Hard Bodies, Soft Hearts: Mixed-Race Men as Muscular Daddies in the Films of Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson

Schofield, Andrea

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-57767-2_7

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…While acknowledging that "these films do in some ways present a less rigid model of the family by depicting mixedrace couples and blended families," she notes that "they also uphold and promote essentialist heteronormative ideologies to their broad audiences of children and parents." 35 Extending such arguments, Hannah Hamad contends that, in the twenty-first century, paternity has become "a universalizing discourse of masculinity . .…”

Section: Fatheringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed Messages: Māori/Pasifika Masculinities and Aotearoa/New Zealand Identity in Television Advertising, 2000–2019

Bannister¹

2022

JNZS

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There is an ongoing association between masculinity and New Zealand identity which can be traced in popular culture and television advertising. Until the early 2000s, white (Pākehā) men/homosocial “Kiwi blokes” predominated but television advertising has since featured a steady increase in Māori/Pasifika men and boys, which also reflects their greater prominence in local popular culture (in comedy, for example). Similar to representations of African American men, Māori/Pasifika masculinities are subject to binary stereotyping: generally more positive in advertisements for commercial products and more negative in anti-drug public service advertisements. These categories relate to the incorporation of non-white subjects into colonial, patriarchal discourse (and shift according to its imperatives). One important shift internationally is the emergence of non-white fatherhood as a way of signalling ethnic diversity while also reaffirming colonial and neoliberal values. There is a related shift from the male “hard bodies” of the 1980s and 1990s towards a more relational, “softer” masculinity; locally, there is a shift away from the “hard” Kiwi bloke (or non-white sporting “warrior”) towards “postfeminist fatherhood.” This features kindly, often humorous paternalism and “magical” scenarios, including literal and metaphorical father/son relations, which may, in the local context, take on connotations of tāngata whenua welcoming manuhiri (Pākehā) into “their land.” A “progressive” discourse of positively imaging Māori/Pasifika men as implicit “fathers of the nation” (and clearly there is a slippage here between Māori and Pasifika through the use of ethnically ambiguous actors) justifies heteronormativity and reconfirms the homosocial emphasis in New Zealand identity as well as neoliberal values.

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Section: Fatheringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed Messages: Māori/Pasifika Masculinities and Aotearoa/New Zealand Identity in Television Advertising, 2000–2019

Bannister¹

2022

JNZS

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“…He is also one of the relatively few multiracial stars who have made it big in the Hollywod star system (others include Dwayne Johnson, Halle Berry and Keanu Reeves). In the scarce number of academic articles which discuss VD, researchers point out that VD’s success and attraction as a mixed race superstar may be contributed to the fact that in his movies, he plays “America’s desired ‘other: multiracial, de-politicized, and lacking any serious racial allegiance” (Dagbovie, 2007, see also Beltran, 2013; Park, 2008 and Schofield, 2016), while still displaying a sexy “hypermasculine identity” (Greven, 2009), or performing as someone with a “hard body and soft heart” (Schofield, 2016). His masculine, apolitical and multiracial appeal might be one of the reasons why he attracts so many global followers to his Facebook page.…”

Section: Celebrity and Stardom In The Age Of Social Media – The “Authentic” Vin Diesel On Facebookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Death and Communal Mass-Mourning: Vin Diesel and the Remembrance of Paul Walker

Klastrup

2018

Social Media + Society

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This article examines Vin Diesel's use of his public Facebook Page to mourn the loss of his friend and co-actor Paul Walker in the period from 2013-2015. It discusses how Vin Diesel performed his grief and how his mourning process was communally reflected and repeated by both Vin Diesel and Walker fans, who used Vin Diesel's page to share and verbalise their own feelings of loss in a both public and safe space. An analysis of Vin Diesel's own status updates and 1800 comments reacting to three popular status updates related to the death of Paul Walk posted over the course of more than a year show that commentary was used to make condolences to both Vin Diesel and Walker's familes and to affectively express the users' immediate feelings, both verbally and through the use of emojis. However, over time, both the form and intensity of expression of both Vin Diesel and his followers changed, pointing to the need to further study celebrity mourning processes on social media over extended periods of time.

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Doing Love: Fathers’ Emotions in Relation to Their Children

Macht

2019

Fatherhood and Love

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Hard Bodies, Soft Hearts: Mixed-Race Men as Muscular Daddies in the Films of Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson

Cited by 5 publications

References 6 publications

Mixed Messages: Māori/Pasifika Masculinities and Aotearoa/New Zealand Identity in Television Advertising, 2000–2019

Mixed Messages: Māori/Pasifika Masculinities and Aotearoa/New Zealand Identity in Television Advertising, 2000–2019

Death and Communal Mass-Mourning: Vin Diesel and the Remembrance of Paul Walker

Doing Love: Fathers’ Emotions in Relation to Their Children

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