Thursday, October 9, 2008

"I know kung-fu"

Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity by Jackson Katz does exactly what the title says; talk about advertising and the construction of violent masculinity (do they ever come up with clever titles?). Anyway, the article goes in depth with the hegemonic ideals that are being filtered into our societies ideal of violence=masculinity. There are two areas of advertising that Katz talks about a little more in depth and they are the 21st-Century Rebel (Eminem, Kid Rock,.....Limp Biskit? lame) and the Military/Sports symbolism of masculinity. Besides those, the main idea of the article is that muscles equal masculinity, and muscles are mainly used for beating people up. He also mentions how guns are actually a intergration of male violent masculinity. "In fact, the presence of guns in magazine and newspaper ads is crucial in communicating the extent of a movie's violent content" (pg.357). I feel like this could easily be attributed to other weapons as well, but I have noticed how the gun's presence (not firing) alone speaks more than a knife would.

This brings me to my case in point.


Ok, I hate to say this but if you haven't at least seen this clip of the Matrix....well I think you may be living under a rock (totally, for sure). The scene drips masculinity. Guns? Check. Dark lighting? Check. Hot actress? Check. All decked out in black? Check. Am I missing anything? Oh, right. Lots of butt kicking? Triple Check. The scene before this one actually shows the materialization of literally millions of guns being created in the white void before the matrix. It is really hard for any guy to not get pumped up while watching this. I have to say that the Matrix as a whole pretty much was all I thought of while reading this article. Self explanitory I believe.

clip from youtube found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF-WeswkqXc

1 comment:

Kevin M said...

From the "yeah, but" school of intellectual conversation: "Yeah, but," in the Matrix--at least the first movie--the female character Trinity is pretty much an equal partner with the male leads (she's actually superior to Neo for much of the movie, until he finally comes into his own at the end). She's not just a "hot chick" hanging on his arm. She's kicking arse, too. That seems significant, although it doesn't argue that this scene is NOT a good example of the military-style masculinity Katz writes about. It's just that, in the Matrix, women join in!