Full Description
Media, Masculinities, and the Machine identifies a distinctive phenomenon in today's media culture - the contemporary male fantasy of 'suiting up' and pushing technology to its limits. The authors deconstruct this fantasy using two in-depth studies from American, British and global media: the social imagining of hi-tech in the long-running Transformers franchise and global Formula One motorsport, with links to numerous other areas of contemporary culture. By drawing on non-representational theory and the latest theories of affect while employing the method of autoethnography to explore what boys and men 'want' and say, the book offers a timely contribution to our understanding of contemporary cultural attachments. The book provides informative accounts of two instances united by their apparent gender focus and by their interest in ways of imagining high-tech. Tracking their theme through TV, cinema, toys, magazines, merchandising, and the culture of the gadget, the authors raise important questions about mediated masculinities today and propose a new theoretical framework for uncovering what is going on.
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1: The Android Imaginaire (Jacques, Move Your Body)
Chapter 2: Intensities and Affective Labor
Chapter 3: The Scene of Autoaffection
Chapter 4: Containment 1: the Strategy-Intensity Field
Chapter 5: Containment 2: the Companionship of Things
Chapter 6: Containment 3: Boys' Toys
Chapter 7: Masculinities, Vitality and the Machine
Afterwords
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
