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

Russell West · Frank Lay

Jan 2000 · Genus--gender in modern culture Book 1 · Rodopi

About this ebook

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 Once relatively stable regimes of masculine gender representation appear to have been replaced by a wider spectrum of varieties of masculine lifestyles taken up by the media and the market, to produce new and immensely flexible forms consumerised gender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. cultural articulations of gender relations in modern society. The series publishes searching and challenging work in current gender studies combining an interdisciplinary approach with a rigorous critique of various cultural media and their modes of production and consumption. Publications interrogate the cultural forms which articulate, legitimise, construct, contest or transform gender configurations in the modern age.