Subverting Masculinity. Hegemonic and Alternative Versions of Masculinity in Contemporary Culture.

Description

Contemporary Western societies are currently witness to a “crisis of masculinity” but also to an intriguing diversification of images of masculinity. Once relatively stable regimes of masculine gender representation appear to have been replaced by a wider spectrum of varieties of masculine “lifestyles” taken up by the media and the market, to produce new and immensely flexible forms consumerised gender hegemony. The essays in Subverting Masculinity concentrate on contemporary film, literature and diverse forms of popular culture. The essays show that the subversion of traditional images of masculinity is both a source of gender contestation, but may equally be susceptible to assimilation by new hegemonic configurations of masculinity. Subverting Masculinity maps out the ongoing relevance of gender politics in contemporary culture, but also raises the question of increasingly unclear distinctions between hegemonic and subversive versions of masculinity in contemporary cultural production. Subverting Masculinity will be of interest to students and teachers of gender, cultural, film and literary studies. Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Men, the Market and Models of Masculinity in Contemporary Culture: Introduction Part I: Cinema Nobody Wants to Be A Man Anymore? Cross-Dressing in American Movies of the 90's "This is a Man's Country": Masculinity and Australian National Identity in Crocodile Dundee American Culture X: Identity, Homosexuality and the Search for a New American Hero Disclosure's Disclosure Part II: Literature From Trainspotting to Filth – Masculinity and Cultural Politics in Irvine Welsh's Writings The Moor's Last Sigh (Salman Rushdie): Marginal Alternatives, the Reconstruction of Identity through the Carnival of Indetermination. From Hard-Boiled Detective to Kaspar Hauser?: Masculinity and Writing in Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy Patriarchal Poetry: Fathers and Sons in Contemporary Poetry Part III: Diverse Cultural Forms "Manhood," "Boyhood" and Reading the Melbourne Weekend Papers: the My(th)op(oet)ic Consumption of Family Life Queering the Straights: Straightening Queers: Commodified Sexualities and Hegemonic Masculinity "Sometimes We Wonder Who the Real Men Are" – Masculinity and Contemporary Popular Music The White Hunter: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ernest Hemingway, Clint Eastwood, and the Art of Acting Male in Africa Notes on Contributors