Week 13 Nick Trujillo

Hegemonic Masculinity on the Mound
By: Nick Trujillo
Nolan Ryan is analyzed through the media to reveal how hegemonic masculinity is reproduced in mediated sport. It explains five distinguishing features about Ryan.
Throughout his twenty five year career, Ryan has become a "prominent sports celebrity." It explains what HM(hegemonic masculinity) is which we have talked about before. Masculinity becomes hegemonic when it becomes widely accepted in a culture reinforcing the dominent gender ideology.
The five distinguishijg features of HM are: physical force and control, occupational achievement, familial patriarchy, frontiersmanship, and heterosexuality. According to Connel the first feature means men have power, women are subordinate and the superiority of men becomes naturalized. Male body represents power, and power becomes masculinized. Secondly work itself can become defined along gender lines, men's work vs. Women's work. Third, males being dominant in the family and the extension of dominanceover women in society. Fourth, "frontier thesis" argues that the general US image is so defined. The cowboy is an archetypal image reproduced in media. And lastly, hegemonic male sexuality embodies personal characteristics which are manifested by males through social relationships with men and sexual relationships with women. With the ideathat you can't act like a sissy in appearance or behavior.
Mediated sport and HM
Sport has influenced the sense of masculinity over any other institution. Football in particular has extremely emphasized the male dominance and women as more cheerleaders and spectators. Mass media follows suit for fashioning hegemony. Mediated sports reaffirm mainstream values and HM in important ways. They represent these hegemonic values and ignore or condemn the alternative features of opposing gender ideologies. The media also personalizes HM when they make heroes out of the individuals who embody the masculine values and ignore those who don't.
Reproducing HM through Nolan Ryan
The media has reaffirmed Ryan's power of the male body. All throughout media Ryan is viewed and explained as a powerful pitcher which was widely celebrated. He was also viewed as a capitalist worker. "The construction of sport as work is even more powerful" in producing HM. The media makes sport to exactly relate capitalism and the protestant work ethic. They proved this through Nolan Ryan and represented him as a successful male worker in a capitalist society. Ryan continues to get praise for dominance. It seems like this writer hates everything about this.....
Disks, "men are cast into ceaseless work and action to prove their worth, masculinity becomes the definition of a superhuman so it becomes that which can never or rarely be achieved."
"Ryan has proved the system works-at least for hard working men."
Ryan was chosen as the "breadwinner" "protecting husband" and his wife portrayed as the attractive woman behind the man. Media reaffirmed the gender division of labor by making Nolan and Ruth the ideal couple. It also reaffirmed the hegemony of family patriarchy by glorifying Ryan's relationship with his sons and deemphasized the relationship with his daughter.
Ryan is also portrayed as a rural cowboy who symbolizes the frontiersman of American history. All throughout media he was portrayed this way with mentions of being back in town for a shootout and actually calling him John Wayne. In advertisments for Wrangled jeans and explaining that he was an actual real cowboy working on the ranch in the off-season.
Ryan was also reproduced as an acceptable image of male sexuality. Commented on of hisattractiveness. This was allowed because of Ryan's wholesome, monogamous, heterosexual and white being. According to a poster and some interpretation Ryan is the "hard phallus" offered only to one woman. He is the middle aged phallus with the power to still explode.
This article basically said media in sport needs to be challenged and critiqued because of the effects it has on society and all groups of people including men.
I wasn't sure really what Trujillo was getting at but it seemed like he hates that it is this way. But to be honest it won't really change. The media are going to latch on to the best players in the game and celebritize them accordingly. I don't seem any harm in that because that is what sells. At the end of the day this is a business and they are going to keep doing what makes money.

Mark Valeriano