“Three Steps Above Heaven? Really? That’s All Tactic!” New Alternative Masculinities Dismantling Dominant Traditional Masculinity’s Strategies

Abstract

Research on preventive socialization of gender violence has contributed abundant empirical evidence that attraction to violence is common among adolescents. This has meant that “bad guys,” or those who reflect the Dominant Traditional Masculinity (DTM) model, are chiefly perceived as appealing, while “good guys” are perceived as good friends but not desirable. The mainstream media tends to reproduce this traditional model of affective-sexual relationships, which has harmful effects on young girls concerning gender and sexuality. However, New Alternative Masculinity men are challenging this traditional and unsatisfactory model of affective-sexual relationships. The 2010 Spanish version of the movie Three Steps above Heaven, a good example of this kind of media product, has proven to greatly impact communicative acts among adolescents. This article explores how this influence on adolescents is because the communicative acts about Hache – the main character in the movie – are full of the language of desire, and his own communicative acts are full of violence. On the one hand, we analyze how Three Steps above Heaven employs communicative acts to enhance the attractiveness of DTM. On the other hand, based on the evidence gathered in a communicative focus group (CFG) addressed to 15- and 16-year-old female adolescents, we analyze how New Alternative Masculinity men are demystifying Hache and the idea of having a “Three Steps Above Heaven” by demonstrating with the powerful language of desire that men like him employ farce strategies. The article includes evidence from interventions with adolescents where discussion of movies like this, with the involvement of New Alternative Masculinity men and grounded in the language of desire, can transform the perception about the sexual-affective relationship in the movie, thus counteracting their negative influence in terms of attraction to violence.

Evidence of Gender Violence Negative Impact on Health as a Lever to Change Adolescents’ Attitudes and Preferences towards Dominant Traditional Masculinities

“…In this regard, the role of boys in preventing adolescent dating violence has been emphasized in community-based intervention programs to improve adolescents’ health and wellbeing [ 23 ]. Other studies have differentiated between three different types of masculinity to understand the role of men in gender violence: dominant traditional masculinities (DTM), oppressed traditional masculinities (OTM), and new alternative masculinities (NAM) [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. DTM represent inegalitarian, dominant, and violent attitudes of men that can lead to gender violence, but that at the same time are associated with attractiveness in the dominant coercive discourse socially transmitted.…”

No Time to Lose Sex-Appeal

“…We can state that based on the data collected we can identify that Bond increases his ethical behavior in line with a more inclusive society, however we cannot state -based on the data collected -that he also increases his attractiveness proportionally. The role of the coercive discourse (Racionero-Plaza et al, 2022;Ruiz-Eugenio, Racionero-Plaza, et al, 2020), which fosters attraction to violence (Gómez, MCS -Masculinities and Social Change, 11(2) 117 2015;Valls et al, 2008), towards non-egalitarian masculinities (Castro & Mara, 2014;Flecha et al, 2013;Rodrigues-Mello et al, 2021), in making some people see the last Bond as less attractive would be the subject of future research. How the socialization of people in this coercive discourse mediated to a lesser or greater extent in their perception of a more or less attractive Bond due to having more ethical behaviors remains to be further studied.…”

“…Different studies analyze in depth how media promote attraction to violence through a coercive dominant discourse (Puigvert et al, 2019;Puigvert & Flecha, 2018;Racionero-Plaza et al, 2020;Torras-Gómez et al, 2019;Villarejo et al, 2020) which links sexuality and violence (Rodrigues-Mello et al, 2021;Villarejo et al, 2020). The research conducted in 2010 by Neuendorf and colleagues (Neuendorf et al, 2010) evaluating 195 female characters in 20 James Bond's films concluded that sexual activity with women has increased at the same time than harm towards them has.…”

“You Enjoy Talking about It More than Doing It”: Fake Narratives in Disdainful Relationships

“…Among those discourses, scientific research has found the CDD, which imposes the link between attraction and violence by portraying individuals and relationships with violent attitudes as attractive, fun and exciting R (Gómez, 2015;. Conveyed through different forms of entertainment (movies, shows, music…) and peer interactions, while the CDD presents violent masculinity models as the only attractive and desirable option, egalitarian models are deemed as convenient but lacking attractiveness and excitement (Gómez, 2015;Rodrigues-Mello et al, 2021;Villarejo et al, 2020;Villarejo-Carballido et al, 2022). In this way, the CDD leads to a double-standard frame of mind in which pleasure, fun, excitement and passion are separated from love, care, stability and egalitarianism (Gómez, 2015;Joanpere et al, 2021;Rios-González et al, 2018;Ruiz-Eugenio et al, 2021).…”