Much has been written about the influence of media in the
shaping of current hyper-masculinities. In primal societies
the morality, tribal ethics, codes of behaviour, masculine
and feminine norms were promoted through stories and myths.
Today’s media is our equivalent story teller and myth
weaver. Numerous studies point to the ways media shapes contemporary
masculinities noting that children have seen thousands of
TV murders and acts of violence at an early age. Then there
is the wrestling (WWE) watched by up to 40 million Americans
each week as ‘entertainment.’ Click
here for in depth survey about WWE.
Jackson Katz and Sut Jhally have produced a group of excellent
videos (see below) which can be used by schools, universities
and community groups to show boys and men viable positive
alternatives to negative media hyper-masculinities. We must
remember that men/boys have been socialized in the dominator
model which systematically trains us to be insensitive to
high levels of violence including sexual assault. The media
is a primary tool to this end.
I trained with Jackson in the 90’s and he inspired me
to deepen my work with men and boys to reduce violence against
women. The safety and equity of women is a vital indicator
of the extent to which a society embraces the partnership
model and supports the development of human rights.
Eisler states:
Katz says:
The issue is not just violence in the media but the construction
of violent
masculinity as a cultural norm. From rock and rap music
and videos,
Hollywood action films, professional and college sports,
the culture
produces a stream of images of violent, abusive men and
promotes
characteristics such as dominance, power, and control as
means of
establishing or maintaining manhood.
Consider professional wrestling, with its mixing of sports
and entertainment and its glamorization of the culture of
dominance. It represents, in a microcosm, the broader cultural
environment in which boys mature. Some of the core values
of the wrestling subculture - dominant displays of power
and control, ridicule of lesser opponents, respect equated
with physical fear and deference - are factors in the social
system of Columbine High, where the shooters were ridiculed,
marginalized, harassed, and bullied.
These same values infuse the Hollywood action-adventure
genre that is so popular with boys and young men. In numerous
films starring iconic
hyper-masculine figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester
Stallone,
Wesley Snipes, Bruce Willis, and Mel Gibson, the cartoonish
story lines
convey the message that masculine power is embodied in muscle,
firepower, and physical authority.
Numerous other media targeting boys convey similar themes.
Thrash metal and gangsta rap, both popular among suburban
white males, often express boys' angst and anger at personal
problems and social injustice, with a call to violence to
redress the grievances. The male sports culture features
regular displays of dominance and one-upsmanship, as when
a basketball player dunks ''in your face,'' or a defensive
end sacks a quarterback, lingers over his fallen adversary,
and then, in a scene
reminiscent of ancient Rome, struts around to a stadium
full of cheering
fans.
How do you respond if you are being victimized by this
dominant system of masculinity? The lessons from Columbine
High - a typical suburban
''jockocracy,'' where the dominant male athletes did not
hide their disdain
for those who did not fit in - are pretty clear. The 17-
and 18-year-old
shooters, tired of being ridiculed or marginalized, weren't
big and strong
and so they used the great equalizer: weapons. Any discussion
about guns in our society needs to include a discussion
of their function as equalizers. In Littleton, the availability
of weapons gave the shooters the opportunity to exact a
twisted and tragic revenge: 15 dead, including themselves,
and 23 wounded.
What this case reinforces is our crying need for a national
conversation
about what it means to be a man, since cultural definitions
of manhood and masculinity are ever-shifting and are particularly
volatile in the
contemporary era.
Such a discussion must examine the mass media in which boys
(and girls) are immersed, including violent, interactive
video games, but also mass media as part of a larger cultural
environment that helps to shape the masculine identities
of young boys in ways that equate strength in males with
power and the ability to instill fear - fear in other males
as well as in females.
But the way in which we neuter these discussions makes
it hard to frame such questions, for there is a wrong way
and a right way of asking them. The wrong way: '' Did the
media (video games, Marilyn Manson, `The Basketball Diaries')
make them do it?'' One of the few things that we know for
certain after 50 years of sustained research on these issues
is that behavior is too complex a phenomenon to pin down
to exposure to individual and isolated media messages. The
evidence strongly supports that behavior is linked to attitudes
and attitudes are formed in a much more complex cultural
environment.
The right way to ask the question is: '' How does the cultural
environment,
including media images, contribute to definitions of manhood
that are picked up by adolescents?'' Or, '' How does repeated
exposure to violent
masculinity normalize and naturalize this violence?''
There may indeed be no simple explanation as to why certain
boys in
particular circumstances act out in violent, sometimes lethal,
ways. But
leaving aside the specifics of this latest case, the fact
that the
overwhelming majority of such violence is perpetrated by
males suggests that part of the answer lies in how we define
such intertwined concepts as
''respect,'' ''power'' and ''manhood.'' When you add on
the easy
accessibility of guns and other weapons, you have all the
ingredients for
the next deadly attack.
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