Be a Man—Buy a Car! Articulating Masculinity With Consumerism in Man's Last Stand

Abstract

On February 5, 2010, a Super Bowl XLIV advertisement, entitled Man's Last Stand, offered 106 million viewers the newly designed Dodge Charger not as a mode of transportation, not as a lifestyle choice, but as a last defense of manhood against the symbolic castration betokened by the encroaching forces of bureaucratization and empowered femininity. In this article, I argue that Man's Last Stand offers a novel development in the discourse of masculinity crisis when it deftly articulates a defense of manhood with consumerism by presenting the purchase of a Dodge Charger as a remedy to the threat of emasculation posed by women and bureaucracy.

Notes

While contemporary attempts to theorize gender typically recognize an enormous range of gender performances as authentic, the discourse of masculinity crisis refers almost exclusively to a very particular, normative conception of masculinity—hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity names a highly visible, influential discourse that articulates manhood with distance from femininity, stoicism, aggression/dominance, sexual attraction and success with women, and homophobia (Jensen, 2007). While hegemonic masculinity is “not normal in the statistical sense … it [is] certainly normative” in shaping societal expectations and evaluations of men (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 832).

Matters look even worse in this regard at the time this article is being written. But because the global economic recession has been a drag on manufacturing jobs practically everywhere, it is difficult to judge the significance of these losses for the long-term health of American manufacturing.

The EEOC reported that white males made less than 2% of discrimination charges; and many of those complaints were ruled by courts as having been made by “disappointed job seekers whom the courts ruled were less qualified than the women or minorities who were given the jobs” (Anderson, 2005, p. 230). However, the perception of discrimination against men “had been planted in the minds of many white men by 1994” to such a degree that they moved en masse to the Republican party (Anderson, 2005, p. 230). This consolidated, engaged voting bloc was considered indispensible in the Republican sweep in that midterm election.

Unlike Diet DrPepper, the artificially sweetened DrPepper variant that is presumably safe for womanly consumption, DrPepper 10's artificial sweetness is never described as diet.

Elizabeth Ellsworth (1997) has, similarly, invited teachers to ask these questions to get at the subject interpellated by traditional teaching models (pp. 23–36).

At the time of the Super Bowl, both Twilight and True Blood were hugely popular among children and women.

In Dexter, the title character makes an unlikely protagonist whose heinous crimes are, to some degree, rationalized by their conformity to a strict code of ethics: Dexter may only kill those who are also killers. Furthermore, he may only kill killers who are likely to offend again. In this way, Dexter turns his pathological behavior into something that provides a sort of grizzly service to society.

Phallic economy, derived largely from Lacan (1972), is used to term the relations of exchange in a culture that structure society according to a rigid hegemonic masculinity that requires the subject to conquer, to dominate, and to exceed all others. See Irigaray (1977/1985).

The appeal may have worked for Dodge, as sales of the sixth-generation Charger jumped 14,746 units in 2010, despite rising gasoline prices and the fact that the 4-year-old design was due for a major refresh in 2011 (Chrysler Group LLC, 2011).