The best a man can get? : an analysis of the representation of men within group situations in the advertising copy of Men’s Health and FHM from December 2006 through May 2007

Scott, Robert James

Title: The best a man can get? : an analysis of the representation of men within group situations in the advertising copy of Men’s Health and FHM from December 2006 through May 2007
Creator: Scott, Robert James
Subject: Men's health (Magazine)
Subject: For Him Magazine (South Africa)
Subject: Men in advertising
Subject: Sex role in advertising
Subject: Discrimination in the advertising industry
Subject: Men in mass media
Subject: Mass media criticism
Subject: Men in popular culture
Subject: Sex role in mass media
Subject: Discourse analysis -- Social aspects
Subject: Masculinity -- South Africa
Date Issued: 2014
Date: 2014
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MA
Identifier: vital:3535
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013576
Description: This study examines the production of masculinity in the advertisements of South Africa’s two most popular men’s lifestyle magazines, FHM and Men’s Health. I specifically focus on advertisements, as I argue that they play a crucial role in the re‐production of prominent discursive formations. Informed by a poststructuralist framework this study adopts Foucault’s notions of discourse, power and the constitution of the subject. Gender is conceived of within power relations, with a hierarchical relationship between masculinities and femininities. The gendered subject is also viewed as being constantly in process and being constructed performatively through material forms of practice. Focusing on group representations to establish gender hierarchies, I argue that these representations of people are performative acts, hailing the subjects who view them and producing reality through discourse. Hegemonic masculinity, which is argued to be prominent in advertising, is located at the highest point in the gender hierarchy. However, there is not one universal hegemonic masculinity, for it can vary across three discrete political contexts: the local, which is constructed in the immediate face‐to‐face interactions of families, organisations and social structures; the regional, which is constructed at the level of culture or the nation state; and the global, which is constructed in supra‐national locations. In the advertisements of FHM and Men’s Health there is interplay between the latter two as global and regional brands both advertise in these magazines. To investigate the portrayal of masculinities in these publications, this study first undertakes a content analysis to survey the “general landscape” of representation in the advertisements and then performs a critical discourse analysis to uncover “thick description” of the production of masculinity. The content analysis, finds that the advertisements in the sample validate both white and heterosexual forms of masculinity. The sample is comprised mostly of white males, white females and black males, generally proposing forms of hegemonic masculinity, emphasised femininity and complicit masculinity respectively. The representation of white males and black males is different both in terms of the frequency of representations and in the types of representations. I argued that a certain tension inhabits the resulting representations, which try to be inclusive of a multi‐racial South Africa, yet do so within a clearly hierarchical structure. An in‐depth analysis of eight texts, informed by Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis and Kress & van Leeuwen’s framework for visual analysis, finds similar results to the content analysis while providing insight into how various discourses produced the representations, particularly within non‐narrative advertisements.
Format: 170 leaves
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, Journalism and Media Studies
Language: English
Rights: Scott, Robert James

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The best a man can get? : an analysis of the representation of men within group situations in the advertising copy ofMen’s Health and FHM from December 2006 through May 2007

The best a man can get? : an analysis of the representation of men within group situations in the advertising copy of
Men’s Health and FHM from December 2006 through May 2007