scholarly journals The Modern Athlete, Hip-Hop, and Popular Perceptions of Black Masculinity

AmeriQuests ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thabiti L. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
Sport Culture ◽  
American Society

The essay explores how black masculinity is situated in modern popular culture) as violent and hyper-masculine, American nightmares. It also examines the racial and power dynamics at play that allow such reifications of the notion that black men as “dangerous” in arenas of mass/popular cultural consumption in American society—namely sport culture and hip hop.

“Hannah Elias Talks Freely”

2019 ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Cheryl D. Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
White Men ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Policy Effects ◽  
White Couples ◽  
Racial Hatred ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Science News

The image of the buck or Mandingo, which has historically found expression in advertising, popular culture, science, news, law, and policy, effects a powerful purchase on our national psyche. The Mandingo’s figurative though sustained life illuminates the ways in which myths about black men’s bodies incite particular kinds of fantasies and instantiate specific relationships of power. Perhaps the most insistent archetype of black masculinity, the Mandingo has been mobilized by a number of actors, including black men who have sought to defy, appropriate, or reinvent the image. Framing black men as possessing a primitive, unquenchable, and even dangerous sexuality –a sexuality that thwarts prohibitions and demands containment– the Mandingo is an ideological construction invented by white heteropatriarchy to effectively police the racial-sexual border. Embedded in the Mandingo construct are potent opposing energies: racial hatred and racialized desire. How then does the mobilization of the Mandingo in contemporary cuckold pornography speak to the desire for and fear of black men as objects for pornographic consumption by white men and women? This chapter investigates the sexual economy of sub-cultural, amateur pornography in which black men are figured as BBC (big black cock) studs central to the fetishistic fantasies of white couples. Highlighting the multiple and mobile desires, relations, and labors evident in “cuckolding socialities”, this chapter looks at pornography as a market for black men’s sex work, and as a space of discipline and containment as well as of queer possibility.

From Jim Crow to Jay-Z

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles White
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Action Films ◽  
Jay Z

This multilayered study of the representation of black masculinity in musical and cultural performance takes aim at the reduction of African American male culture to stereotypes of deviance, misogyny, and excess. Broadening the significance of hip-hop culture by linking it to other expressive forms within popular culture, the book examines how these representations have both encouraged the demonization of young black males in the United States and abroad and contributed to the construction of their identities. The book traces black male representations to chattel slavery and American minstrelsy as early examples of fetishization and commodification of black male subjectivity. Continuing with diverse discussions including black action films, heavyweight prizefighting, Elvis Presley's performance of blackness, and white rappers such as Vanilla Ice and Eminem, the book establishes a sophisticated framework for interpreting and critiquing black masculinity in hip-hop music and culture. Arguing that black music has undeniably shaped American popular culture and that hip-hop tropes have exerted a defining influence on young male aspirations and behavior, the book draws a critical link between the body, musical sound, and the construction of identity.

“I See Death Around the Corner”: Black Manhood and Vulnerability in Me Against the World

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (7) ◽  
pp. 632-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keven James Rudrow
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Suicide Ideation ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Black Manhood ◽  
The World ◽  
Relational Network

This essay uses Tupac Shakur’s Me Against the World as a case study examining how Black male artists use hip-hop music for articulating the racialized vulnerability organizing their manhood. By thinking about how Shakur understands his Black maleness through his social relationality to the world around him, Shakur’s album creates resistive space for defining Black maleness despite how Black masculinity is often defined and imposed on Black men. Shakur’s album maps a relational network for understanding a brand of Black manhood obscured by dominant discourses about Black men and their masculinity. Specifically, Shakur’s album frames Black maleness through poverty and how it orients Black men, his perpetual susceptibility to harm and death, and suicide ideation as a response to his despair. Connecting Black maleness and vulnerability, Shakur’s album offers insight about being Black and male in a patriarchal White supremacist society.

Individuals In Postmodern Society And Evolution Of New York In Select Novels Of Don Delillo.

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 875-879
Author(s):  
M. Thendral ◽  
Dr. G. Parvathy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
York City ◽  
Don Delillo ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
American Society ◽  
Effects Of Media

DeLillo is a well- known American novelist of fifteen novels, who is widely regarded by other critics as an important satirist of modern culture. Throughout his novels, he has picturized the chaos underwent by the society i.e. the effects of media, technology and popular culture on the daily lives of contemporary American society. All of his novels move in and around New York City as a setting. The study attempts to examine the development of New York City and individuals in a post-modernistic perspective.

scholarly journals Representation and Agency of Aging Superheroes in Popular Culture and Contemporary Society

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Kateřina Valentová
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many

The figure of the superhero has always been regarded as an iconic representative of American society. Since the birth of the first superhero, it has been shaped by the most important historical, political, and social events, which were echoed in different comic issues. In principle, in the superhero genre, there has never been a place for aging superheroes, for they stand as a symbol of power and protection for the nation. Indeed, their mythical portrayal of young and strong broad-chested men with superpowers cannot be shattered showing them fragile or disabled. The aim of this article is to delve into the complex paradigm of the passage of time in comics and to analyze one of the most famous superheroes of all times, Superman, in terms of his archetypical representation across time. From the perspective of cultural and literary gerontology, the different issues of Action Comics will be examined, as well as an alternative graphic novel Kingdom Come (2008) by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, where Superman appears as an aged man. Although it breaks the standards of the genre, in the end it does not succeed to challenge the many stereotypes embedded in society in regard to aging, associated with physical, cognitive, and emotional decline. Furthermore, this article will show how a symbolic use of the monomythical representation of a superhero may penetrate into other cultural expressions to instill a more positive and realistic portrayal of aging.

Black Men and Black Masculinity

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 437-457
Author(s):  
Alford A. Young
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Black Males ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Male Experience ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Research ◽  
Sociological Studies

In recent decades, sociological studies of black males and of black masculinity in America unfolded with great rapidity. In the 1960s, sociological studies of black males gained currency. Much of their focus has been on the problematic state of black males in education, employment, family life, peer and social relations, and within criminal justice systems. That tradition moved from employing a social problems lens for researching black men to documenting how their efforts in these and other spheres of life reflect creativity and efficacy as much as malaise and despair. Emerging several decades later in sociology, black masculinity studies began with an emphasis on how black males contended with hegemonic masculinity. This tradition moved to explore how sexual, socioeconomic, and other variations in the black male experience elucidated vulnerability as a common feature of that experience, as well as to more extensive visions of black masculinity. New research questions stand before both traditions that constitute the twenty-first-century agenda.

Bombing, Breakin', and Gettin' down: The Folk and Popular Culture of Hip-Hop

1984 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 287
Author(s):  
Sharon R. Sherman ◽  
Tony Silver ◽  
Henry Chalfant ◽  
Charles Ahearn
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Hip Hop

Reflections of Durbar in the Diaspora

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-140
Author(s):  
Teleica Kirkland
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Living Culture ◽  
The Caribbean

This article questions if the propensity of Black men in globally dominant western countries to wear black or dark colours is an outcome of internalized subjugation and an adherence to westernized projections of masculinity. It uses the 2018 Akinola Davies Junior film Zazzau as its backdrop, drawing parallels with other examples of colourful clothing in the context of Black masculinity. Zazzau shows the annual festival of Durbar, a vibrant celebration at the end of Ramadan in Kaduna State, Nigeria, where the Emir of the region and his entourage use traditional dress and contemporary fabrics to demonstrate their sartorial elegance. The bold and flamboyant dress of the men is not only indicative of the pageantry of this procession but is reminiscent of the creative exuberance and stylishness of annual carnivals in the Caribbean. This article uses this comparison as a tool to discuss a reengagement with the creativity, styling and colour of Black men’s clothing, and demonstrates how an engagement with colourful design aesthetics maintains its sense of masculinity. ‘Reflections of Durbar in the Diaspora’ draws parallels between the robes of the Emir, men’s costumes at carnival and the tailoring of Abrantie the Gentleman to examine how social engagement, living culture and traditional fashion intersect to influence and impact the ways in which men’s style is understood in Africa and the African Diaspora.

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