, subliminal messages. Beauty and the Beast promotes female subservience and subjugation in addition to the glorification of abusive relationships. Belle, the female protagonist, embodies these gendered disparities and …

Slave To Fashion: Masculinity, Suits And The Masciste Films Of Italian Silent Cinema, Jacqueline Reich

CMS Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The World’S Most Perfectly Developed Man: Charles Atlas, Physical Culture, And The Inscription Of American Masculinity, Jacqueline Reich

CMS Faculty Publications

The major wave of Italian immigration between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries coincided with the growth of the physical culture movement in the United States. A principal participant in both phenomena was the Italian male, with a particularly fascinating case being that of the bodybuilder and fitness guru Charles Atlas. Born Angelo Siciliano in Calabria, Italy, Atlas provides an interesting window into how the Southern immigrant became American and how that Americanization was written on the muscled, male body. This article examines how Siciliano/Atlas transformed himself into the world’s most perfect white man at a time when Italians’ whiteness was …

Black And White On Black: Whiteness And Masculinity In The Works Of Three Australian Writers - Thomas Keneally, Colin Thiele, And Patrick White., Matthew Israel Byrge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

White depictions of Aborigines in literature have generally been culturally biased. In this study I explore four depictions of Indigenous Australians by white Australian writers. Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972) depicts a half-caste Aborigine's attempt to enter white society in a racially-antipathetic world that precipitates his ruin. Children's author Colin Thiele develops friendships between white and Aboriginal children in frightening and dangerous landscapes in both Storm Boy (1963) and Fire in the Stone (1973). Nobel laureate Patrick White sets A Fringe of Leaves (1976) in a world in which Ellen Roxburgh's quest for freedom comes only through …

Film Review: Masculinity & Interracial Intimacy In 'Star Trek' And 'Gran Torino', Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

Race has long been a central object of political reflection. The salience of racial difference remains hotly debated, figuring in both “utopian” and “dystopian” visions of America’s political future. If race is a primary configuration of “difference” and inequality in the nation, then intimacy between the races is often construed as either a bellwether of equality and political utopia or a re-inscribing of political dominance, typically represented as sexual predation by men against women. Quite expectedly, these political fantasies and fears are often played out at the multiplex, and we can see them in stark relief in two recent films …