man of action hero
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Man-of-Action Heroes: The Pursuit
of Heroic Masculinity in Everyday
Consumption
Cultura do Consumo
– Luiz Valério P. Trindade | 1st June, 2012 –
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START
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Authors
Craig J. Thompson Douglas B. Holt
University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) University of Oxford (UK)
BA – University of Stanford (USA)
MBA – University of Chicago (USA)
PhD – Kellog School – Northwestern (USA)
BS – University of Stanford (USA)
MA – University of Texas at Austin (USA)
PhD – University of Texas at Austin (USA)
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Purpose of the Study
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Major socioeconomic changes;
Routinized and less secure jobs;
Women independence and
entering into the marketplace ...
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Search for symbols to reaffirm their
status as real man through
compensatory consumption.
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American ideal of
the self-made man
More dependent
conditions of
wage earning
GAP
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The situation just
described
produces and
identity crisis!
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Symbol of Liberation
Antithesis of all the sources of confinment (including cars, offices,
schedules, authority, and relationship).
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As the authors have interviewed men in their homes and studied
the representations of masculinity advanced in mass culture, they
came to believe that the compensatory consumption thesis fail to
capture some of the most powerful masculine identifications that
men forge through their consumption.
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This has led them to the identification that, in fact, the so
called American ideology of heroic masculinity is threefold:
1 – Breadwinner;
2 – Rebel;
3 – Man-of-Action Hero.
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The Breadwinner Model
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The Breadwinner Model
Breadwinner masculinity is grounded in the
American myth of sucess. That it, the idea
that America is a land of boundless
opportunity, free from the social barriers to
individual mobility found on other countries,
whereby individuals from all backgrounds
(particularly immigrants) can grab the golden
ring if they work har and demonstrate
initiative.
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The Breadwinner Model
In the breadwinneer model, men work hard
and are dependable collaborators in a
corporate environment. They are willing to
devote themselves to their careers, playing
by the rules to climb within organizations
and communities toward material sucess and
higher status.
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The Rebel Model
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The Rebel Model
The first wave of American mass culture was
born around the Western adventurer.
These hunters and fur trappers were
represented as uncivilized, anarchic, and
fiercely independent men who survived
through courage, physical skills, and
cunning.
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The Rebel Model
In American mass culture, rebels are lionezed as the
paragons of idependence, potency, and adverture.
More warrior than father, more seducer than
husband, more class clown than serious worker, the
rebel poses a direct threat to the litany of norms and
obligations central to breadwinning.
Because rebels are both magnetic and threatening,
they are often scripted as tragic figures whose fierce
independence becomes their undoing.
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The Man-of-Action Hero
Model
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The Man-of-Action Hero Model
The most celebrated men of American culture are neither
bredwinners nor rebels.
Instead, they draw from the best of both models, resolving the
tensions between breadwinning and rebellion in a utopian
resolution.
These heroic men-of-action embody the rugged individualism
of the rebel while maintaining their allegiance to collective
interests, as required of breadwinners.
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The Man-of-Action Hero Model
The mass media is packed with stories of supremely
confident men who pay no mind to industry
conventions, invent a new way of doing things,
struggle tenaciously against seemingly
insurmountable forces, and improbably conquer the
establishment to found new industries.
The business press celebrates man-of-action
managers who practices creative destruction in order
to create powerful new companies from scratch.
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Bill Hewlett & David Packard
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The Hero’s Adventure
Why there are so many stories of the
hero in mythology?
Because that’s what’s worht writing
about. Even in popular novels, the
main character is a hero or heroine
who has found or done something
beyond the normal range of
achievement and experience.
A hero is someone
who has given hir or
her life to something
bigger tna oneself.
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Case 1 – Robert
General Profile
He’s a 47 years old dentist who has worked
hard for the past 17 years in order to build a
succesful practice in a Pensssylvania college
town.
Robert lives in a upscale neighborhood on the
outskirts of town with his wife of 21 years and
tow sons, aged 9 and 13.
He’s a keenly competitive man and
characterizes himslef as a political
conservative.
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Case 1 – Robert
He devotes na extraordinary amount of time and financial investment to
two avocations: auto racing and hockey card collecting;
He wanted to be the hero in a contest that the wordl considers as a
legitimate man-of-action pursuit;
Besides this man-of-action behavior he also demonstrates breadwinner
traits by the time he explains his desire to have a larger home;
His interest in hocke emerged due to his younger son starting to
practice it on a club team. He then started to watch NHL games, his son
begun a card collection and soon afterwards Robert took over his
collection.
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Case 2 – Donny
General Profile
He’s a high-school educated, middle-aged,
working-class man who earns his living
through a series of transient semi-skilled
service economy jobs;
He has worked as a cook in a institutional
kitchen, as a convenince store clerk, as an
ambulance driver, and as a nurse’s aid in a
psychiatric ward;
He’s overweight and stutters, and so he finds
most social situations to be uncomfortable.
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Case 2 – Donny
Donny does not fit into the model of a, so
called, traditional working class individual;
He is not fond of regular symbols of
masculinity such as football, hunting, bars,
bowling and so on;
He is kind of na enigma because on one hand
he rejects the Breadwinner Model but he also
posses a unique way of demonstrating his
version of heroic masculinity.
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To Sum Up
Robert
He’s an upwardly mobile
middle-class man who
frames breadwinner
masculinity in the terms
used by managers and
professionals; acquiring
occupational expertise,
acquiring possessions that
signify economic power, and
demonstranting competitive
achievements in prized
leisure contests.
Donny
His celebration of entrepreneurial
independence is also expressed in
his dream of striking it rich
someday as a fashion designer or
a software inventor. By cashing in
on his crreative talents, he
envisions attaining success and
respect on his own maverick term.
In both work and consumption,
Donny constructs hilself as a
caring hero who draws upon
feminine values to rebel against
working-class masculinity.
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THANK YOU!