Pop Masculinities

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190938796.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kai Arne Hansen

Keyword(s):

Social Inequalities ◽

Full Range ◽

Pop Culture ◽

First Century ◽

Pop Music ◽

Media Ethnography ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Starting Point ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

The Aesthetic

Pop Masculinities investigates the performance and policing of masculinity in pop music as a starting point for grasping the broad complexity of gender and its politics in the early twenty-first century. Drawing together perspectives from critical musicology, gender studies, and adjacent scholarly fields, the book presents extended case studies of five well-known artists: Zayn, Lil Nas X, Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, and Take That. By directing particular attention to the ambiguities and contradictions that arise from these artists’ representations of masculinity, author Kai Arne Hansen argues that pop performances tend to operate in ways that simultaneously reinforce and challenge gender norms and social inequalities. Providing a rich exploration of these murky waters, the author merges the interpretation of recorded song and music video with discourse analysis and media ethnography in order to engage with the full range of pop artists’ public identities as they emerge at the intersections between processes of performance, promotion, and reception. In so doing, he advances our understanding of the aesthetic and discursive underpinnings of gender politics in twenty-first century pop culture and encourages readers to contemplate the sociopolitical implications of their own musical engagements as audiences, critics, musicians, and scholars.

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Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn

10.5406/illinois/9780252039577.001.0001 ◽

2015 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Keyword(s):

Cultural Production ◽

Pop Culture ◽

First Century ◽

Cultural Products ◽

Public And Private ◽

American Experience ◽

Early Twenty ◽

The Feminine ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Fifty Shades Of Grey

Media expansion into the digital realm and the continuing segregation of users into niches has led to a proliferation of cultural products targeted to and consumed by women. Though often dismissed as frivolous or excessively emotional, feminized culture in reality offers compelling insights into the American experience of the early twenty-first century. This book brings together writings from feminist critics that chart the current terrain of feminized pop cultural production. Analyzing everything from Fifty Shades of Grey to Pinterest to pregnancy apps, contributors examine the economic, technological, representational, and experiential dimensions of products and phenomena that speak to, and about, the feminine. As these chapters show, the imperative of productivity currently permeating feminized pop culture has created a generation of texts that speak as much to women's roles as public and private workers as to an impulse for fantasy or escape. The book sheds new light on contemporary women's engagement with an array of media forms in the context of postfeminist culture and neoliberalism.

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Continuing Visions

10.1093/oso/9780198813279.003.0011 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Linda Freedman

Keyword(s):

Social Activism ◽

William Blake ◽

First Century ◽

Ridley Scott ◽

American Novel ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Protest Group ◽

Late Twentieth ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Dead Man

The questions that drove Blake’s American reception, from its earliest moments in the nineteenth century through to the explosion of Blakeanism in the mid-twentieth century, did not disappear. Visions of America continued to be part of Blake’s late twentieth- and early twenty-first century American legacy. This chapter begins with the 1982 film Blade Runner, which was directed by the British Ridley Scott but had an American-authored screenplay and was based on a 1968 American novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It moves to Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film, Dead Man and Paul Chan’s twenty-first century social activism as part of a protest group called The Friends of William Blake, exploring common themes of democracy, freedom, limit, nationhood, and poetic shape.

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History Has Its Eyes on You

10.1093/oso/9780199832538.003.0014 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Laurence Maslon

Keyword(s):

Popular Culture ◽

Pop Culture ◽

Technological Advance ◽

First Century ◽

The Internet ◽

Generational Change ◽

Personal Preference ◽

Broadway Musical ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Consumer Habits

A generational change at the beginning of the twenty-first century intersected with the technological advance of the Internet to provide a renaissance of Broadway music in popular culture. Downloading playlists allowed the home listener to become, in essence, his/her own record producer; length, narrative, performer were now all in the hands of the consumer’s personal preference. Following in the footsteps of Rent (as a favorite of a younger demographic), Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton emerged as the greatest pop culture/Broadway musical phenomenon of the twenty-first century; its cast album and cover recording shot up near the top of music’s pop charts. A rediscovery of the power of Broadway’s music to transform listening and consumer habits seems imminent with the addition of Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen to a devoted fan base—and beyond.

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