Popular Culture: Gender

Ikenna Ezeanioma

Popular culture: Gender

March 15th 2011.

Media and its best friend

Masculinity is the state of human beings being men with the right physical conditions, mind set and character; and thats just a general definition. Meaning masculinity can differentiate in many ways but most especially race (white masculinity and black masculinity). But Jackson Katz's also tried to analyze the way violence of different masculinity committed by different celebrities (like Chris brown and Eminem) and how the media evaluated, explored and illustrated them and the assaults they committed.

Katz states that media and popular culture can influence the way masculinity can be portrayed through advertisements and even entertainment. According to Katz, "the poses we strike and the images of masculinity that proliferate in media culture"...."illuminate...what's going on in individual men's lives, and in our culture as a whole." The reality and culture of masculinity is not well exemplified in media, commercials, music videos, and even movies. That men should be the strong hard core human beings and that anything that comes in our way or hinder our path to our destination "so to say" that we "men" should be fighters so our "manhood" will not be disrespected; in this case, the influences from the media based on masculinity can lead men of different race to abusing verbally and physically their significant other which happens to always be the women in their lives most of the time. A place of concern is from the start where young boys can easily relate and digest anything that is portrayed in the media more than females especially when it is of something of power, authority and heroic nature. That's why as young boys tend to play around with action figures, read comic action books and watch and play a lot of hard rough sports like football comparing to young girls that just play with dolls, watch romantic movies and read romantic books. Also when boys, on the other hand, happen to accumulate all of that information or culture that is portrayed by the media they tend to reenact it sometime in life subconsciously or even consciously which can lead to violence and even abuse.

Masculinity that leads to violence and abuse can be committed by anyone even celebrities; even when they know that they are public figures. For instance, we have Chris Brown who is an African American R&B singer abuse, beat up and assaulted his formal girlfriend Rihanna. Chris, who also claimed that when he was younger and living with his mother and his stepfather that he witnessed his stepfather abusing his mother a lot of times that it might have been it that influenced him to commit the assault. Although witnessing his mother being abused by his stepfather might have also tried to influence him to make things different and treat women with respect and care. According MTV in 2006 he once stated: "an influence in me about how to treat a woman." And he goes on to say, "I used to always feel the hate for anybody that disrespected a lady." So this being said it is obvious that he was definitely mad and dislike his stepfather and relates him to whomever that abuses or abused a woman. Also comes to the question if Chris really wanted to commit that assault or was he pushed to the wall that he felt that he was the one that was really being abused maybe verbally by Rihanna; because most of the abuse committed by his stepfather was verbally. So he most have experienced that same situation from Rihanna and felt he must defend and retaliate. But in the other hand his act was not justified and obviously the media blamed every absolute act on him because of the obvious and sterotype which is the "masculinity" without the total whole story which no one really knows but him and Rihanna that happened that night. From news networks to even social media they all critized him and blamed him totally for