Contesting Hegemonic Masculinity Through Profeminist Passing on The Police’s Outlandos d’Amour

Abstract

On their debut album Outlandos d’Amour (1978), British band The Police explicate the machinations of hegemonic masculinity in their lyrical content to highlight the multidimensional and performative aspects of normalized male dominance over women. Within the constraints of punk, the band engages in a mediated form of introspective and self-reflexive “profeminist cross-dressing” in the three singles and their accompanying music videos released in promotion of the album. Owing a great debt to queer performance theory, The Police does not simply question the processes of gender socialization through which hegemonic masculinity is maintained. Rather, the band engages popular audiences with a masculine feminist perspective within a genre rooted in hegemonic masculinity, wielding its privilege in public and performative ways to subvert and undo these toxic structures. The study of mediated profeminist performances allows for the analysis of profeminist messages beyond interpersonal interactions within their unique political, social, and cultural circumstances.

Keywords:

• Camp
• masculinity
• profeminism
• punk
• queer passing