‘Potency is important for a real man’: Affective Readings of Shame and Performance Anxiety in Spam Selling Viagra and other Sexuopharmaceuticals

Viagra is a popular topic in spam, but contrary to Pfizer's official marketing of Viagra, little attention has been directed at how the content of spam plays into gendered discourse on masculinity and men's sexual performances. This is not surprising, if we consider how spam is mostly treated as a nuisance to digital infrastructures. Yet, studies have demonstrated how spammers build on, reflect and transmit gender ideologies (e.g. Mullany 2004 ; Paasonen 2009 ; Yu 2014 ). In the present paper, we contribute insights to the existing studies on Viagra and spam, as we examine how spammers promote Viagra and other sexuopharmaceuticals. Taking our point of departure in an online spam archive ( Guenter 2010 ), we combine qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse the textual content of spam emails. Using TagSpheres models, we have produced an overview of the most frequent and relevant terms in spam which we further subject to a qualitative analysis. Drawing on Sara Ahmed (2004) , we engage in an affective reading of selected spam emails, generated by randomised samples. In the analysis, we argue that spammers attempt to move possible consumers away from official and legal sale methods by emphasising shame and anxiety related to procuring Viagra and other sexuopharmaceuticals. While shame moves the consumer away from legal sale methods, anxiety is invoked to encourage the possible consumer to envision a hypermasculine future, in which virility is everlasting. We further discuss our findings in relation to masculinity, arguing that spammers capitalise on existing communication- and pharmaceutical technologies, whilst taking gendered discourse in advertising to their ‘functional extremes’ ( Brunton 2019 : xiv).

Roses in Amber: Gendered Discourse in Disney’s 2017 Adaptation of Villeneuve’s Fairytale Beauty and the Beast

This study considers the dialogic relationship between the 2017 Disney live-action film Beauty and the Beast with Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve’s fairy tale and Disney’s 1991 animated version. Drawing on cultural and feminist discourse, the study seeks to examine Disney’s live-action film for incidents of cultural appropriation of gender representation compared to Villeneuve’s fairy tale and Disney’s 1991 animated version. The Study argues that the 2017 film adaptation reverses the traditional patriarchal notions and embraces a transgressive feminist discourse/approach as part of Disney’s strategy of diversity and inclusion of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation as constantly evolving cultural categories. This study finds significant alterations made to the physical and psychological attributes of the 2017 film’s three characters: Beauty/Belle, the Beast, and the Enchantress, changes that align with the film’s gendered discourse. By reversing the characteristic privileging of the male and the empowerment of the female, the live-action succeeds in addressing the contemporary audience demands of diversity and inclusion. The study concludes that the changes made in the 2017 film adaptation displace the oppressive patriarchal notions and stereotypical modes of representing the male and female as they have been perceived in the original fairy tale, for they are no longer compatible with contemporary cultures’ assumptions on gender.

Exposing Flaws of Affirmative Consent through Contemporary American Teen Films

The discursive shift during the twenty-first century from “no means no” to “yes means yes” clearly had an impact on contemporary American teen films. While teen films of the 1970s and 1980s often epitomized rape culture, teen films of the 2010s and later adopted consent culture actively. Such films now routinely highlight how obtaining a girl’s “yes” is equally important to respecting her “no.” However, the framework of affirmative consent is not without its flaws. In this article, I highlight how recent teen movies expose some of these shortcomings, in particular how affirmative consent remains a highly gendered discourse that prioritizes verbal consent over desire.

Roses in Amber: Gendered Discourse in Disney’s 2017 Adaptation of Villeneuve’s Fairytale Beauty and the Beast

This study considers the dialogic relationship between the 2017 Disney live-action film Beauty and the Beast with Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve’s fairy tale and Disney’s 1991 animated version. Drawing on cultural and feminist discourse, the study seeks to examine Disney’s live-action film for incidents of cultural appropriation of gender representation compared to Villeneuve’s fairy tale and Disney’s 1991 animated version. The Study argues that the 2017 film adaptation reverses the traditional patriarchal notions and embraces a transgressive feminist discourse/approach as part of Disney’s strategy of diversity and inclusion of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation as constantly evolving cultural categories. This study finds significant alterations made to the physical and psychological attributes of the 2017 film’s three characters: Beauty/Belle, the Beast, and the Enchantress, changes that align with the film’s gendered discourse. By reversing the characteristic privileging of the male and the empowerment of the female, the live-action succeeds in addressing the contemporary audience demands of diversity and inclusion. The study concludes that the changes made in the 2017 film adaptation displace the oppressive patriarchal notions and stereotypical modes of representing the male and female as they have been perceived in the original fairy tale, for they are no longer compatible with contemporary cultures’ assumptions on gender.

The Temptation of Opera

This chapter explores opera—established as the antithesis of musical priesthood—as a site of debate over musical sensuality including the gendered discourse on opera and the critique of purity in those composers who, in Wagner’s words, “failed” to write opera with their “chaste and innocent hands.” A generation of revolutionary music critics, including Rudolf Benfey and Ludwig Eckardt, applied these Wagnerian values to Brahms with negative results, depicting purity as his weakest characteristic. Brahms’s own potential libretti and styles of opera in the 1860s and 1870s seem to explore alternatives to the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, from genres such as the oratorio to Singspiel, and topics including Carlo Gozzi’s eighteenth-century fairy-tale plays. Two of Brahms’s works from this period, the Op. 57 Daumer lieder and Op. 50 Rinaldo, contain dramatic and erotic elements that inspired some contemporaries to hope Brahms would take the next step toward an opera.

Sovereignty at Bridewell Palace: Gender in the Architectural Designs of Hans Holbein the Younger

This essay examines the representation of gender and sovereignty in a little examined design for a royal fireplace created by Hans Holbein the Younger during the reign of Henry viii. When Henry sought to divorce Catherine and to establish the Church of England, the Bridewell precinct became a site for political upheaval. As Holinshed’s Chronicle details and William Shakespeare and John Fletcher’s 1613 All Is True or Henry viii would later dramatize, Bridewell and the neighboring Blackfriars staged the divorce trial and removal of Catherine’s sovereignty as Queen. By examining Holbein’s design that Bridewell palace became a palimpsest upon which the crown continually cultivated its dynastic desires –desires that Holbein’s design prove to be imbricated with questions of gender and sovereignty. Gender, sex, and reproduction are central to Holbein’s representation of the Tudor dynasty. Yet, alongside this gendered discourse is a legal one. Holbein depicts the law and justice as mechanisms which can redefine a sovereign woman’s subjectivity and curb her agency in submission to her King and husband. Thus, from Holbein’s fireplace emerges an ideology of familial dynasty and imperial aspirations built atop the legal subjection of women.

Relational practice in the workplace: women's talk or gendered discourse?

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