Super-Curricular Documentary: Incorporating Clay Shirky’s theory - Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere

Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere Netflix documentary explores the unnerving nature behind the world’s most elitist, masculine-mindset men, normalising the oppression of women in today’s dynamic society, with notorious influences such as HS TikkyTokky, Justin Waller and ‘Sneako’, with some objectifying their wives, truly believing that one-sided monogamies should be accessible to all men, and men exclusively. Terms such as the ‘red-pill’, ‘anti-feminism’ and ‘alpha-male’ were highly prevalent and topical throughout the documentary, with the latter being men’s insatiable desire to be the ‘ultimate man’, both physically and mentally. Those leading a ‘white-supremacy’ lifestyle are devoted to practicing their own misogynistic culture, willingly and carefully selecting multiple women to spend time with. One of the most concerning elements of the documentary was not just the concept of masculinity being modernised and females being repressed as a social normality, but the influence that these men were generating, being titled as ‘role models’ and being ‘my biggest inspiration’ for a large proportion of the younger male generation. The prospect of these extremist ideologies filtering and perpetuating into our new media is becoming a challenge in society that is progressive faster than tradition. Theroux also considers what may be the contributing factors for men turning towards the ‘red-pill’ and anti-feminist values, finding a common pattern between an abusive childhood and the lacking of a ‘father-figure’ in households. Furthermore, the majority of the male influencers crave the monetisation of their success, yet seem to state that they do not own luxury cars for status, but as a result of their hard-work and efforts. This controversial concept of elitist men wanting to turn their content into dollars, their engagements with women into views, all to reap the financial benefits.

This documentary made me consider what would happen if this view monopolised society. Would we regress backwards to the historical gender inequalities that once corrupted our social values, or would women learn from the past to condemn these ‘toxic masculinity’ behaviours?

This documentary resonates well with Clay Shirky’s End of Audience theory, as the men who are engaging with the live streams and media content enabling a participatory culture. These fans and avid followers of influences such as HS TikkyTokky and Amrou Fudl are able to ‘talk-back’ on his media platforms and easily publish snippets of his content on their own social media pages. This was evident when Harrison Sullivan (HS TikkyTokky) was deliberately trying to aggravate Louis Theroux during a live stream, with many of his fans publishing and then filtering his content to position Theroux with a bad reputation, almost incorporating Strauss’ binary oppositions. These men will gatekeep information from a renowned and critically-acclaimed journalist - Louis Theroux (such as when Fudl’s girlfriend was informed to no longer participate and interact with Theroux in the documentary) in order to protect their status and censor private information from the mass media and target audience, particularly when the documentary will be published onto Netflix, an established, multinational corporation with a wide global reach.

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 The reading of the Dixon Chapter 17 within Stuart Hall’s Reception theory  has enhanced my knowledge and reading skills of Hall’s Reception theory, identifying that the theory is more complex than simply the preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings, but audiences may adopt a misreadings approach when decoding media products, as well as decoding a product based on their situated logics.. I have learnt that there are broader topics and factors which largely influence whether an audience member will adopt the dominant, oppositional or negotiated reading when encoding and encoding the producer’s intended message, learning how media products interweave various iconic signs into their works in order to appear polysemic. Furthermore, the contributor of audiences potentially making misreadings shapes which reading position the audience member will uptake, dependent on the complexity and illegibility of a text.

 I have also learnt that multiple other theorists (including Albert Bandura and David Gauntlett) might challenge Stuart Hall, such as George Gerbner’s cultivation theory, where he believes that even the strongest of audience members may experience attitudinal change as a result of media exposure. Linking closely to Neale’s Genre theory, there is the concept of genre-driven mediation within the Reception theory, where producers will recycle themes and characters in order to drive the narrative and to appeal to the audiences. This audience collects information  and forms their own perspective if they constantly view the same charcsters perpetuated via the media, they may form a political bias, learning to potentially dominant, oppositional or negotiated readings. 

Hall also believes that an invisible set of rules help to govern and dictate our behaviours, based upon what we consume from media industries. He believes that political opinions and biases build the foundations of political ideologies of the public, leading to the re-inforcement of legitimacy through parliament and its systems by reporting. Additionally, the audience may create ‘situated logics’, actively and selectively filtering information portrayed to them through newspapers by selecting articles orientated around their knowledge and past experiences within society.

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Super-Curricular: Judith Butler - Gender Performativity Notes

‘Assault on gender = assault on democracy’

Open-ended question about what a gender means/the distinction between genders.

Sex=category assigned to infants that has importance in medical and legal worlds.

Gender=mix of cultural norms, historical formations, family influences, desires and wishes.

1960s social movements largely affected theses definitions at the time and being in the Jewish community.

Many people (including those of the LGBT community) have been subject to genocidal politics - different forms of oppression.

Queer conversations were arising - in a complicated discourse with feminism. Butler was part of a movement at the time that was reconsidering the meaning and definition of gender during the 1960s.

Trans issues hadn’t surfaced in contemporary society.

Feminism definition approach = ‘Women are fundamentally mothers and that maternity is the essence of feminine’.

Feminism definition approach = Sexual difference (this meaning presumptuously heterosexual).

‘The sex you are assigned with at birth and the gender that you are taught to be should not determine how you live your life’. - Judith Butler

Simone de Beauvoir (philosopher) - wrote a novel called ‘Second Sex’, detailing that someone is not ‘born’ a woman, but ‘becomes’ one. The body is not a fact, showing the potential for a difference between being assigned a gender and being born as one.

Gayle Rubin: Anthropology and Psychoanalysis - ‘Family is a structure whose task it was to reproduce gender’.

-Invited the idea that gender could be reproduced and cultivated.

Psychoanalysis - ‘There is repression going into becoming a man and becoming a woman. We feel we have to conform of being, doing and loving.

People did not perceive gender as something that you can make and re-make, people treated gender as a social reality.

We no longer speak about sex, desire and wants in the same way as we used to before people were coming out as gay and queer.

Gender - The changing of reality.

Concerned about finding effective ways to countering the attack on gender.

People who struggle to understand what trans-gender people define themselves have their own self-definition destabilised.

The fact that we can change reality and make it appear unjust means that there is an instability to people who want to solely understand that gender is a fixed term.

There is a lot in the world that is telling us not to be free with our bodies - we struggle to claim this freedom.

In a democracy, we’re assume that we acclaim to the democratic principles we are provided with (quality, freedom, justice). 

But what do these terms actually mean.

Sexuality and racial movements mean that we actually have to challenge people’s already existing, preconceived ideas about these topics - the democratic struggle consists of occupying the difficulties in trying to achieve the societal, common goal of justice.