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zational communicationstudies. West- it is represented and defined in

ern Journal of Communication, 62, various media, genres, texts, or
343-375.
West, C., & Fenstermaker; S. (1995). Do-icons and the relationship be-
tween these sites and gender,
ing difference. Gender & Society, 9, 8-
37. the gender order, other cultural
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. (1987). Do-
differences, identity and identi-
ing gender. Gender & Society, I , 125-
151. fication, the subject, experi-
Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How
ence, and reality in late capital-
working class kids get working class
jobs. New York: Columbia University ism. As has often been ob-
Press. served, the theoretico-political
clusters of feminist and gay
0 1998 International Communicaton Assn.
and lesbian studies have given
particular impetus to the ex-
ploration of masculinity as a
dominant cultural identity and
invisible norm. At the same
time, particular projects con-
tinue to be in dialogue with
On Masculinity other theoretical work that has
Theorizing Masculinity opened up mediated masculini-
WitMn the Media ties to new questions.
In media studies of the last
decade, we have come to un-
derstand masculinity as “both
by Robert Hanke a product and process of repre-
sentation” (de Lauretis, 1987,
The relationship between mas- p. 5). Within a constructionist
culinity and the media, which approach to representation and
first came into focus in the meaning, some scholars have
1970s and gained increased adopted a feminist poststruc-
scholarly attention in the late turalist orientation to “mascu-
1980s, has continued to gener- linity as signs,” where mascu-
ate work that theorizes, inter- linity is regarded as one of the
prets, and evaluates masculin- subjectivities (or subject-posi-
ity with/in the media. In the 5 tions) that make up our social
years since Fejes (1992)com- identities (Saco, 1992). Within
pleted his review of empirical the growing body of work on
mass communication research gender representation and dis-
on masculinity, there has been course in the media, particular
a growing stream of books and attention has been paid to the
articles within media studies representation of the male
that has shifted critical atten- body, giving rise to debates
tion from what Fejes calls over its cultural significance,
“masculinity as fact” to the political valences, and its mate-
facticity of masculinity. This riality. Today, as Hall (1996)
work focuses on masculinity as observes, the “body serves to

183

function as the signifier of the
condensation of subjectivities
in the individual” (p. 11).
In this contribution, I want
to briefly discuss some of the
detours through theory, major
concepts, strategies of media
analysis, and issues that define
the space within which media
studies defines the problem of
masculinity with a view to the
possibilities that have been
opened up as well as some of
the limitations or problems
that remain. Within the limited
space of this forum, I am able
only to offer a preliminary, no
doubt overly simplifying and
polemically unifying, mapping
of the interdisciplinary border
zone of “theorizing masculin-
ity.” Although it is not a com-
prehensive survey, it should, I
hope, be useful in taking our
bearings. Different projects, of
course, may be located in dif-
ferent research traditions, be
informed by more than one
theoretical position, and seek
to set different priorities.
An intradisciplinary dia-
logue concerning this topic is
timely and important for sev-
eral reasons. For starters, as
Sedgwick (1995) has observed,
“Sometimes masculinity has
got nothing to do with it.
Nothing to do with men” (p.
12). In other words, we should
no longer presume a relation-
ship between masculinity and
men even if it is difficult not
to. Second, recent writing on
masculinity, gender, and patri-
archy has begun to question
their very utility as explanatory
Communication
Theory
concepts (Hearn, 1996;
Hawkesworth, 1997;
Ehrenreich, 1995). Finally,
what is to be done if there is
no definition of masculinity
that is not already hegemonic
(Rogoff & Van Leer, 1993), no
gender trouble (whether as
spectacle, masquerade, or
parody) that “would push the
masculine stereotype beyond
its threshold of recuperation”?
(Massumi, 1992, p. 89).
I first discuss some strategies
of media analysis that have
been influenced by Gramsci,
Foucault, and Butler. I then
consider Berger, Wallis, and
Watson’s Constructing Mascu-
linity (1995)and Smith’s Boys:
Masculinities in Contemporary
Culture (1996),two recent col-
lections that lay the basis for
current debates even as they do
not exhaust all the possibilities
for research and analysis. Work
by Bordo (1994),Brod (1995),
Byers (1995, 1996), Coates
(1998),Cohan & Hark (1993),
Doty (1993), Dyson (1993),
Farred (1996),Jeffords (1994),
Mercer (1994),Nixon (1996),
Pfeil(1996), Savran (1996),
Shaviro (1993),Tasker (1993),
and Walser (1993) attests to
the range of projects and diver-
sity of theoretical routes. My
simple argument is that,
whereas film studies continues
to maintain a prominent place
in the study of popular repre-
sentations of masculinity, be-
cause of its own rich tradition
of film theory and criticism
and a fascination with spec-
tacular Hollywood masculini-
184

ties, studies of masculinities in
television, mediated sports, ad-
vertising, and publicity, as well
as popular music, are also
demonstrating the relevance of
theoretical work that has
pushed, as Carole Spitzack has
put it, our “existing visions
and articulations” of mascu-
linity.
M y Hegemonic Masculinity
The concept of “hegemonic
masculinity,” introduced by
Connell(1987,1990) has been
utilized in my own previous
work as well as studies of me-
diated sports (Trujillo, 1991;
Davis, 1997).In other writings
where the term appears, it ex-
presses the general idea of as-
sumptions and beliefs about
masculinity that have become
common sense, that may be
uncritically absorbed or spon-
taneously consented to, but
that are presumed to have an
imperative character in shaping
consciousness, norms of con-
duct, affect, or desire. In light
of some of the debate over the
theory of hegemony (Condit,
1994;Cloud, 1996;Cloud,
1997;Condit, 1997),it is
worth recalling that a neo-
Gramscian-feminist perspective
served to guide inquiry out of a
functionalist, sex-role frame-
work towards dialectical soci-
ology, cultural studies, feminist
media studies, and historical
contextualization. The turn to
Gramsci was a significant
move in Marxist strategies of
media and cultural analysis be-
cause it represented a depar-
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ture from class essentialist and
reductionist accounts of ideol-
ogy and culture and opened up
popular cultural analysis to
struggles around gender and
race (Bennett, 1996).More-
over, as Grossberg (1997)
notes, a “hegemonic project . ..
does not demand the produc-
tion of consensus . . .nor a
process of incorporation. It
does operate through the pro-
duction of a certain conver-
gence of interests through
which subordination and resis-
tance are contained” (p. 226).
Within civil society, the na-
tional popular culture is where
various agents of hegemony
(the New Right, cultural pro-
ducers such as journalists, poli-
ticians, television producers,
and filmmakers) give shape to
the common sense of the
people, including their taken-
for-granted notions of mascu-
linity and femininity.
Thus, it seemed to me that a
neo-Gramscian perspective
could be brought into a pro-
ductive dialogue with feminist
media studies in order to theo-
rize and critique masculinity in
fictional U.S. television series
and genres of the 1980s. By
then, feminist media studies
had moved toward an Althus-
sarian sense of representation
and ideology, which defined
“femininity” as “a set of highly
orchestrated representational
practices which together pro-
duced this coherence of female
gender as easy and natural-
ized” (McRobbie, 1997,p.
172).A neo-Gramscian-femi-
185
 Communication
Theory

nist perspective was also a way masculine subjectivity-the be-

of carrying out critical and em- coming conservative of White,
pirical work on masculinity in middle-class, heterosexual,
the U.S. context as a response professional-managerial men
to Chapman and Rutherford’s (Hanke, 1992). Taken together,
(1988) collection, which began this work suggested that hege-
the debate over the representa- monic masculinity is not only
tions of the idealized “New secured through the reassertion
Man and Retributive Man” in of dominance-based masculini-
the U.K. These “polarized fig- ties, but also through a “new
ures,” as Tasker (1993) has view of manhood” defined in
since pointed out, tended to relation to women’s liberation
map a stable gender binary and its image of the “new
onto different male types. woman,” and in relation to
My definition of hegemonic representations of gay men
masculinity referred to the “so- that maintain a heteromascu-
cial ascendancy of a particular line point of view.
version or model of masculin- Trujillo (1991) has ex-
ity that, operating on the ter- panded the definition of hege-
rain of ‘common sense’ and monic masculinity by identify-
conventional morality, defines ing five major features that de-
‘what it means to be a man”’ fine when masculinity is hege-
(Hanke, 1990). This implies monic in U.S. media culture:
that one version may occupy a (1)“when power is defined in
leading position in the media terms of physical force and
mainstream (for instance, the control” (particularly in the
much discussed hard-bodied, representation of the body),
action heroes of the 1980s). (2) “when it is defined through
Because Gramscian common occupational achievement in
sense is fragmentary, incoher- an industrial, capitalistic soci-
ent, ambiguous, contradictory, ety,” (3)when it is represented
and multiform, however, other in terms of familial patriarchy,
versions (e.g., the “soft” or (4) when it is “symbolized by
New Man, gay men, and so the daring, romantic frontiers-
on) are among the representa- man of yesteryear and of the
tions that were also construct- present-day outdoorsman, ”
ing masculinities. In follow-up and (5) “when heterosexually
work, I adopted Connell’s defined” and centered on the
(1987) categories of hege- representation of the phallus.
monic, conservative, and sub- Through an analysis of sports
ordinate masculinities, arguing hero Nolan Ryan, Trujillo ana-
that 1980s fictional television lyzes how this figure exhibits
articulated the relation among these features to varying de-
dominant, conservative, and grees and thus how hegemonic
subordinated masculinity, so as masculinity reproduces itself in
to produce a reformation of the context of mediated sports.

186
 Forum

The limitation of this strategy psychological structures alone

is that any discussion of a (Middleton, 1992) is adequate
single exalted male hero is unless the meanings and values
likely to tend toward a norma- of the “masculine” that these
tive definition of manhood. fantasy figure ensembles pro-
Yet, such work reveals how duce and put into circulation
sports writing, television, and are relationally defined, articu-
advertising work in concor- lated to other differences, and
dance to construct hegemonic located within a particular his-
masculinity and naturalize so- torical conjuncture.
cial and historical relations of Qualitative, (con)textual
power and privilege. analysis informed by post-
The difficulty has been how structuralism enabled me to
to talk about hegemonic mas- read a television series like
culinity as a “historically mo- thirtysomething as a “text ar-
bile relation” (1995, p. 77) and ticulates a specific signifier as
to maintain a focus on both its part of common sense and the
continuities and discon- production of experience”
tinuities. In analyzing specific (Grossberg, 1997, p 225), as
masculinities, Connell ( 1995) well as the other side of
suggests the need to consider “double articulation”-how
two types of relationship: “he- “meanings are articulated to
gemony, dominatiodsubordi- real social practices, relations,
nation, and complicity on the and conditions” (Grossberg,
one hand, marginalizatiodau- 1997, p. 225). However, as
thorization on the other” (p. critics have been quick to point
8 1). A critical method consis- out, men are missing as televi-
tent with a neo-Gramscian sion viewers. Apart from the
feminist perspective must be tradition of film study that has
careful to avoid redescribing theorized the male gaze and
hegemonic masculinity as an the male spectator, masculinity
ideal character type, role iden- as a dimension of social audi-
tity, or metaphysical substance ences’ reception practices re-
(Butler, 1990). For example, mains invisible except in a few
the decline in popularity of Su- studies (Morley, 1986;
perman and the rise in popu- Steinman, 1992; Fiske &
larity of Batman is part of the Dawson, 1996). Donaldson
ebb and flow of specifiable (1993)has also critiqued the
meanings of masculinity, gen- explanatory utility of Connell’s
der, and sexuality encoded by concept, suggesting that the
these hypermasculine heroes, gap between the “culturally
their partners, and the villains idealized form of masculine
they encounter. Neither a role- character” and what real men
model, socialization theory ap- are means that it is unable to
proach to such figures (Pecora, account for changes in the gen-
1992) nor an analysis of their der system. He proposes in-

187

stead that we limit the concept
to “really real” men, the ex-
alted ruling-class heroes of
capitalist entrepreneurship (Bill
Gates, Sam Walton, Ted
Turner, and the like). Although
the articulation of masculinity
and class is important, this
move returns us to a Marxist
perspective on social class rela-
tions and reintroduces the very
problems that the turn to
Gramsci sought to resolve. The
relationship between hege-
monic masculinity and social
change can be addressed only
historically, as Connell (1995)
has attempted to do, although
he neglects the media. He sums
up the state of theorizing hege-
monic masculinity as follows:
On the one hand, “hegemony
is likely to be established only
if there is some correspondence
between a cultural ideal and
institutional power”(p. 77); on
the other hand, even though
few men may embody cultur-
ally exalted forms of masculin-
ity, large numbers of men ben-
efit from cultural definitions
that legitimate claims to leader-
ship. However, in addition to
institutional life and “techno-
cratic” variants of hegemonic
masculinity, media studies also
needs to consider how hege-
monic masculinity articulates
to structures and lived forms of
patriarchy within everyday life,
as recent work in cultural criti-
cism and cultural studies has
begun to do.
Deviations from Foucault
Besides offering a useful over-
Communication
Theory
view of central concepts,
claims, and issues relevant to
studying mediated masculini-
ties, Nixon’s (1997) examina-
tion of “exhibiting masculin-
ity” draws upon Foucaultian
concepts of discourse, the place
of the subject, subjectivization,
and technologies of the self. In
Foucault’s archaeological writ-
ings, the subject was produced
in discourse and subjectiv-
ization was a material rather
than ideological process
whereby power relations in-
vested and materialized sub-
jects. Nixon translates these
concepts into a strategy for
analyzing groups of statements
(texts, sites), their “regularity
or underlying unity,” and the
place of the subject as it is pro-
duced in media discourse
through specific codes and
conventions of representing the
male body. Based on a reading
of three versions of the “new
man” (articulated with genera-
tion, ethnicity, and race), he ar-
gues that visual codes of fash-
ion photography not only
work to produce a “spectator-
ial look,” but marks the forma-
tion of new subject-position for
men in relation to practices of
fashion, style, and consumption.
Nixon rejects Foucault’s no-
tion of “subjectivization” in fa-
vor of Foucault’s later notion
of “technologies (or practices)
of the self” (as read through
Butler) to conceptualize “the
articulation of concrete indi-
viduals to particular represen-
tations as a performance based
upon the citing and reiteration
188

of discursive norms; a perfor-
mance in which the formal po-
sitions of subjectivity are in-
ha bited through specific prac-
tices or techniques” (p. 323).
In this formulation, “new
man” imagery is “operation-
alized or performed as a his-
torical identity” (p. 323).
Codes of looking, among other
techniques in the care of the
self, are located across various
representational sites, and
these codes, in turn, are
contextualized as part of the
historical construction of new
modes of “spectatorial con-
sumer subjectivity” (first ana-
lyzed by Walter Benjamin).
Contrary to Neale (1993),who
argued that film was a technol-
ogy for representing the male
body in a way that circumvents
eroticization, Nixon concludes
that advertising and fashion
photography are a technique
for “sanctioning the display of
masculine sensuality and, from
this, opening up the possibility
of an ambivalent masculine
sexual identity” (p. 328).
In a Foucaultian framework
of discourse and powerknowl-
edge, specifiable “masculini-
ties” are understood as the ef-
fect of specific regimes of vis-
ibility, and such representa-
tions are overdetermined by
discursive formations and the
interplay of signifying prac-
tices, social processes, histori-
cal forces, and the business of
late capitalism. The “new
man” is a rearticulation of the
relationship among masculin-
ity, gender, and economics,
Forum
where consumption and mass
culture is no longer figured as
“feminine” as it was within
modernity. In the US.context,
this was also evident in
advertising’s image of the new
man (Barthel, 1988) and also
more recently in the “gayifi-
cation” of advertising (Clarke,
1995). In their study of the
gayification of action hero
Claude Van Damme as fan ob-
ject and publicity subject in
heteronormative publications,
Clarke and Henson (1996)ar-
gue that “gay identity forma-
tion and valorization have be-
come directly complicit in capi-
tal formation and valoriza-
tion” (p. 144). Gay-oriented
publicity or advertising compli-
cates the very logic of visibility
and affirmation that has been
central to gay and lesbian poli-
tics of representation. The in-
creased visibility of “gayness”
in these media produces them
as new economic subjects
whose gayness is increasingly
defined in relation to market-
ing and consuming practices
and the generation of corpo-
rate profits rather than the ex-
tension of civil rights.
In sum, both neo-Gramscian
theory of hegemony and
Foucaultian theory of dis-
course, in dialogue with femi-
nist media studies or theory,
are tool kits for understanding
power as a determinant of
masculinities. Mediated mascu-
linities construct figures to
identify with and places to oc-
cupy within the gender order.
For the former, the emphasis is
189

on popular representations
(figures) producing and circu-
lating common-sense notions,
so that hegemonic masculinity
is won not only through coer-
cion but through consent, even
though there is never a com-
plete consensus. For the latter,
the emphasis is on masculine
subject-positions (places) as an
effect of discursive formations
and how these positions are
taken up or inhabited (prac-
tices of everyday life).
Among the many implica-
tions of this work, there are
two that I would like to men-
tion here. First, once masculin-
ity is understood as a histori-
cally specific cultural construc-
tion without fixed meanings or
attributes, it is opened up to a
modernist temporalizing logic
that enables us to describe the
changing codings of the mascu-
line, how the meanings of
White masculinity have shifted,
and how they have produced
our experience. In terms of
feminist analysis and critique
of patriarchy, it also means
that the universal equation be-
tween men and patriarchy is
put into question, for not all
men have the same relationship
to discourses and institutions
of power. Second, once mascu-
linities are opened up to
poststructuralist theories of
language, theories of sexual
difference, and deconstruction,
the polysemy and multiaccen-
tuality of signs of masculinity
become open to analysis and
the very facticity of masculinity
is put into question. Masculine
Communication
Theory
identity becomes impossible to
define apart from its relation-
ship to femininity and its ar-
ticulation to sexualities (Doty,
1993; Fejes & Petrich, 1995),
class (Aronowitz, 1992;
Burnham, 1996), and race
(Dyson, 1993; Mercer, 1994;
hooks, 1995; Wallace, 1995;
Farred, 1996). The challenge
now is to conceptualize and
describe more than one differ-
ence at a time, their intersec-
tion, and their interlocking ef-
fectivity, at the level of psychic
processes, the self, and social
relations of privilege and
power.
Reciting Judith Butler
Since the publication of
Butler’s Gender Trouble: Femi-
nism and the Subversion of
Identity (1990),her theoriza-
tion of gender as a “corporeal
style, an ‘act,’ as it were, which
is both intentional and
performative, where ‘perform-
ative’ suggests a dramatic and
contingent construction of
meaning” (p. 139) has been in-
fluential in rethinking gender
and sexuality in antiessentialist
terms. Her thesis, based on
rereadings of feminist and psy-
choanalytic theory and an
analysis of the cultural prac-
tices of drag, cross-dressing,
and the stylization of butch or
femme identities, is that gender
is a performance that main-
tains the retroactive illusion of
a core feminine, or masculine,
self. Gender impersonation,
she argues, disarticulates gen-
der signification from the poli-
190

tics of truth and falsity that
makes for an essential, polar-
ized female or male identity.
Following Butler (1990),I have
attempted to argue that
“mock-macho” sitcoms invite
parodic laughter by parodying
the mechanisms of the con-
struction of some “original”
domestic patriarch or macho
stereotype (Hanke, forthcom-
ing). These performances tem-
porarily deprive the hegemonic
norm of “its claim to a natu-
ralized or essentialized gender
identity” (Butler, 1990, p.
138). However, the light
parody of mock-macho
sitcoms is less likely than men-
in-drag sitcoms to constitute
the kind of gender perfor-
mance “that will compel a re-
consideration of the place and
stability of the masculine and
the feminine” (Butler, 1990, p.
139). Nonetheless, Cohan
(1995) has brought feminist
film studies of femininity as a
masquerade into dialogue with
the theatrical rather than
phallocentric implications of
Butler’s work to read Cary
Grant’s masculine masquerade
in North by Northwest (1959).
In his historicizing reading of
this performance ethic, Cohan
reveals how ideologically con-
flicted the film is, and that its
portrayal of a masculine iden-
tity crisis is not only symptom-
atic of new class anxieties, but
that it destabilizes the relation-
ship between gender and repre-
sentation, so that masculinity
(like femininity) is “an ongoing
and potentially discontinuous
Forum
performative masquerade” (p.
46). He also suggests that be-
cause of Hollywood’s institu-
tionalization of stardom, the
analysis of masculine masquer-
ade “brings to the foreground
of popular representation the
epistemological problems” (p.
58) that Butler describes even
though Cary Grant’s perfor-
mance does not subvert gender
or trouble heterosexuality.
In Bodies That Mutter
(1993), Butler has revised her
views of gender parody and
gone on to argue that denatu-
ralization is not necessarily
subversive; she now claims
drag is “hyperbolic confor-
mity” to gender norms, “taken
not as commands to be
obeyed, but as imperatives to
be ‘cited,’ twisted, queered,
brought into relief as hetero-
sexual imperatives, are not, for
that reason, necessarily sub-
verted in the process” (p. 237).
In light of this, my presump-
tion that men-in-drag sitcoms
would be more subversive than
mock-macho sitcoms needs to
be reconsidered. However,
Coates (1998), drawing on de
Lauretis’s notion of gender
technologies and Butler’s
(1993) notion of femininity as
the abject of masculinity, has
described how a self-conscious
performance of the feminine
within Rocklist, a male-domi-
nated academic discussion list
on the Internet, gave gender
trouble to the coherence of
masculine as it is normally reit-
erated within the rock forma-
tion.
191

Scattered Hegemonic
Masculinities
The combined influence of
Butler and Foucault is evident
in the introduction to Berger,
Wallis, and Watson’s collec-
tion, Constructing Masculinity
(1995). Their “conceptual
bias” is toward Butler’s theori-
zation of gender as “always a
doing” and Foucault’s theori-
zation of power (as power/
knowledge applied to the regu-
lation of conduct). The editors
have organized contributions
according to Foucault’s notion
of “disciplinary systems”-
”processes and institutions
through which power is repli-
cated and enforced,” such as
philosophy, culture, science,
law, and political practice.
Within this framework, gender
dualisms or binary opposites
are put into question by an em-
phasis on gender discontin-
uities, and enactment, as fluid
and temporal. Although some
contributors wrestle with the
question, “What is masculin-
ity?,” it is clear that this does
not entail any straightforward
description of what maleness
is. It is no longer a question of
being, but rather of gender
“thresholds” and a “dynamic
self-recognition” (Sedgwick,
1995), “accomplishments,”
and (dis)avowals (Butler,
1995), and a “prefixing of the
rules of gender and sexuality;
an appendix or addition, that
willy-nilly, supplements and
suspends a ‘lack-in-being”’
(Bhabba, 1995).
Communication
Theory
Other contributors explore
“the ways representations of
men and maleness in the media
and in the arts are negotiated
and circulated, and how such
images can produce and ulti-
mately reshape notions of the
masculine” (Berger, Wallis, &
Watson, 1995, p. 6-7). These
contributions offer different
strategies for reading modern-
izing hegemonic masculinities.
Solomon-Godeau (1999, for
example, puts the contempo-
rary range of mediated mascu-
linities into a historical per-
spective by arguing that the
“feminized” masculinity is not
merely the product of a con-
temporary “crisis,” or post-
Second World War “historical
trauma,” as Silverman (1992)
has argued, but very much in
evidence in late 18th- and early
19th-century French art. If he-
roic masculinity is always in
crisis, the issue becomes how
heroic masculinities “manage
to restructure, refurbish, and
resurrect themselves for the
next historical turn” (p. 70).
For Smith (1999, even Clint
Eastwood, one of the most
popular contemporary repre-
sentations of masculinity, signi-
fies “troubled presentations or
investigations of the kind of
(or, of the image of) masculin-
ity that they popularly stand
for” (p. 78). Smith’s thesis is
that the “narrative disposition
of particular tropes of mascu-
linity does not ultimately con-
trol or delimit them” (p. 80).
Not only does the male pro-
192

tagonist display an inability to
act as the ”solution to narra-
tive and social contradictions”
(p. 79), but- Eastwood’s
changeable, excessive, defective
body figures male subjectivity
as “hysterical,” that is, outside
of phallic organization. The
“hysterical moment,” for
Smith, “marks the return of
the male body out from under
the narrative process. . .” (p.
92), so as to express what is
unsayable in male-embodied
experience. hooks (1995) ex-
amines representations of
Black men in the context of
“White-supremacist capitalist
patriarchy.” In her reading of
films featuring Denzel Wash-
ington and Wesley Snipes, she
argues that within White cul-
tural productions, images of
Blackness are overdetermined
by a structure of “competition,
envy, and black male desire for
white approval” (p. 99). Black
masculinity is reenvisioned, but
only to produce a new stereo-
type, one that is continuous
with, and reproduces, the nar-
rative of colonialism. Finally,
Ross (1995)foregrounds how
hegemonic White masculinities
seeking to maintain their pro-
file of dominance are updated.
Alongside other reformed vio-
lent, hard-body, he-men,
Steven Segal has morphed into
“Eco-Man,” a heroic figure
Ross reads as modernizing the
imagery of the frontiersman
and outdoorsman by articulat-
ing White male rage to the
ecology movement.
Forum
Whereas none of these con-
tributors share a conceptual
vocabulary, one theme that
emerges is that neither mascu-
line representation nor subjec-
tivity is monolithic. At the
same time, there is a clear com-
monality running through their
conclusions: “Feminized,”
“eroticized,” or “androgy-
nous” representations may af-
firm patriarchal privileges
(Solomon-Godeau); “hysteri-
cal” representation is “de-
signed to lead the male subject
through a proving ground to-
ward an empowered position”
(Smith); black masculinity
continues to be represented as
unrequited longing for white
male love” (hooks); and Segal’s
White male rage and “kick-ass
conscience” may be just “an-
other ruse of patriarchy”
(Ross). Thus a major issue is
how hegemonic masculinities
are refurbished, reempowered,
renegotiated, and reenvisioned.
Taken together, this work sug-
gests that patriarchy reforms
masculinity to meet the next
historical turn, to regain the
pleasure of reinforcing the
norm, to fit the social climate,
or to articulate the new racism.
Boys: Masculinities in Con-
temporary Culture (1996),ed-
ited by Paul Smith, takes up
the topic of masculinities
within a cultural studies rubric.
In this collection, the question,
“What is masculinity,” which,
at some level, presumes the
giveness of masculinity as a
cultural category, is abandoned
193

in favor of what Smith calls
“indefinite masculinity” and
the “specificities and dispersals
of masculinity and maleness”
(p. 2). This work proceeds
from the point of view of hege-
monic masculinity’s others-
“minorities of masculinity”-
and attempts to maintain a
dual focus on the “construc-
tion and the heterogeneity of
subjects presumed to be male”
(P. 2).
Ramsay, Willis, and
Burnham are all engaged in
film study, but this does not
exhaust the analysis of popular
representation, as work by
Clarke and Henson, Farred,
Fuchs, and Michael demon-
strates. One of the major issues
that emerges in the film studies
is whether particular bodies of
work or even particular films
are subversive of conventional
or idealized notions of mascu-
linity or femininity. Ramsay
and Burnham suggest that
some filmic representations of
maleness can be non- or
counterhegemonic, and Willis
advances the domestication of
difference argument.
Following Cohan and
Hark‘s (1993) anthology,
which focuses on the “distur-
bances” and “slippages” in
idealized Hollywood mascu-
linities that are not easily ef-
faced, Ramsay (1996)explores
Canadian horror and fantasy
filmmaker David Cronenberg’s
films as a “minority discourse”
(p. 81). For Ramsay,
Cronenberg’s male heroes are
“manifestations of the forces
Communication
Theory
of idealized masculinities
‘other”’ that is in sharp con-
trast to Hollywood’s rehearsal
of hegemonic masculinities.
Cronenberg’s films deliberately
blur and cross the very bound-
aries that define the masculine
subject (mind and body, male
or female, rational or irratio-
nal, conscious or unconscious)
until they collapse and dis-
solve, and his male heroes are
“passive and lacking,” “der-
elicts, outsiders, exiles, and los-
ers” who carry the burden of
the “abject” truth of masculin-
ity. For Ramsay, the cultural
significance of the violence of
these characters signifies the
ambivalence of men who are
simultaneously attracted to,
and repelled by, others. Thus,
she argues, the crisis of White,
heterosexual, middle-class
masculinity is played out
within and across the splittings
of the masculine subject.
Willis (1996)examines the
role of “fetishism” in The Cry-
ing Game, a film that repre-
sents multiple differences in a
narrative structured around the
secret of heterosexual differ-
ence. Her basic argument is
that the spectacle of Dil’s body
and the visibility of her penis is
correlated with a “structural
displacement” of Jody’s Black-
ness and his homosexuality.
For Willis, this logic of exces-
sive visibility and displacement
works to “secure both Fergus’s
heterosexuality and the film’s
own address to a heterosexual
viewer” (p. 104). Contrary to
Bordo (1994),who reads
194

Fergus as an emotionally re-
sponsive, nonphallic hero with-
out “masquerade”-a
revisioning that is an indict-
ment of modern masculine
subjectivity-Willis argues that
spectacle of heterosexual dif-
ference displaces questions of
racial identity, sexuality, and
politics so that the “embodied
materiality of black homo-
sexual masculinity gets reduced
to a picture” (p. 109). For
Willis, within the context of
the global culture of capitalism
and its marketing of “differ-
ence,” The Crying Game’s
spectacle of difference is a re-
cuperation of “absolute other-
ness into a domesticated diver-
sity” (p. 109).
Burnham’s (1996) essay
takes the recovery of minorities
of masculinity right into the
core of hegemonic masculinity
represented by U.S. male ac-
tion-adventure or law-and-or-
der films. For Burnham,
Harvey Keitel’s on- and off-
screen representations call into
question hegemonic American
masculinity, figured as “white,
working-class, (perhaps) ethnic
(Italian), and heterosexual” (p.
113). For Burnham, Keitel’s
character’s “lack” is not a sig-
nifier of femininity, but of a
breakdown of the masculine
order and the masculine
subject’s dissolution from male
mythology rooted in imperial
experience or fantasies. Over
the course of Keitel’s career, his
performances are postmoder-
nized, so that in The Piano, his
face imitates the subaltern and
Forum
his body is revealed in full
frontal nudity. “Keitel’s body,”
Burnham continues, “is neither
classically muscular nor lithe,
but his gestures reveal a certain
Real.. .” (p. 121). He thus
concludes that Keitel’s work
“presents the possibilities of a
white, working-class ethnic
subjectivity that admits the
Other-women, queers, people
of color” as a “nonhegemonic
subjectivity” (p. 124).
By foregrounding minorities
of masculinity, these essays beg
the question of their cultural
significance and political va-
lence, raising the issue of
whether “becoming
minoritarian” (Massumi,
1992) is an option for all sub-
jects of late capitalism, includ-
ing the traditional White, male
subject. Willis seems certain
that The Crying Game demon-
strates that “there can no tell-
ing the story of masculinity
that is neither heterosexual or
white,” thus positing that a
definite White, heterosexual
subject persists through its
spectacular indefinite appear-
ances in contemporary film.
Thus, Willis’s thesis is in ten-
sion with the thesis of dissolv-
ing or ambivalent masculine
subjects at the core of Ramsay’s
and Burnham’s essays.
Newly Hegemonic
Masculinities
Neither Constructing Mascu-
linities nor Boys: Masculinities
in Contemporary Culture,
which lay the basis for current
debate, exhausts all the pos-
195

sible strategies of media analy-
sis. In closing, I want to return
to Hall’s observation about the
body as a signifier of subjectiv-
ity, in order to single out work
that attempts to put the em-
bodied struggles of hegemonic
masculinities and its various
others into the context of the
postmodern condition. Byers
(1995,1996),Savran (1996)
and Pfeil (1996)all read Holly-
wood rnasculinities as a cul-
tural response to the historical
trauma and identity crises
wrought by the transition to
late capitalism or post-
Fordism.
For Byers (1999, feminism
and homosexuality become
“tropes” of a range of eco-
nomic, social, and cultural
shifts and developments since
the 1970s. The postmodern
condition, in turn, has precipi-
tated a profound, unprec-
edented identity crisis, particu-
larly for masculine identity. In
his neo-Marxian, neo-Freudian
analysis of Terminator 2:
Judgement Day, Byers’s strat-
egy is to read the Terminator
model T-101 (Arnold
Schwarzenegger) and the
newer T-1000 as embodying
the oppositions between “clas-
sical and late capitalism, be-
tween a production-based in-
dustrial and a consumption-
based informational economy,
between modern and
postmodern culture, between
paranoia and schizophrenia”
(p. 8). These terminators are
signifiers of traditional mascu-
line subjectivity and a
Communication
Theory
postmodern one. In contrast to
the domesticated T-101, the
liquid metal T-1000 “embodies
the schizophrenic flows that
Deleuze and Guattari identify
with capital as a force and
capitalism as a social forma-
tion” (p. 10).As a nomadic
rather than monadic subject,
the T-1000 represents the
forces that threaten to dissolve
the self, which, in turn, acti-
vate defensive psychic pro-
cesses such as paranoia and
narcissistic regression. Thus, in
Byers’s neo-Freudian reading,
the T-1000 is a paradigm of
paranoia and homophobia,
while the T-101 is “aligned
with “hypermasculinity, patri-
archy, and the recuperation
and preservation of the family,
over and against all threats . .
.” (p. 17).This recuperation is
accomplished through the do-
mestic subplot in which Sarah
Connor represents a “mascu-
linization” of the female body
that is delegitimated, whereas
the T-100 is positioned as the
legitimate “Uberdad” of the
Connor family. Contrary to
Jeffords (1994), who suggests
that the film’s ending signals a
transition from an “outward”-
directed to “inward”-directed
masculinity, Byers argues in-
stead that the future “New
M a n . . . must be both more
sensitive and more successfully
violent than ever” (p. 25). Al-
though this analysis is phrased
as “both/and,” Byers’s evalua-
tion is that, in spite of discern-
ible differences between the T-
101 (father)and the New Man
196

(son), “these differences are
not only easily recuperated by,
but are recuperative of, the
father’s dominion” (p. 26).
If one response to the his-
torical trauma of postmoder-
nity is for hegemonic American
masculinity to imagine its own
patriarchal future as “the only
sane choice,” Byers (1996)
demonstrates how Forrest
Gump, through a double pro-
cess of forgetting and “re-
membering,” writes the past in
order to control the popular
memory of this historical
trauma. Byers’s strategy is to
show how this film’s treatment
of history as pastiche dumps
countercultural (re)con-
structions of the gender and
race down the memory hole
and figures the “dominant sub-
ject” not only in terms of gen-
der, sexuality, race, class, and
generation, but also as a sub-
ject of contemporary, conserva-
tive historical consciousness.
For Byers, Forrest “represents
a liberal myth (in Barthes’s
sense. . .)of the boomer as the
‘new man,’ egalitarian, sympa-
thetic to the marginalized, and
in touch with his ‘feminine
side”’ (p. 431). At the same
time, however, he lives up to
“fantasies of traditional mas-
culinity,” thus combining an
“apparent accommodation of
feminism with a deep-seated
misogyny” (p. 432). Unlike the
alien T-1000, which must be
destroyed for future New Man
John Connor to live (and lead),
Forrest is the new man who,
“in his relations to (and appro-
Forum
priations of) femininity and
Blackness, has united with the
identities of those whose other-
ness threatens the white male”
(p. 437). In the process of for-
getting of the other’s cultural
history and social struggles,
“the patriarch is all that is re-
membered” (p. 439).
Within global postmodern
cultural productions, hege-
monic masculinities are “con-
structed through, not outside,
difference” for without the
Other, there would be no Same
(Hall, 1996, p. 4). Hegemonic
identities need the other as a
“constitutive outside” to con-
stitute itself in the first place
and its unity (internal homoge-
neity) is constantly destabi-
lized. Hall’s theorization of
identity accounts for the fact
that some work posits an in-
definite, dispersed, nonphallic,
nonhegemonic masculinities
(foregrounding the impossibil-
ity of identity), and other work
can argue that dominant fic-
tions preserve, consolidate, rec-
reate, and retell this imaginary
identity (foregrounding the ne-
cessity of identities).
If the New Man has func-
tioned as a symptomatic figure
and sign of the times, he is not
the only contender for a lead-
ing position within the social
imaginary. In Savran’s ( 1996)
analysis, for example, the
“white male backlash” that
surfaced in the media in the
mid-l990s, signifies the “new,
white masculine fantasmatic
that coalesced in the mid-
1970s in order to facilitate an
197

adjustment to changed mate-
rial circumstances by encour-
aging the white male subject’s
simultaneous embrace and dis-
avowal of the role of victim”
(p. 128). For Savran, the pro-
totypes for a new type of male
protagonist were Chuck Yeager
in The Right Stuff, Rambo
(Sylvester Stallone) in Rambo,
and D-Fens (Michael Douglas)
in Falling Down (1993).Re-
cent films such as Face/Off, Air
Force One, Conspiracy Theory,
The Game, and The Edge have
expanded the array of its pre-
ferred icons, because these
films feature male protagonists
who perform their own contra-
dictions, struggle with them-
selves as much as with evil or
nature, or undergo ordeals that
prove they can take pain and
punishment like a man.
Savran’s major contribution,
however, is to offer a critique
of neo-Freudian film theory
and its dematerializing and
universalizing tenden~ies.~
First, he rereads one of the
most phallic representatives of
national-political phallic mas-
culinity of the 1980s (Rambo)
as a spectacle embodying “op-
posed positiona1ities”-h yper-
masculinity and femininity. In
his rereading, even Rambo fails
to represent “pure phallic mas-
culinity.” Second, he
historicizes the paradigm of
“reflexive sadomasochism” by
specifying the social and eco-
nomic changes of the last 30
years that gave rise to the cul-
tural figure of the “White male
as victim.” Rather than
Communication
Theory
grounding the fantasies and de-
sires that this figure embodies
in the Oedipal complex,
Savran locates it in what he
calls “The Right Stuff” com-
plex. Third, he analyzes the
rhetoric of Robert Bly, whose
Iron John theorized the “deep
masculine” and hailed readers
into a men’s movement based
on “imperialistic fantasies”
and the “racialization of the
‘Wild Man.”’ Finally, he sug-
gests the most emblematic vic-
tim-as-hero is Michael Dou-
glas. So, in The Game, for ex-
ample, Nicholas Van Orton
(Michael Douglas) is a wealthy
corporate potentate who expe-
riences rejection, powerless-
ness, invasion of privacy, and
temporary poverty. Savran
concludes that this “newly he-
gemonic masculinity” has
given impetus to the “patriot
movement” and that Timothy
McVeigh is an “enterprising,
malignant-and since Okla-
homa City, suddenly demon-
ized-variation” of the White
male as victim and victimizer.
Pfeil’s White Guys: Studies
in Postmodern Domination
and Difference goes further
than any other text I know of
in analyzing straight, White
masculinity in relation to both
femininity and liberal femi-
nism, in a way that underlines
the political limitations of any
(essentialist) left-feminist posi-
tion that posits White, straight
masculinity as “a single, mono-
lithic, absolute evil against
which an interminable struggle
for turf and power must be
198

waged” (p. xii). In his “close
reading” of male rampage
films of the late 1980s and
early 1990s, and the 1991
cycle of sensitive-guy films,
Pfeil(l996) gives greater atten-
tion to their postmodern for-
mal elements rather than for-
mulaic ones, as well as the
complex pleasures and satisfac-
tions these films offer as sub-
jects living through the shift
from Fordism to post-Fordism.
His Gramscian-feminist textual
analysis demonstrates the value
of close reading and is an im-
plicit critique of more “hori-
zontal” types of cultural inter-
pretation, which gloss over the
complexities of texts and the
specificities of cultural and po-
litical conjunctures. In contrast
to Jeffords’s (1994) narrative
analysis, where straight, White
masculine hard bodies and
their makeovers are read as
historical signs of the Reagan
revolution, Pfeil reads Holly-
wood “white guys” as a net-
work of contrasts, codes and
correspondences in order to
emphasize the “irresolutions,
anxieties, and contradictions
sawing away at one another
within the constructs and dis-
courses of straight white mas-
culinity” (p. 2). Jeffords (1994)
argues that there has been a
shift from the 1980s hard body
to the late-1980s “fathering”
films (where “fathering” is the
vehicle for transcending racial
and class difference), and to
films that position their White
male heroes as agents of justice
on behalf of African Americans
Forum
and women. Yet, for Jeffords,
there is an underlying symme-
try between hard bodies that
define strength either exter-
nally or internally and presi-
dential rhetoric, which she
takes as evidence of the conti-
nuity of the Reagan revolution
into the post-Cold War era.
Pfeil also sees gender as a
coded projection that is also
fundamentally present in the
most popular Hollywood
films, but he argues that good-
bad guy dualities are often dis-
turbed, the Other “is not only
resisted but partially, covertly
taken in” (p. 10)and, at level
of rhythm and mise-tn-scene,
such films express a “thematics
of post-patriarchal male ‘wild-
ness’-a breakdown and
rejigging of the oedipal pat-
terns of classical emplotment”
(p. 27), that is inseparable, in
the first instance, from post-
Fordist modes of production.
In particular, Pfeil claims the
combination of male bodies
and buildings “literally in-cor-
porate Fordist old and post-
Fordist new” (p. 29). So,
whereas Jeffords argues that
the ending of films like Termi-
nator 2 offer only the appear-
ance of masculinity’s own ne-
gation while the narrative sup-
plies a ‘“new’ direction for
masculinity” that works to re-
solve anxieties about the end
of masculinity, Pfeil concludes
that the “wild, violent, morti-
fied white male body’’ at the
center of male rampage films-
whose fantasies of class- and
gender-based resistance to the
199

post-Fordist, postfeminist
world are typically turned into
accommodations-may “none-
theless suggest anew and ver-
tiginous psycho-social mobility,
a moment of flux” (p. 32). For
Pfeil, in the final analysis, no
“psycho-social body is ever fi-
nally closed, no imaginary ever
complete or fully resolved,” (p.
32), including the straight,
White male imaginary. Pfeil’s
work thus urges us to be aware
when White, working men’s
(screen) bodies are mutating,
for this means that they are
open to redefinition and
rearticulation. Pfeil’s strategy is
to focus on popular films’
symptomatic irresolution, in
which case even some male
rampage or sensitive-guy films
may offer not only evidence of
ideological recuperation, but
also of “those ‘morbid symp-
toms’ that occur when, as
Gramsci said, ‘the old is dying
and the new cannot be born”’
(P. 5 5 ) .
Taken together, these studies
in postmodernizing hegemonic
masculinities offer varying
models for analysis and critical
practice that close the gap be-
tween the discursive and the
material and take account of
psychic processes, the self, and
social relations in the present
conjuncture. The foregoing
discussion has not produced a
definitive map of the zone of
theorizing masculinity witldin
the media, but it does indicate
how the agenda for media
studies work on the topic has
been evolving. The theoriza-
Communication
Theory
tion of mediated masculinities,
an argument that is to be con-
tinued, is likely to be ad-
vanced, however, only when
we begin to take seriously the
relevance of theory for media
studies work, read across disci-
plinary borders, and make, as
Carole Spitzack has proposed,
a “commitment to the destabi-
lization of singularity in per-
spective.”
Author
Robert Hanke is on the faculty of the Uni-
versity of Louisville.
Notes
As Conell (1995)notes, functionalist
“complementary” sex-role theory was it-
self a form of normalizing gender politics.
For further discussion of these posi-
tions in the context of television studies,
see Hanke (1997).
For a powerful and fascinating critique
of, and alternative to, film theory’s “con-
tinued maintenance of an all-encompass-
ing, hegemonic paradigm for the critical
and theoretical discussion of film,” see
Shaviro (1993),whose work draws from
Deleuze and Guattari’s postpsychoanalytic
theory of the subject in order to break
from Freud and Lacan.
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0 1998 International Communication Assn.
On Masculinity
Disciplinary Violation
as Gender Violation:
The Stigmatized
Masculine Voice of
Performance Studies
by Craig Gingrich-Philbrook
As with “Whiteness” and “het-
erosexuality,” “masculinity,”
as a term marking unexplored
privilege, has begun to inspire
considerable investigation.
This effort undermines the
power of the previously unex-
plored term by demonstrating
its performative, imaginary,
unnatural status. However,
whereas masculinity may not
be “natural,” it nonetheless
motivates a range of cultural
expressions, “objects or events
that, apart from possessing
physical characteristics, ex-
press or refer to some mental
content” (Rickman, 1972, p.
277). One category of these ex-
203