Homework answers / question archive / The papers (5-6 pages aka 1700 – 2000 words, excluding bibliography) must be devoted to a more in-depth exploration/analysis of media/visual artifacts with the aid of the theories/concepts discussed in class

The papers (5-6 pages aka 1700 – 2000 words, excluding bibliography) must be devoted to a more in-depth exploration/analysis of media/visual artifacts with the aid of the theories/concepts discussed in class

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The papers (5-6 pages aka 1700 – 2000 words, excluding bibliography) must be devoted to a more in-depth exploration/analysis of media/visual artifacts with the aid of the theories/concepts discussed in class. This is an application of theory. 1. Object: choosing an object/media artifact for analysis a. Appropriate: Choose an object/media artifact that fits the requirements. Make sure the object is appropriate. b. Doable: When choosing on artifact for analysis the key word is “manageable.” Avoid choosing topics that are too broad or too narrow. Focus on one image/ad/ movie. Look at the word/page requirements and develop a full argument that fits those limits. c. Rich: Choose something that you love or hate (passion is an excellent motivator for critical thinking), but, more importantly, choose an object you feel you have something to say about, an artifact rich in issues that can be discussed. Make sure you have enough supporting material to make your argument: i. Textual evidence from the object itself (image, movie, etc.) ii. Theoretical concepts used to explicate the object. iii. Supporting evidence from other sources. 2. Theory: choosing theory/concepts/articles to support your argument a. “You can only see in an artifact what you already know” – this means that a close reading of the text/artifact/object should prompt you to think back to the theory covered in class and use the concepts or theories in support of your claims about the artifact. b. The goal is to use these concepts to help you understand and explain what that particular artifact does. Use specific concepts and theories as needed to make your argument (not general statements, general ideas). 3. Argument: making an argument about the object supported by theory a. In every paper you make an argument, meaning, you start with a claim about the object (this image means this or that) and spend the rest of the paper proving your claim (bringing evidence form the media object itself and theoretical support) b. You must persuade the reader that your claim has merit. To do that, you have to assume the reader will disagree with every claim you make. The burden of proving your claim to be true/have merit is on you. c. Do not assume the reader knows your object or the theory you use yet is capable of understanding if explained properly. Requirements/Format: Minimum 5 sources (minimum 3 of the ones we read in class, minimum 1 new source form a peer reviewed journal, and the object) Post on Blackboard 5-6 pages aka 1700 – 2000 words, Times New Roman 12 pt font, double spaced, 1 inch margins. Follow AP style. Tool for Organization: Sample Outline for Argument/Analysis Paper Introduction (no more than 1 robust paragraph) Attention Material: you start with broad statement about the state of affairs related to your subject area. Try to open your essay with an interesting statement about the object or subject, something that seizes the attention of the reader and makes them want to continue reading. Introducing the Object: name the object and try to establish the relevance of analyzing this object (millions have seen it, millions have been affected by it, it has been shown in 100 countries, etc.) Do not go too much into detail. There is no need at this stage to describe everything that is happening/is being said/is being shown in that picture/movie/etc. Thesis Statement: Make a claim about the object (how does it create, perpetuate, display, challenge, and/or disseminates certain meanings) Preview: Here, you go into detail and you tell the reader, point by point, how will you demonstrated/argue the thesis (first I will talk about this aspect of the thesis, then I will discuss the next aspect, and so on) Body/Demonstration (5-6 paragraphs): This is the section where you develop the argument stated in the thesis. Look for purposeful use of images/words/metaphors/scenes etc. First try to describe what is happening; use direct quotes from the object; then try to understand/interpret; next, link the theory/concepts with your interpretation. Short Synopsis/Background: here you provide a brief description of the media object (picture, film, ad, etc). Assume people have not seen it – what is the minimum they need to know in order to follow your argument? This does not have to be a long paragraph and you do not have to use theory here. (if possible you can have the image inserted in the text) Analysis Paragraph (4-5 paragraphs): follow this structure for each analysis paragraph. Claim about the object/topic sentence: this object displays, strengthens, perpetuates, illustrates this aspect of gender, race, stereotyping, etc. Interpretation: use specific scenes, images, words form the object (film, ad, etc.) to show evidence of this or that idea. When using theory, write for smart people that have not heard about this particular concept/author. Theory: quote form readings detailing a concept (“symbolic annihilation” or for example). Explanation: never leave a quote to speak for itself. Explain the quote in your own words. What does it mean? Analysis: specifically link the concept to your interpretation and tell us what it means to understand this object through this theoretical lens. Conclusion: Briefly conclude how the images/words lead to symbolic annihilation (or whatever concept you used). Transition: have a short sentence that links the previous idea in this paragraph with the next idea/paragraph. In this way, you don’t have a collection of paragraphs but a unified argument. Conclusion (1 paragraph) Summary: summarize briefly the argument of the paper without using the same words. Ending: end with a strong general statement about your subject, object, and/or theory. Tool for Organization Thesis Statement Guidelines In an argument paper, the thesis statement is a claim about a topic/artifact. The goal of the paper itself is to persuade the reader that this claim has merit based on specific evidence—interpretation of scenes, images, words, etc. supported by theoretical concepts. # The thesis statement must take a stance # The thesis statement must be specific not general/vague # The thesis statement must be clear # The thesis must be a claim that you can prove throughout the paper. # The thesis cannot be a personal opinion # The thesis cannot be a statement that everyone will agree immediately. Tool for Organization “Fill in the Blanks Guide” for Argument/Analysis Papers Thesis statement: ………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. I. Supporting Point 1 (first sentence of each analysis paragraph): ………..………………... ……………………………………………………………………………………………… II. Supporting Point 2: ………………………………………………………………………... ……………………………………………………………………………………………… III. Supporting Point 3: ………………………………………………………………………... ……………………………………………………………………………………………… IV. Supporting Point 4: ………………………………………………………………………... ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Note: this tool is designed to make sure you have specific main points and the main points relate directly to the thesis statement. Each supporting point is the first sentence (topic sentence/claim about the object) of an analysis paragraph. Check list: ? Every main point provides direct support for the thesis (directly related). ? Every main point has references to aspects of the communication act (main object of analysis). ? Every main point has supporting evidence/data form sources in support of the claims. Tool for Draft Review Draft Checklist Introduction Synopsis Analysis Paragraph Analysis Paragraph ……… Conclusion ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Attention material Introducing the object Relevance of object Thesis statement Preview of argument Description of object with enough detail for people unfamiliar with object 1st sentence is a claim about the object. Interpretation of object (scene, etc.) Theory Quote Explanation of theory Linking interpretation and theory. Conclusion (how claim was proven) Transition to next paragraph 1st sentence is a claim about the object. Interpretation of object (scene, etc) Theory Quote Explanation of theory Linking interpretation and theory. Conclusion (how claim was proven) Transition to next paragraph 1st sentence is a claim about the object. …… ? Summarize the main points ? Strong ending about object/theory Note: make sure that you understand the distinction between: description (describing an image), interpretation (description + claims about what the image means), and analysis (interpretation + theory to make claims about the meaning of the scene that are supported by a theoretical framework) Note: Make sure every use of concepts/theory is explained and linked back to the object (1) quote; (2) explain; (3) apply. Note:: Do not start paragraphs with sources but with claims about the object – then quote sources to support. Note: Do not end a paragraph with a quote – quotes need to be explained – theory never speaks for itself. Note: Read the paper out lout for grammar issues, word choice problems, and awkward sentences. Sample Student Paper Movin’ On In: All in the Family and the Performance of Race in Situation Comedy Full Name Media & Public Perception Movin’ On In: All in the Family and the Performance of Race in Situation Comedy Mainstream television provides a lens upon which to mirror culture and create it. This was even more the case during the 1970s, when only three networks dominated the airwaves. Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family (1971-1979) was cutting-edge in the way it held up issues such as bigotry, Watergate, the Vietnam War and others to comedic scrutiny. One episode in particular, the first season’s “Lionel Moves into the Neighborhood,” illustrates perfectly the racial hostilities of the time. The episode proceeds with a plot remarkably similar to Lorainne Hansberry’s classic 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. Both works deal with the effects of African-Americans migrating into predominantly white neighborhoods, the psychological effects of this on white homeowners who hold biases, and the difficult choice of black migrants who must weigh personal dignity over the temptation of an easier life in the ‘old neighborhood.’ In “Lionel Moves into the Neighborhood,” the black Jefferson family (later the focus of the CBS spinoff series The Jeffersons) moves into a house across from the Bunker family’s New York brownstone. As Archie, the main character of the series, realizes in comedic fashion the race of his new neighbors, he plots a scheme to tempt them with profit in order to save the neighborhood from a housing value collapse-- the oft-cited excuse of those in the era who would seek to discourage integrated communities. The episode begins as Louise Jefferson stops by the Bunker’s household to pick up a key that has been left for her by Bowman, the owner of the house across the street. As she also asks for a pail, the Bunkers believe she is in fact a maid heading over to clean the house, which has been vacant for some time. As she approaches her home-to-be, she spots its current owner outside and engages him in conversation: LOUISE: Oh, Mr. Bowman, I'm so glad you're here. I just noticed a new crack in the ceiling. BOWMAN: Mrs. Jefferson, you bought a perfect house. You're gonna be very happy here, so let's not start with none of that, huh? LOUISE: Well, my sister just talked with the movers, and-BOWMAN: Look, let's go inside and talk. Bowman ushers her toward the front steps with a quickness. At this point, the audience has realized that Bowman is uncomfortable about the fact that neighbors may realize he has sold his home to a black family. Bowman’s racist predisposition can be traced to sentiments of the time, but also has its roots in what a pattern which Alexander (2010) has traced from the early colonial period to what she dubs “The New Jim Crow.” According to Alexander, white anger over the sweeping racial reforms of the 1860s led to a new resentment in which “most white people believed African Americans lacked the proper motivation to work, prompting...the notorious black codes...prohibiting, among other things, interracial seating in the first-class sections of railroad cars and by segregating schools (p. 28). She later adds that “racial segregation had actually begun years earlier in the North, as an effort to prevent race-mixing and preserve racial hierarchy" (p. 30) This historical account of racial tension gives us a glimpse into why the narrative of the episode takes this immediate direction. After Bowman finally coaxes Louise Jefferson into the house, he is spotted by Archie, who inquires as to the new occupants of the home. He does not get a straight answer, but Louise pops out of the front door with a “Hi, neighbor!” prompting him to shoot Bowman a stern look. Bowman then attempts in vain to explain that he could not find any suitable occupants, so he had to resort to black buyers. Out of guilt, he hatches this scheme and proposes it to Archie: BOWMAN: Get all our friends together to chip in, and you buy back the house. Then you turn around, and you sell it back to one of our own kind. ARCHIE: What makes you think these people are gonna sell it back to us ? BOWMAN: You offer the schwartzes a $2,000 profit. ARCHIE: You think they'll go for it ? BOWMAN: They'll jump at it ! They'll be so happy, you'll have them tap dancing all the way back to Harlem! References to “our own kind” (whites) and “schwartzes” (a denigrating term for blacks used among New Yorkers of the time) ground the viewer in the racial reality of the plot. “Tap dancing all the way to Harlem” draws on two dated stereotypes: the fast-dancing “Zip Coon” of 1800s minstrel shows (Riggs et al,, 1987), and the fact that since most black New Yorkers have lived in Harlem, so too should they remain there. The plot also moves beyond mere embarrassment at the arrival of blacks onto a more sinister theme. That black people can be swayed from migration toward a better neighborhood is explained by the fact that "conservatives...succeeded in using law and order rhetoric in their effort to mobilize the resentment of white working-class voters, many of whom felt threatened by the sudden progress of African Americans " (Alexander, 2010, p. 46). Archie Bunker, a prominent fictional workingclass conservative, here represents this growing disenchantment and feeling that blacks were encroaching upon white spaces and safety. The story continues at the Bunker household, where Archie and his wife Edith discuss the implications of these new neighbors. Archie states, “Edith, it ain't their problem, it's our problem! These people are steppin' up in life, and we're movin' down. How much you think our property's gonna be worth with them livin' two doors away?” Suddenly, the focus shifts from the loss of gentrification of their neighborhood to the potential problem of property value loss, another common fallacy of the period among those who harbored racist sentiments. According to Alexander (2010), "a new raceneutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place" (p. 40). Here, that language is a subtle code, not an outright slur or blanket indictment. The subtle linguistic shift allows the bigot, represented here by Archie, to express otherwise prejudiced views in a fashion that mimics civility. His fear of “movin’ down” is reminiscent of working-class whites of the 1960s and 70s, "who were suddenly forced to compete on equal terms with blacks for jobs and status and who lived in neighborhoods adjoining black ghettos" (Alexander, 2010, p. 46). However, the fear is only a reflection of a “monetary system which beggars both" (p. 33), in which hegemonic rhetoric forced whites to cope against a non-existent enemy. As Archie’s daughter Gloria and liberal son-in-law Mike join in the discussion, they point out to Archie that Louise’s arrival is “only a beginning, but...wonderful.” Thus, we are presented with a more rational side to the debate, one which privileges the black point of view instead of reinforcing the hegemonic discourse as would be expected of mainstream television. However, this challenged by Archie’s tirade: “I'm all alone in this house ! Isn't anybody else interested in upholdin' standards? Our world is comin' crumblin' down. The coons are comin'!...Let’s see how ‘wonderful’ it is when the watermelon rinds come flyin’ out the window!” The ridiculousness of the behavior Archie foresees is actually a fictional representation of the real-life fear which gripped many neighborhoods of this era. Alexander (2010) points out that "cities...were described as being victims of their own generosity. Conservatives argued that, having welcomed blacks migrating from the South, these cities "were repaid with crime-ridden slums and black discontent" (p. 42). Archie’s reference to “standards” reflects Stuart Hall’s (1997) argument that “culture depends on giving things meaning by assigning them to different positions...what really disturbs cultural order is when things turn up in the wrong category...Stable cultures require things to stay in their appointed place” (p. 236). In this case, the only standard to be upheld is the perceived normalcy of segregated neighborhoods in spite of the fact that no hard, factual evidence was available to suggest that “the social pathologies of the poor” (Alexander, 2010, p. 45) contributed to a decline in property value or neighborhood safety. References to “watermelon rinds” and “coons” are a further use, on Archie’s part, of stereotypes, defined by Gorham (2004) as “a schema for people we perceive as belonging, to a social group” (p. 95). Though the attributes he cites are decidedly not a feature of the group he is discussing as a whole, their appearance in the popular culture leads the general public, especially those with racist predispositions, to believe that they are. The response of Archie’s good-natured wife Edith, depicted throughout the series as decidedly unprejudiced, is a far more nuanced aspect of the plot. Her daughter Gloria questions her, following Archie’s outburst, regarding her feelings on Louise: GLORIA: Ma, how do you feel about the new neighbors? I mean, you never told us how you feel about black people. EDITH: Well, you sure gotta hand it to 'em. I mean, two years ago they was nothin' but servants and janitors. Now they're teachers and doctors and lawyers. [PAUSE] They've come a long way on TV. The response is played for laughs, and though it represents African-Americans in more of a positive light, it is still a restrictive framing because it suggests their societal triumphs are confined only to media portrayals. Thus, the only characters so far in the episode who have expressed empathetic sentiments toward African-American upward mobility have been the object of derision and laughter. Eventually, Louise Jefferson’s son Lionel, already a friend of Mike and Gloria, visits the Bunkers to drop off their dry cleaning. Before he can leave, Archie confronts him, unaware that he is in fact the son of the new neighbor. He explains that “a group of concerned neighbors has got together and we’re gonna take up a collection to buy back that house...we’re gonna give ‘em a $2,000 profit...I want you to take them the offer, see? I mean, I could do it myself, but for this job, uh, you got the best credentials.” Thus, he is suggesting that Lionel must already know any other person of color that has been in the neighborhood. Lionel’s response is to ‘play dumb,’ sarcastically humoring Archie by pretending to agree with his views on the separation of races. This powerful plot point is the first moment in the episode when the audience is allowed to completely divorce itself from the views of Archie, and ridicule them against Lionel’s incredulousness. Finally, Lionel reveals to Archie that he is in fact the new neighbor and will not be accepting the bribe. This prompts applause from the studio audience, smiles from Mike and Gloria, and a bewildered look from Archie as he is left speechless at the dining room table. The episode’s final scene depicts Lionel at the table with Gloria, Mike, and Edith, as he takes notes from them on reputable shops and services nearby. Archie sits quietly in the living room, making terse comments until he finally rises out of frustration: ARCHIE: What are you talkin’ about? Listen, Lionel, don’t pay no attention to these people, huh? You wanna know anything about the neighborhood, ask me. First of all, Tomasetti, He’s an Italian. We all know what they are...So keep your eye on him, eh?...Look out for these colored guys on the garbage truck. They’re always tryin’ to set you up...they’re thieves… Berg (2002), in his effort to understand why minority audiences often empathize with racially-insensitive films, posits a theory of "social triangling" (p. 59) to explain this seeming paradox. According to Berg, "through this process of stigmatizing and consequently stereotyping Blacks, the Anglo dominant and the 'positive' minority groups [say] to one another, 'We are in agreement about that pathological Other (black) group'" (p. 60). Here, Archie exemplifies this tactic by appealing to Lionel’s sense of camaraderie with him to achieve a sense of prejudice for other ethnic groups, even black ones. The specific groups in question need not remain the same, for Berg points out that "specific Other groups rotate in and out of targeted stereotyping" (p. 61). Although Archie’s triangulation in regard to Lionel is problematic, and likely intended to keep his own race a step above, it can still be seen within the context of the series as a softening of Archie’s character and perhaps an attempt to make amends. Further episodes involve Archie softening toward the Jeffersons as people, while still maintaining a sense of prejudice toward theirs and other ethnic groups. The legacy of All in the Family is cemented as one of TV’s most enduring sitcoms. However, the racial and political antagonisms of the day, and subsequent reflections on hegemony and racial media constructs, give us reason for reflection upon that legacy. Vidmar and Rokeach (1976), two scholars who looked closely at the show during its original network run, suggest that the viewer has one of three reactions to the show. They experience either a catharsis, a modeling of Archie’s racist attitudes, or instead: “the constructive learning approach...would propose that the expression of Archie’s prejudices via derisive ethnic humor allows viewers to recognize the absurdity of such views, both in Archie and in themselves” (1976, p. 69). It is through this third lens that I suggest contemporary viewers view the series. The serious issues confronted in comedic fashion offer not a model to be followed, but instead a rebuke of Archie, and allow us to laugh and move forward from the contemporary racial politics being satirized. References Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. NY: The New Press. Berg, C. (2002). Latino images in film: Stereotypes, subversion, resistance. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Hall, S. (1997). The spectacle of “the other”: Cultural representation and signifying practices. London: Sage Publications. Lear, N., and Nicholl, D. (Writers), & Rich, J. (Director). (March 2, 1971). Lionel moves into the neighborhood [All in the family]. In N. Lear (Producer). Television City, CA: CBS Riggs, M., Rolle, E., Hoffmann, D., Salmon, K., Watkins, M., California Newsreel, & KQED-TV. (1987). Ethnic notions. Berkeley, CA: California Newsreel. Vidmar, N., & Rokeach, M. (1974). Archie Bunker's bigotry: A study in selective perception and exposure. Journal of Communication, 24(1), 36-47. Gender Paper 1 Student Gender Paper 1 Objectification of women for male visual pleasure in films is a common reoccurrence, especially in action genre. Action films like the James Bond series often objectify women in a way that they are depicted as a disposable sex object for the main character, Bond. Typically, the lead female character is meant to be visually pleasurable, as she is often wearing impartial clothes for spy missions, like skin tight clothing and high heels, while Bond is in a loose-fitting dress suit or appropriate attire. The main character, James Bond, is often seen as the ideal male because he is so masculine; because he sleeps with many women and shows his strength and dominance through violence. It is important to draw attention to this film because the Bond films have continually portrayed the main male character like this since the early films, like Goldfinger, until now. These films are widely popular amongst all people, men, women, and even children. The films have been released every couple of years starting in the 1960’s up until now, so these films are still relevant today. Therefore, these popular films have been influencing millions of people for more than 50 years. The Goldfinger is considered one of the best and most iconic of the Bond series. This film portrays the women in the film as disposable object and portrays Bond as the ideal, masculine male. Women in James Bond films, in particular the Goldfinger film, are objectified, while Bond is portrayed as the ideal man because is powerful, strong, dominant, white, and heterosexual, upholding the idea of hegemonic masculinity. The first way that a woman is objectified for male visual pleasure is how one of the characters in the film, Jill Masterson, is portrayed on the movie poster. Clearly, the poster is meant to be visually pleasurable because it showcases the male’s achievements while posing the female as an object for advertising purposes. This is what Mulvey refers to as “scopophilia” in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Scopophilia is viewing someone as an object through a controlling and curious gaze (Mulvey 835). The poster has three photos, the first is an action shot of Bond’s face, second photo is a posed headshot of him, and finally is a shot of him kissing another female character, Pussy Galore. Behind the middle image is Jill Masterson, one of the few female characters and a temporary romantic interest for Bond. She is posed naked, face down, and her body painted head to toe with glimmering gold paint. By painting Masterson gold, she is objectified because she no longer exhibits human-like qualities; because her physical characteristics have been vanished by the gold paint. Next, she is not facing the audience because of her pose. By not facing the audience, she is not human-like, because the focus of the pose is to emphasize her body. She is laying down, with her head tilted to the side, eyes closed, suggesting that she is not alive anymore. Her backside is exposed, showing her entire backside and upper thighs down to her feet. The way that both characters are portrayed are intended for visual pleasure. Although it can be argued that Masterson’s gold painter body is relevant to the story, there are not any other victims that were painted gold. Therefore, the film chose to only have one victim that is fully painted gold and it happens to be a female that plays a minor role. The most blatant objectification on this poster is what is in big letters, “everything he touches turns to excitement,” the excitement is referring to the images on the poster. Because the cover says everything and not something like everyone, it is showing that she is a thing and not a person. Through this concept, there is clearly a link with the viewing pleasure of females as objects. The film does by stripping all of Masterson’s human features by painting her gold, making her an object. This object’s gold paint that covers her naked body is meant to be visually pleasurable, making it easier for viewers to stare without any limits. Objectifying women to make them visually pleasurable is a common advertising tactic in the film industry and this film clearly does this through the movie posters. Moreover, Bond’s character is always complemented by a gorgeous female character, usually clad in revealing clothing. There is no relevance of the female’s clothing other than looking sexually attractive for the viewers and characters in the film. Bond’s outfit serves a purpose of stating his dominance and sophistication, as he is often dressed sharply in a full piece suit. Mulvey refers to this as sexual imbalance, which is when the female is portrayed as passive, while the male is portrayed as active; or, more specifically the concept of to-be-looked-at-ness (Mulvey 837). The first scene viewers see of Jill Masterson is when she is wearing a lacy bikini while on a balcony at a resort because she is assisting the villain, Goldfinger, by telling what cards his opponent has. Bond is trying to get in contact and intimidate Goldfinger, so he leans over Masterson and lays on top of her while threatening him through the radio. After he is done, he proceeds to flirt with her and of course, she is enchanted. He makes it obvious when leaning over here that he notices her revealing swimwear. The article suggests that often times the clothing has nothing to do with it; but rather the erotic attire disrupts and freezes the storyline (Mulvey 837). It is important to realize that the females in films are objected to this; the male is dominant, while the female is submissive to them. In the film, Bond shows his dominance by taking over Masterson’s station and putting himself on top of her. He then proceeds to flirt with her because she has no other choice than to sleep with him. Clearly, the Bond films portray the females in the film as passive and Bond as the active male; Goldfinger is no exception. The scene where Bond first encounters Masterson is one of the many scenes where he asserts himself over women. Furthermore, the portrayal of Bond is about making the audience narcissistic. In particular, the males want to be like him because he is dominant, strong, and women are attracted to him. According to Hegemonic Masculinity on the Mound: Media Representations of Nolan Ryan and American Sports Culture, something becomes hegemonic when it becomes accepted across the culture, therefore, the idea of masculinity in our culture has become hegemonic (Trujillo 290-1). The idea of hegemonic masculinity in our culture is that males should be strong, dominant, wanted by women, white, heterosexual, and other qualities. Bond is all of these characteristics. He is often entitled to the women in the film and asserts his dominance over them. For instance, Bond meets with another female in the film named, Pussy Galore. There is a scene where he walks her to a secluded area on a property and begins to try to seduce her. She states that she is unwilling by saying “No” to him several times; she even uses self-defense take downs on him, but they are turned into sexual tension. He uses physical force to coerce her into sleeping with him, despite her initial rejections. The characteristics that Bond displays continues to feed into the toxic idea of hegemonic masculinity in our culture. It is not bad that a male is strong or heterosexual, it is the idea that all of them should act this way. The films certainly emphasize this because all of the other male characters, even the villains, display these characteristics. It marginalizes males who do not display these qualities, suggesting to male viewers that they need to act this way as well as suggesting to female viewers that this behavior from men is normal. In addition, these qualities of hegemonic masculinity often normalize violence amongst males, specifically white males. Bond fits the part of a hegemonic masculine male; he is heterosexual, strong, dominant, and white. Because he is strong and dominant, he often demonstrates this through violence against other males in the film. The justification of this violence is because he is fighting against the villains. It is stated in the Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader that males are often expected to be violent to maintain or prove their masculinity (Dines & Humez 350). This is shown throughout the film as Bond gets the job done by fighting and shooting all of the villains in the film to save the world. it is important to consider that he does this in every film in the series. One of the very first scenes in the film starts with him seducing a woman until he is betrayed by her and ends up being attacked by another man. At the start of the fight, he uses the woman as a shield to block the first punch from the man. As the fight continues, he ends up winning the fight by pushing him into a bathtub of water and throwing a portable heater in there, electrifying and killing the man. This display of violence in the film have no other significance but to show that Bond is strong and dominant. It is about displaying and proving his masculinity. Through violence, he is able to show that he is dominant, strong, and masculine traits because no other man can take him down. Overall, the Bond films have a reoccurring view of women throughout their films. One of the most popular and iconic films in the series, Goldfinger, is no exception. James Bond is depicted as the ideal hegemonic masculine male continuously in the films, Goldfinger stands out because of his constant assertion and force over the females in the film. The James Bond films are considered to be classic and new ones are still being made every couple of years. Even though this film is quite old, it is still important to consider the impact that this film has made on people throughout the world. the clear objectification of Jill Masterson in the film is disturbing as it is used for reference when the film is mentioned and advertising purposes. The objectification of women in this film is disheartening because rather than playing a key part to the story, they are used as objects for Bond and the other characters to use and dispose of at their leisure. James Bond represents and display the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity throughout the film by being dominant, strong, heterosexual, and other qualities. He also displays and proves his masculinity through violence. These characteristics make the male viewers want to be more like him. It is not that males that are strong, dominant, heterosexual, and other qualities Bond displays are wrong; it is the idea that all males in our culture should be this way. References Dines, Gail & Humez, Jean M. (2003). Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader. California, USA. Sage Publications, Inc. Mulvey, Laura. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Trujillo, Nick. (1991). Hegemonic Masculinity on the Mound: Media Representations of Nolan and American Sports Culture. Ryan • 1 Manufacturing Rage The Cultural Construction of Aggrieved Entitlement \\ Tom," from Wichita, Kansas, has been waiting on hold, he tells us, for two hours and twenty minutes. An army veteran, he lost his job earlier this year. For months, he's been looking for work, sending out hundreds of resumes. A few interviews, no offers. What will happen to his family when his unemployment insurance runs out? "We're into the red zone," he explains. "We're cutting essentials: food, laundry, clothing, shoes." He's worried, he says, "scared to death." Repeatedly, he insists he is "not a whiner." What he wants to know, he asks Rush Limbaugh on his nationally syndicated radio show, is what President Obama is doing to turn the economy around. Why was he spending all this energy on health care when people are out of work? What has the stimulus plan done to create jobs for people like him, with families to support? Fortunately, he says, his wife has a job that provides health care for the family. But 31 if he doesn't find something soon, he's considering reenlisting. He lost his own father in Vietnam, he says, softly, and h~'s afraid that ar forty-three, he might leave his own children fatherless. "My self-esteem is right now at its lowest that I've ever had it," Tom says. "I'm getting •choked up." "I know," replies Limbaugh empathetically. "I've been there." Limbaugh recounts his own history of unemployment. But then, he transforms Tom's experience. "I don't hear you as whining," says Rush. "I hear you as mad." Wait a second. Did you hear Tom as mad? I'm no expert in auditory interpretation, but what I heard was anxiety, vulnerability, and more than just a slight tremor of fear. I heard someone asking for help. In a revealing analysis of Limbaugh's radio persona, antiviolence activist Jackson Katz carefully parses this particular exchange as emblematichow the talk-show host transforms this- plaintiv emotional expressi.Q_n into someth.ing else. What starts as sail.ness, anxiety, grief, worry. ·s sarefullY. manipulatedinto political rage. 1 Rush Limbaugh is a master at this translation of emotional vulnerability or insecurity into anger. All that he needs is that shared sense of aggrieved entitlement-that sense that "we," the rightful heirs of America's bounty, have had what is "rightfully ours" taken away from us by "them," faceless, feckless government bureaucrats, and given to "them," undeserving minorities, immigrants, women, gays, and their ilk. If your despair can be massaged into this Manichaean struggle between Us and Them, you, too, can be mobilized into the army of Angry White Men. Limbaugh is one of hundreds of talk-show hosts on radio dials across the nation-indeed, the AM radio dial seems to have nothing but sports talk, Spanish-language stations, and vitriolic white men hosting radio shows. Talk radio is the most vibrant part of the radio dial-thirty-five hundred all-talk or all-news stations in the United States-up from about five hundred two decades ago. 2 According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, while the majority of radio, newspaper, and magazine consumers are female (51 percent), Limbaugh (59 percent), Sean Hannity (57 percent), and Stephen Colbert (58 percent) skew most heavily toward men. (So, incidentally, does Rachel Maddow, at 52 percent.) Limbaugh's audiences skew slightly 32 ANGRY WHITE MEN older, less educated (only 29 percent are college graduates, compared to 39 percent and 35 percent for liberals Colbert and Maddow, respectively). Their income tends to be squarely in the middle-30 percent make more than seventy-five thousand dollars, 37 percent between thirty and seventy-five thousand dollars, and 21 percent below thirty thousand dollars a "year. Obviously, more than seven in ten identify as conservative. 3 Visitors to Limbaugh's website tilt even more rightward. It's visited by 1.1 million people a month-more than 94 percent white and 85 percent male, most are between thirty-five and sixty-five, with the biggest bulge at forty-five to fifty-four. Most (54 percent) do not have kids. Two-thirds have incomes below one hundred thousand dollars a year, though two-thirds also have at least a college, if not a graduate, degree. (That's an index of downward mobility; their educational achievements haven't paid off in better jobs.) 4 This would make the typical Limbaugh fan (enough to view his website) a downwardly mobile white male, whose career never really panned out (college or grad school but only modest income) and whose family life didn't either (majority childless). That is a recipe for aggrieved entitlement. Everything was in place to partake of the American Dream, and ·it didn't quite work out. Just whose fault is that? Sociologist Sarah Sobieraj and political scientist Jeffrey Berry call it "outrage media" -talk-radio, blog, and cable news designed "to provoke a visceral response from the audience, usually in the form of anger, fear, or moral righteousness through the use of overgeneralizations, sensationalism, misleading or patently inaccurate information, ad hominem attacks, and partial truths about opponents. "5 Sobieraj and Berry trace this development through the technological shifts from radio and 1V to cable news, the blogosphere, and talk radio as the news vehicles of choices and to the incredible consolidation of media companies, so that only a handful of companies control virtually all of America's airwaves. (Women own about three of ten businesses in America but own only 6 percent of radio stations. Racial minorities own 18 percent of all businesses, but only 7.7 percent of radio stations. Clearly, white men are being squeezed out, right?) 6 But it's also linked to the displacement of white men from every single position of power in the country. Talk radio is the last locker MANUFACTURING RAGE 33 room, juiced not on steroids but on megahertz. It's the circled wagons keeping out the barbarian hordes, who may be just a millimeter away on that dial. It's the Alamo on AM frequency. · The rise of outrage media is coincident with the erosion of white ( •male entitlement. Outrage media generally begins with Peter Finch in ( the film Network (1976), exhorting his audience to go to their windows and scream, ''I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Finch's impotent outburst provides a heroic riposte to a film about the steamroller of corporate takeovers, the ethically rudderless drive for ratings trumping all other criteria, including quality. Like the tabloid newspaper or local newscast- whose motto is "If it bleeds, it leads" -the motto of outrage radio is closer to "If he yells, it sells." Of course, one needn't be some academic postmodernist to understand how the catharsis of the experience is what enables us to take more of it. We feel outrage, and we're told it's not our fault and that we have plenty of company. But it's more than just the cheerleaders of the angry mobs. Anger sells. It's become part of marketing strategies for products ranging from regular-guy cars and beer to defiantly politically incorrect items like Hummers and cigars. Anger, after all, implies some degree of hope, of "aspiration," which is a core element in advertising strategy. Anger implies commitment; if you're angry, you feel yourself to be a stakeholder. Anger is emotion seeking an outlet, an excited politicized electron seeking to connect with other atoms. (Contrast it with what happens to the anger that does not find a means of expression: it can become nihilistic, despondent, or resigned bitterness. The resigned and despondent do not buy products. They sulk. They give up.) You could hear that anger, the aggrieved entitlement, on election night 2012, as President Obama handily defeated Mitt Romney for president. Romney, the unfathomably wealthy corporate plutocrat, was unable to transform himself into a populist firebrand . Even though white men were the only demographic who went for Romney (although not decisively), it was too close in all those battleground states to offset the huge margins Obama racked up with African Americans, women, union workers, and Latinos. The fact that white men are not a monolithic group-and that enough voted Democratic, especially in blue states-is, of course, an important empirical counterweight to the claims of many of the Angry 34 AN GRY WHIT E M EN White Male choirmasters on talk radio and Fox News who say that they speak for all of "us." But it hardly deters them. Do you recall the commentary on election night 2012? Rush Limbaugh said that he went to bed thinking "we'd lost the country." Bill O'Reilly quoted one of his listeners, mourning that "we.have lost our American way of life." "I liked it the way it was," former Saturday Night Live news anchor Dennis Miller (now more of a self-parodying talk-show host) said about the country. "It's not going to be like that anymore." 7 And what was the single unifYing campaign slogan the Tea Party had to offer? 'We want to take back our country." 8 When I read these comments, I was reminded of a joke from my childhood. It seems that the Lone Ranger and Tonto were riding across the plains when suddenly they were surrounded by ten thousand angry Indian warriors. (The word savages would likely have been used in those days.) "We're in trouble, Tonto," says the Lone Ranger. "What do you mean 'we; kemosabe?" is Tonto's reply. Tonto was right. Just what do they mean by "we"? Whose country is it? One has to feel a sense of proprietorship, of entitlement, to call it "our" country. That sense has led millions of Americans, male and female, white and nonwhite, to feel like stakeholders in the American system and motivated millions to lay down their lives for that way of life. It's prompted some of the most moving stories of sacrifice, the most heroic and touching moments of connectedness with neighbors and strangers during crises. But it has its costs. That sense of holding on to what's "ours" can be turned into something ugly, sowing division where unity should be. Just as religiosity can motivate the most self-sacrificing charity and loving devotion, it can also be expressed as sanctimonious self-righteousness, as if a privileged access to revealed truth grants permission to unspeakable cruelties. It's not the depth of those collective feelings that is troubling-obviously, love of country can inspire us to great sacrifice; rather, it's their direction. When threatened, that sense of entitlement, of proprietorship, can be manipulated into an enraged protectionism, a sense that the threat to "us" is internal, those undeserving others who want to take for themselves what we have rightfully earned. "We" were willing to MANUFACTURING RAGE 35 share, we might say, totally inverting the reality that "they" ask ortly for a seat at the table, not to overturn the table itself; "they" waht it all for themselves. According to these angry white men, "they" not only want a seat, but now they got a guy sitting at the head of the ta• ble itself. Note, also, that I said "can be manipulated." The expression of emotion often leaves one also vulnerable, susceptible to manipulation. There's little empirical evidence for some biologically driven or evolutionarily mandated tribalism-at least a tribalism based on such phony us-versus-them characteristics. Sure, it's true that when threatened, we have an instinctive reaction to circle the wagons and protect ourselves against whatever threatens us. So, for example, the fierce patriotism that emerged after the 9/11 attacks was a natural, collective response to invasion, just as the mobilization of the entire nation's sympathies after Hurricane Katrina or Sandy; few Americans were inured to the outpouring of collective grief, anguish, and shared purpose. But to fixate on Saddam Hussein and the invasion of Iraq? That had to be manipulated: Iraq had not invaded us; indeed, Saddam Hussein was antipathetic to al-Qaeda. There were no weapons of mass destruction-but even had there been, why was it necessary to try to divert the outpouring of grief and desire for revenge to a different enemy? That we feel collective sentiments tells us nothing about how those sentiments can be mobilized and manipulated. In the case of the Iraq War, there was no threat, just the raw sentiments ripe for exploitation by cynical politicians. Angry white men are genuinely floundering-confused and often demoralized, they experience that wide range of emotions. But their anger is often constructed from those emotional materials, given shape and directed at targets that serve other interests. Angry white men are angry, all right, but their anger needs to be channeled toward some groups-and away from others. OUTRAGEOUS RADIO As an emotion, anger has a fairly short shelf life. It's a "hot" emotion, like sexual desire, not a cooler emotion like devotion to a loved one, or abiding love of country, or pride in one's child. Anger must be fed, its 36 ANGRY WHITE MEN mbers constantly stoked- either personally, by holding a grudge, or ollectively, by having sustained the sense that you have been injured, wounded, and that those who did it must pay. Feeling like the wronged victim is a way to channel hurt into a self-fueling sense of outrage; a personal sense of !njury becomes "politicized" as an illustration of a general theme. The politicization of the countless injuries, hurts, and injustices is the job of the self-appointed pundits in the media. It is they who offer a political framework for the anguish that you might feel, suggest how it represents a larger pattern of victimization of "people like you," and then urge collective action to redress it. (The collective action can be simply tuning in to the same radio show every day, knowing that you are among friends and allies.) As a result, ~it e are a llittuaLsoci-al movement. I don't mean that they are "virtually" a movement-as in "almost, but not quite." I mean that they or aniz · ualiy, that their social-movement organization is a virtual organization. They sit alone, listening to the radio, listening to Rush Limbaugh and Mike Savage and Sean Hannity. They meet online, in chat rooms and on websites, whether promoting antifeminist men's rights or the re-Aryanization of America. They troll cyberspace, the anti-PC police, ready to attack any blogger, columnist, or quasi liberal who dares to say something with which they disagree. It is the task of the Angry White Male pundits in the media to act as the choirmasters of the Angry White Male chorus, to direct and redirect that rage, to orchestrate it so that the disparate howls of despair or anguish, the whimpers of pain, or the mumblings of confusion can sound unified. They are the conductors; they believe that we are their instruments. It's their job to take the anger that might, in fact, be quite legitimate and direct it elsewhere, onto other targets. Say, for example, you are an autoworker, and you've seen your wages cut, your benefits dismantled, and your control over your hours steadily compromised. You may well be a bit miffed. But at whom? Left to your own devices-and conversations with your friends-you might conclude that it is the fault of rapacious corporate moguls, who line their pockets and pay themselves fat bonuses and who squeeze every drop they can from America's working man. You might even list to the Left and make common cause with others in similar situations and try to get the government to regulate the industry, raise wages, protect MANUFACTURING RAGE 37 benefits, and institute national health care. You might even work with your union. So, if I were to try to channel Rush Limbaugh or Mike Savage, my task would be to redirect that anger onto others those even less fortu• nate than you. Perhaps the reason you are so unhappy is because of all those immigrants who are streaming into America, driving the costs of labor lower and threatening "American" jobs. Or perhaps it's because women-even, perhaps, your own wife-want to enter the labor force, and that's what is driving down labor costs, as corporations no longer need to pay men a "family" wage, since they no longer support a family. Your grievances are not with the corporations, but with those just belaw you. In other words, as Thomas Frank points out in What's the Matter with Kansas ?, it's the task of the pundits to create "a French Revolution in reverse-one in which the sans-culottes pour down the streets demanding more power for the aristocracy. " 9 Limbaugh and Savage are only two of the hundreds of angry white men who have staked out an angry white male club on radio waves. I'll focus on them briefly here not because they are any worse than any of the others, but rather because they are so similar-in that masculinity is so central in their radio ratings. They're among the most popular: The Savage Nation is heard on 350 radio stations and reaches 8.25 million listeners each week ranking third behind only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Limbaugh outpaces everyone else, heard on more than 600 stations, with a weekly audience of more than 20 million. lO Angry White Men dominate the American airwaves (even though their claim that the media tilt leftward enables them to both claim dominance and victimhood); their goal is to protect and preserve the dominance of American white men, even at the moment when white men, in real life, are actually accommodating themselves to greater and greater gender equality-and, actually, liking it very much. What, though, are they actually so angry about? Angry White Men exhibit what French social theorist Georges Sorel called "ressentiment"-a personal sense of self that is defined always in relationship to some perceived injury and whose collective politics mixes hatred and envy of those who we believe have injured us. That "creative hatred," Sorel argues, is anathema to serious collective action because it is so easily manipulated; it is more likely to spawn sporadic spasmodic violent eruptions than a serious social movement. 38 ANGRY WHITE MEN This sense of sel£ grounded in victirnhood, both hating and envying others, can be a brilliant strategy, generating an audience of onsumers. And it's not only these angry white men. Indeed, Oprah Winfrey's early television success involved constructing her audience as victims. In the e.arly 1990s, I entered a discussion to appear on her how following the publication of my book Men Confront Pornography. When I spoke to the producer, she suggested that I appear alongside several women whose "husbands or boyfriends had forced them to do degrading sexual things after they'd seen them in pornography." I said no, that my book was a serious effort to invite men to take on the political debate that was, at the time, roiling feminism . I proposed being on with a few men who took the issues seriously. We went back and forth, up the ladder of increasingly senior producers. Finally, the very seniormost producer of the show, the one who talks directly with Oprah, admitted she didn't understand how my idea would work or what was wrong with her idea. "I just don't see it," she said. "I don't see who the victim is. You can't have an Oprah show without a victim." What a revealing statement! As the producer saw it, the world was divided into two groups, viewers and victims. Viewers would tune in each day, perhaps feeling that their lives were miserable. And then they'd watch the show and exhale, and say, "Well, at least my husband doesn't force me to do degrading sexual things after he sees them in pornography! Maybe my life isn't so bad after all. wAnd the next day, as the effects wear off, and viewers feel crappy again, they tune in to see someone who has it far worse, and they feeL temporarily, better. It's like Queen for a Day, a show I watched assiduously as a young child, in which three different women would tell of the terrible fates that had befallen them (husband injured on the job and unable to work debilitating illnesses, and so on), and the studio audience would vote (by the loudness of their applause, registering on an "Applause-a-Meter") which one of the women would be crowned queen and receive gifts like a new refrigerator and other household appliances. (I ended up going on The Phil Donahue Show instead.) Oprah's shows in her last years on the air were more inspirational-not necessarily a parade of victims, but more about people who had triumphed over adversity, who had fallen down seven times and gotten up eight. But the theme of viewers and victims resonates more now on talk radio. It's but a short hop from dichotomous viewers and MANUFACTURING RAGE 39 victims to a more unified community of viewers as victims. The genius of Rush Limbaugh and the others is that they have appropriated a more commonly "feminine" trope of perpetual victimhood imd successfully masculinized it. In fact, they claim, it's your very manhood that is con• stantly under threat! As befits an industry leader, Rush Limbaugh's politics of ressentiment has been amply parsed for its racism and sexism-he's popped into national consciousness usually when he strays over a line already drawn far to the other side of decency and respect. He defends white people against what Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, early-twentieth-century racialists, called "the rising tide of color." Limbaugh's racism is as transparent as his nativism and sexism. Here's what he said after Obama was elected the first time: "It's Obama's America, is it not? Obama's America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yeah, right on, right on, right on; and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it: he was born a racist; he's white." 11 And how does one get ahead in Obama's America? "By hating white people. Or even saying you do .... Make white people the new oppressed minority.... They're moving to the back of the bus.... That's the modern day Republican Party, the equivalent of the Old South: the new oppressed minority."l2 Poor white people, the victims of government-sponsored racial discrimination. And poor men, victims of reverse sexism as well. For example, when Sandra Fluke, a graduate student at Georgetown, testified in support of requiring all institutions receiving federal funds to actually obey the law and provide contraception, Limbaugh launched into a vicious ad feminam attack against Fluke personally, calling her a slut and a whore for having so much sex, and demanded, as a taxpayer, that she provide high-quality videos of her sexual escapades. "If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch." It's easy to understand the sense of entitlement that this sixthgeneration upper-class heir to a Missouri family of lawyers and politicians might feel. And it's not so very hard to understand how so 40 ANGRY WHITE MEN many of his white male listeners might identify with him, even if they're more recent arrivals, and they've always held jobs for which you shower after work, not before it. What binds this bilious martinet to his listeners, though, is that they are men, at least the overwhelming majority of them, and their sense of entitleme~t comes from their deep-seated feeling that they are the heirs to the American Dream that, as Woody Guthrie should have sung, this land was really made for them. Note that he assumes that his listeners are male-that "we" are entitled to see videos of Sandra Fluke or that it's a little white boy who is being harassed. "We" is white and male. Indeed, a cover story in Newsweek on talk radio called it "group therapy for mostly white males who feel politically challenged." 13 Rarely, though, have commentators gone much further than noticing how these shows resonate with white men. It's as if noting the demographics explains the sociology. So they rarely discuss gender, discuss how masculinity is implicated. Nor do they see Limbaugh's rage as a particularly masculine rage, the "gender" of the pain he claims to channel into outrage. On the one hand, he's a real man, a man's man-"a cigar-smoking, NFL-watching, red-meat right winger who's offended by the 'feminization' of American society." 14 His sense of aggrieved entitlement is to restore not the reality but the possibility of dominance. It is simultaneously aspirational and nostalgic-he looks back to a time when it was all there, unchallenged, and forward to its restoration. Limbaugh's own public struggles with his weight, his failed childless marriages, his avoidance of military service, his addiction to OxyContin (surely the wimpiest addiction possible; real men smoke crack or shoot heroin), and his well-known need for Viagra all testify to a masculinity in need of propping up, in need of reconfirmation. In Limbaugh's case, right-wing racist and sexist politics is the conduit for the restoration of his manhood-and for the manhood of other fellow sufferers of aggrieved entitlement. Limbaugh offers a prescription for political Viagra, designed to get that blood flowing, reenergize a flagging sense of white American manhood. But if the elite-born Limbaugh plays in the populist sandbox, Mike Sayage is both the real deal and even more a poseur. At least he's a working-class guy-born Michael Alan Weiner, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who settled in the Bronx during World War II. But then, why would such a nice Jewish boy, whose own mother and MANUFACTURING RAGE 41 / father were the beneficiaries of the American Dream of immigration, now want to slam the door on the faces of everyone else? Limbaugh is positively tame compared to Savage, 'who seems to believe that the higher the decibels of his denunciations, the more persuasive they will be. And like Limbaugh, he's interested in reversing the very multicultural trends that he represents. Like Limbaugh, he's immensely popular, and like Limbaugh, he engages in a conspiratorial Us-Them framing, in which "we" are the enlightened few and "they" are the dupes of the government-inspired hijacking of freedom. He calls illegal immigrants and their allies "brown supremacists" and accuses activists for sexual equality of "raping" children through media campaigns for tolerance. But ultimately, it all has to do with masculinity. Savage alternates between Limbaugh's conspiratorial outrage-can you believe what they are doing to us?-and chastising his audience for allowing this all to happen under their very noses. The campaign for so-called civil rights is a "con," and affirmative action stole his "birthright." What you have now, he claims, is "the wholesale replacement of competent white men." And what has been our reaction? We've become a "sissified nation," a "sheocracy." Part of "the de-balling of America," "true red-blooded American types have been thrown out of the-out of the government." 15 Part of this is women's fault, of course-feminist women who have become more masculine. Here's what he said on his show: "Particularly today, the women are not, you know, what they were thirty years ago. The women have become more like guys, thanks to the hags in the women's movement, and the white race is dying. That's why they won't reproduce, because the women want to be men. They want to behave like men, they want to act like men, they've been encouraged to think like men, act like men, be like men. Consequently, they don't want to be women, and they don't want to be mothers. " 16 Were you to ask Limbaugh and Savage, and the others who aspire to their seats of influence, they'd likely tell you that they aren't really antiwomen but antifeminist, and specifically promale, more about legitimizing the anger of white men. Feminism comes under attack-after all, it was Limbaugh who popularized the term feminaziphantasmagorically linking campaigns for wage equality, or safety 42 ANGRY WHITE MEN from battery and rape, to the organized, methodical genocide in the Third Reich. Now, why has this resonated? Because the defensiveness of white men is so narcissistic that any criticism of masculinity and male entitlement is seen as the effort to leverage the apparatus of the state in the service of the destruction of an entire biological sex. But these guys aren't really interested in women. They're interested in promoting the interests of white men. In a particularly revealing rant, Savage links racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant nativism in his pitch to fellow angry white men: Many of you have been hoodwinked into believing that we are a multicultural nation, which we are not. We're a nation of many races and many cultures, that is true, it has been true from the beginning_ but in the past people would come over and become Americans. Now they come over, and they want you to become them . . . . We're going to have a revolution in this country if this keeps up. These people are pushing the wrong people around . ... If they keep pushing us around and if we keep having these schmucks running for office, catering to the multicultural people who are destroying the culture in this country, guaranteed the people, the white male in particular ... the one without connections, the one without money, has nothing to lose, and you haven't seen him yet. You haven't seen him explode in this country. And he's still the majority, by the way, in case you don't know it. He is still the majority, and no one speaks for him, everyone craps on him . .. and he has no voice whatsoever. .. . And you're going to find out that if you keep pushing this country around, you'll find out that there's an ugly side to the white male. 17 Outrage media is not, however, a one-way street. The audience is an active participant; together with the host, they produce the rage of the day and direct it toward the issues on which the free-floating rage will land. Each day offers no shortage of the horrors of what "they" are doing to "us" -"they" being government bureaucrats in thrall to the feminist cabal, implementing the gay agenda, illegals, and minorities guided by sinister Marxian forces. (They often come perilously close to denouncing their Zionist puppeteers of the International MANUFACTURING RAGE 43 Jeish Conspiracy. Indeed, were it not for the convenience of stoking~nti-Muslim sentiment since 9/11, we'd hear quite~ bit more antiSemitism from some of these hosts. Generally, the right wing loves Israel, but hates Jews.) • Angry White Male Radio is the New England town meeting of the twenty-first century. The participatory experience, with its steady stream of callers, ups the emotional ante. Sure, there's plenty of defensive anger to go around. But the tone expresses a sense of aggrieved entitlement. Rush's followers call themselves "dittoheads," echoing every sentiment. "What Rush does on his shows is take frustration and rage and rearticulate and confirm them as ideology," writes Sherri Paris, after listening nonstop for several weeks. "Umbaugh's skill lies in weaving political alienation and anger into the illusion of common political ground." He's creating a community out of people's individual frustrations, giving them a sense of "we-ness. "18 "I love it," says Jay, a twenty-six-year-old Nebraskan with obvious self-consciousness. Jay was one of several dittoheads I talked with around the country. Actually, he drove the taxi from the university where I'd been lecturing to the airport. Rush was on in the cab. "I mean, all day long, all I get is multicultural this and diversity that. I love it because I can let off steam at how stupid the whole thing is. I can't stop it-there's no way. But I get all these other guys who remind me that it's not right, it's not fair, and the system's out of control. And I'm the one getting screwed!" Jay was among the more articulate when it came to discussing substantive issues like affirmative action or race and gender preferences in admissions. Most of the guys I spoke with whose analysis came from Limbaugh and Fox News merely mouthed platitudes they took directly from the shows, without so much as actually thinking if they applied to their situations. I cannot count the number of times I heard lines like "It's not the government's money, it's the people's money" in response to tax policy. You'd think that after nearly a half century of sustained critique of racial and gender bias in the media, of the most convincing empirical social and behavioral science research imaginable, of civil rights, women's, and gay and lesbian movements, white guys would have finally understood how bias works and would have accommodated themselves to a new, more egalitarian, more democratic, and 44 ANGRY WHITE MEN more representative media. Or at least you'd think they'd be less vocal in their resistance. But as far as they're concerned, the world hasn't merely changed-it's been upended, turned upside down into its perverse mirror image. "It's completely cr~" says Matt. "The inmates are running the asylum. They're completely in power, and they get anything they want. And us regular, normal white guys-we're like nothing. We don't count for shit anymore." Outrage media offers a case of what Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse called "repressive desublimation." Although not exactly the catchiest of phrase makers, Marcuse was on to something that, as a refugee from Hitler's Germany, he found so scary: how the ability to sound off angrily, to express all your pent-up rage (the "desublimation" part), could actually serve the interests of those in power. Being able to rebel in these impotent ways actually enables the system to continue (hence, the "repressive" part). You think you're rebelling by listening to jazz, or punk rock, or even angry rap music, having a lot of sex, drinking and screaming your heads off about how the system is oppressing you. You find common cause with others who are doing the same thing: instant community. And, after desublimating, you go back to work, a docile, sated drone, willing to conform to what the "system" asks of you because the system also lets you blow off steam. Bread and circuses. Participatory entertainment. (Instead of worrying, for example, that an excessive diet of violent video games would make a young guy more likely to commit an act of violence, the Frankfurt School would have been more worried that he'd be more docile, that he'd never rebel socially, collectively, because he got all that rebellion out of his system on a machine created by one of the world's largest corporations.) Yet, ironically, the very medium that provides the false sense of community of Limbaugh's ditto heads can also be, simultaneously, isolating. "People tend to be less angry when they have to interact with each other," writes journalist and media commentator Joe Klein; they become afflicted with "Information Age disorder" -the "product of our tendency to stew alone, staring into computer screens at work, blobbing in front of the television at home." Perhaps we're not bowling alone, but fuming alone. Together. 19 So American white men, still among the most privileged group of people on the face of the earth-if you discount hereditary aristocracies MANUFACTURING RAGE 45 and sheikdoms-feel that they are the put-upon victims of a society that grows more equal every day. It's hard if you've bee~ used to 100 percent of all the positions of power and privilege in the world to wake up one morning and find people like you in only 80 percent of those • positions. Equality sucks if you've grown so accustomed to inequality that it feels normal. Listen to the words of one leader, defending the rights of those disempowered white men: "Heaven help the God-fearing, law-abiding Caucasian middle class, Protestant or even worse evangelical Christian, Midwest or Southern or even worse rural, apparently straight or even worse admittedly [heterosexual), gun-owning or even worse NRA card-carrying average working stiff, or even worst of all, male working stiff. Because not only don't you count, you're a downright obstacle to social progress. "20 That leader was, incidentally, Charlton Heston, acting less like Moses and more like an angry Pharaoh, feeling powerless as he watches his slaves disappear. These are not the voices of power but the voices of entitlement to power. The positions of authority, of power, have been stolen from them-handed over to undeserving "others" by a government bureaucracy that has utterly abandoned them. If listening to Guy Radio and watching Guy 1V is about blowing off steam, this is what that steam smells like. Far from fomenting a reactionary revolution, Limbaugh and his ilk are the Peter Finches of the twenty-first century, screaming about how they are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore-which is the very thing that enables them to take far more of it. A GLANCE BACK: A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN ANGRY WHITE MEN Of course, this isn't the first time that Americans have been treated to a chorus of complainers that rail against the "masculinization" of women and the "feminization" of men. 21 A centu ago, m.mdits across America bemoaned what they saw as a crisis oT masculinity. Tiley bemoanea e loss of the hardy manly virtues that had settled the country, harnessed its natural resources toward amazing industrial breakthroughs, "tamed" a restive native population, and fended off ex46 ANGRY WHITE MEN mal threats. Men were becoming soft, effeminate. Ironically, it was the somewhat effete novelist Henry James who captured this sentiment most eloquently in the character of Basil Ransome, the dashing southern gentleman in The Bostonians {1885): t The whole generatidn is womanized; the masculine tone is passing out of the world; it's a feminine, neroous, hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false delicacy and exaggerated solicitudes and coddled sensibilities, which, if we don't soon look out, will usher in the reign of mediocrity, of the feeblest and flattest and most pretentious that has ever been. The masculine character, the ability to dare and endure, to know and yet not fear reality, to look the world in the face and take it for what it is . .. that is what I want to preseroe, or, rather, recover; and I must tell you that I don't in the least care what becomes of you ladies while I make the attemptf22 Where these critics disagreed was over the source of this emasculation-and, therefore, of course, what solutions might be helpful to restore American men's manly virtues. Most agreed that modern urban civilization had a feminizing effect: instead of working in the fields, or in factories, or as artisanal craft workers, American men now sat in stuffy offices, in white-collared shirts, pushing paper around desks. Instead of being apprenticed to older, seasoned male workers, young boys were now taught by female teachers, by female Sunday-school teachers, and, most of all, by their mothers, as fathers were away all day at work. (The separation of work and home may have meant that women were "imprisoned" in the home, as Betty Friedan would later argue, but it also meant that men were exiled from it, away all day, and returning to an increasingly feminized Victorian living space.) Even religion had become "feminized," as Protestant ministers spoke of a beatific and compassionate Christ, who loved his enemies and turned the other cheek. Not only were women demanding entry into the public spheregoing to work, joining unions, demanding the right to vote and go to college-but native-born white men were facing increasing competition from freed slaves migrating to northern industrial cities and waves of immigrants from Asia and southern and eastern Europe, moving into tenement slums and creating a vast pool of cheap labor. MANUFACTURING RAGE 47 Everywhere men looked, the playing field had grown increasingly competitive and uncertain. Just as Horatio Alger was celebrating the "luck and pluck" that would enable young men of modest means to make their way to the top, native-born American white men were be• coming far less concerned with how to make it to the top and far more anxious about sinking to the bottom. Restoring or retrieving a lost heroic manhood was less about the thrill of victory, as television announcers might have said, had there been ABC's Wide World of Sports in 1900, and far more about forestalling or preventing the agony of defeat. Actually, there was the equivalent of Jim McKay, host of that iconic 1V show. Or, rather, a lot of equivalents. It was at the tum of the last century that all the modem sports we know and love today-hockey, footbalL baseball, basketball-were organized into leagues and prescribed, especially, for schoolboys to promote a healthy, hardy manliness. Following on the heels of the British elite private schools and the success of Tom Brown's School Days, American reformers were quick to point out the restorative qualities of athletic prowess and the tonic virtues of the outdoors. Baseball, for example, was trumpeted by Theodore Roosevelt, himself the epitome of manly triumph over aristocratic weakness, as a "true sport for a manly race." "All boys love baseball," wrote the western novelist Zane Grey in 1909 . "If they don't, they're not real boys. "23 Getting in shape was a manly preoccupation at the tum of the last century, as urban men fretted about the loss of manly vigor. In studying the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I discerned three patterns of response to this mounting crisis, three avenues in which American men were counseled to restore the manhood that seemed so threatened. First, they sought self-control. Believing that American men had grown soft and indolent, they sought to demonstrate greater amounts of self-control. Believing that the body was an instrument of their will, American men at the tum of the twentieth century bulked up, pumped up, and worked out as never before. As famed psychologist G. Stan24 ley Hall put it, "You can't have a firm will without firm muscles." Gyms sprouted up all over the country, especially in large cities where middle-class white-collar office workers followed athletic regimens offered by scions of "physical culture" (like Bemarr Macfadden) and admired the physique of bodybuilders like Eugen Sandow. By the 48 ANGRY WHIT E MEN 1920s, they'd begun to follow a young, scrawny, Italian American immigrant who'd been unsuccessful at picking up a girl at the beach at Coney Island, Brooklyn. Ashamed of his physique-he called himself a "97 Pound runt . .. skinny, pale, nervous and weak" - young Angelo Siciliano developed a muscle-building regime that became the most successful body-transforming regimen in US history. Along the way, Siciliano changed more than his physique, becoming the "world's most perfect man." He also changed his name, to Charles Atlas. The biceps weren't the only muscles over which American men felt they needed to exert greater control. They were equally concerned that they'd grown soft and weak because of their sexual profligacy. Masturbation not only threatened a man's healthy development, but was also a moral threat to the nation. Reformers utilized what one historian labeled the language of a "s e · econom.y" to discourage it. Sperm were a resource, not to be s uandered or "spent," but rather "saved" and "invested" in the future. Other health reformers like Sylvester Graham, C. W. Post, and J. H. Kellogg experimented with different whole grains and flours in their crackers and cereals to help keep men regular and thus prevent the blockages that pollute the body, and thus the mind, and lead to solitary vices. It's one thing to prescribe graham crackers or Post Toasties, or even Com Flakes, and quite another to prescribe suturing the foreskin closed without anesthesia as a way for parents to ensure that their sons didn't masturbate. But that is what Kellogg did in his efforts to treat all sorts of male malaise in his sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan (Kellogg's own hysteria was held up to hilarious ridicule by novelist T. Coraghessan Boyle in The Road to Well ville) . These efforts represented only one of the three major patterns of solutions to the "crisis" of masculinity that were offered to American men at the turn of the last century. A second strategy was "esca Boys needed to escape the feminizin utches of women; they had to run away, ship out on the Pequod, join Henry Fleming in the army, or otherwise be "lighting out for the territory," in the immortal last words of Huckleberry Finn, "because Aunt Sally she's gonna adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it."