Performing American Masculinities: The 21st-Century Man in Popular Culture [Paperback]

This collection highlights the fluidity of masculinity in American popular culture at the turn of the new millennium and beyond by examining possibilities for male identity formation. Each chapter mines American popular culturetheatre, film, literature, music, advertising, internet content, television, photography, and current eventsto pose questions about the process of gender creation and the contestation of masculinities as constantly changing political forms. The first section explores masculinities within late capitalism and includes studies ofSeinfeld,Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,and reality television.The second section addresses identity when masculinity intersects with race, religion, disability, and sexuality, including chapters on Barack Obama, the O.J. trial, and popular movies.

This overview of turn-of-the-millennium sexual identities examines the contradictions and instabilities inherent in latter-day American masculinity as evidenced in pop culture. Watson (history, African American studies, and gender studies, East Tennessee State Univ.) and Shaw (theater arts, Hartwick College) have assembled nine timely essays that cover a range of cultural touchstones and phenomena. The Geico cavemen in the insurance company's ads, Dr. McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy, the sitcom Seinfeld, O. J. Simpson, metrosexuals, and Barack Obama all receive extended and thoughtful critiques. The volume touches on age-old barometers of masculine identityincluding film, advertising, capitalism, and presidential campaignsbut also highlights more typically 21st-century indicators and influences, for example, viral videos and reality television dating shows. By stressing masculinity's flexibility and ephemerality, the collection succeeds in puncturing what one author describes as 'the inflated notions of sexuality and the true self. ' A fine contribution to contemporary gender criticism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undelS&