VPMC83H3 Lecture Notes - Battletech, Masculinity, Hypermasculinity
Document Summary
Forging masculinity: heavy-metal sounds and images of gender. Flamboyant display represents manipulative power, but also results in object of display. Music depends on power of control and transcendent freedom. Vocal extremes, guitar power chords, sheer volume of bass and drums. Topics include mythology, violence, madness, and iconography of horror. Address anxiety, such as television show the a-team . Audience is mostly male teenagers that lack social, physical, and economic power. Fiske: insecurity of masculinity results in the achievement and emphasis of masculinity in heavy metal. Walser: sex roles as social construction rather than normative formation. Confirmation and alteration of gendered identities through involvement. Stories of nature of masculinity in heavy metal. Anxieties of gender and power are not resolved. Social circumstances may change that a form of culture is no longer relevant as metal deals with experience of powerlessness. Offer contradictions of masculinity that is constructed by societies on the basis of patriarchy, capitalism, and mass-mediation.
