Skate Life: Re-Imagining White Masculinity by Emily Chivers Yochim

Author:Emily Chivers Yochim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press and the University of Michigan Library
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

In this short segment, the Wildboyz demonstrate the multiply inflected, ironic yet sincere mockery and reinscription of masculinity as construction, white dominance over ethnic “others,” and men's exploitation of women that pervade Jackass, Viva La Bam, and Wildboyz. Although each of these shows operates in this manner, Wildboyz consolidates the nexus of irony; Page 114 → self-inflicted pain; simultaneous mockery of women, nonwhites, and white men; and adolescent humor that characterize them all. Displacing the overt performance and reinforcement of masculinity onto Amazonian “natives” or “savages” while repeatedly mocking such performances as “such dumb things to do,” the Wildboyz demonstrate their knowledge of masculinity as construction while suggesting that they are above such display, particularly because of their whiteness but also because of their confidence as men.3

The Wildboyz, then, and their counterparts on Jackass and Viva La Bam, enact a mode of white masculinity that seems to indirectly align with—or correspond to—skateboarders' mockery of jock masculinity, adherence to cooperation over competition, and core valuation of confident individuality. The intertextual relationships between the Dickhouse oeuvre and the niche media of skate culture establish these similarities, and viewers' extratextual knowledge of these shows' industrial histories—particularly their key personnel's involvement with Big Brother—solidifies the significance of skate culture to mainstream appeals to white male youth as well as the intersecting nature of the media's portrayals of young men. Although the show does not exhibit a one-to-one relationship with skateboarder values, its simultaneous critique and reinscription of dominant masculinities certainly demonstrate an affinity with skate culture. The shows' masculine performances also overemphasize the adolescent masculinity frequently on display in niche skateboarding videos.

These shows' representations of masculinity are dynamic and contradictory, relying on multiple axes of identity—age, race, and gender in particular—to continually decodify and consolidate hegemonic masculinity. In playing up and valorizing their adolescent antics, the characters make visible the demands of adult, white, middle-class masculinity to reject bodily or emotional excess and be rational and in control. Their adolescence, then, affords them the opportunity to critique adult masculinity from a safe space. Furthermore, the boys transfer masculine performance onto nonwhite “natives,” ridiculing their traditions while at the same time taking part in them. As such, the Wildboyz demonstrate the flexibility of whiteness and the tendency of whites to fetishize ethnicity or nonwhite skin in the name of solidifying their coolness while disrupting masculine norms and alerting viewers to the inconsistent and contradictory construction of masculinity.4 Their renegotiation of masculinity relies on their whiteness.

Page 115 → The versions of skate culture on display on MTV are not the only media texts in which skateboarders depend on their whiteness as a location of power. As David J. Leonard demonstrates, extreme sports video games, particularly the Tony Hawk series of video games produced by Activision, showcase white skateboarders playing in urban “ghettos” absent people of color. The virtual skateboarders' forays into these supposedly dangerous spaces construct them as both cool and hypermasculine. What's more, Leonard argues, skateboarding's construction as a white practice means that the adolescent

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.