Turning Boys Into Monsters
by: Derrick Kikuchi on December 9th, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Friend and colleague, Amy Jussel wrote a wonderful article titled “Turning Boys Into Monsters: Energy Drink Leaves A Foul Taste (Again)” today on her blog ShapingYouth.org.
Amy writes, “With everything from motocross and macho madness to the thumping, screaming, over the top rebel yell, Monster ‘packs a vicious punch’ by creating lil’ monsters out of the male middle-school set without a clue (or a care) as to the impact of the jolt and crash ‘kick ass flavor’ to their adolescent bods. Wow. I feel like I got a testosterone infusion just reading the freakin’ label…”
Besides writing about the obvious health implications of energy drinks on developing adolescent or even adult bodies, the article primarily focuses on the hype and specifically male gender-targeted marketing and messaging that is being used.
Violence, risk taking, and dangerous pushing of the limits are being positioned as an expected rite of passage for becoming a “real” male… and of course the advertised energy drink will help you get there quicker. It’s all about business and energy drinks are an effective gateway product to creating new consumers of alcoholic beverages with advertising providing the seemless linkage between the two. “Be a man… drink this.”
What’s disturbing to me is the overall public complacency if not celebration of such messages out in the media. I mean, are you really OK with an energy drink called “Hitman Energy Shooter”?
To demonstrate the topsy-turvy nature of our current 21st century world, I mocked up an energy drink advertisement “Bring down your war monster” that I’m guessing would surely create an outraged public outcry if it were used in an advertising campaign or in an opening slide show at your favorite movie theater. “Drink this energy drink, the terrorists win!” Fox News would report. (An aside… Paul George from Peninsula Peace and Justice tried to run a “Out of Iraq” slide in a local movie theater. It was rejected.)
That “Hitman Shooter” doesn’t create that outcry, and an advertisement like this would, requires some pause and consideration for where our current values as a society rest.
By the way, if you would like to view Eric Drooker’s poster that I used in this parody ad, you can see it here.
Derrick, brilliant parody and excellent post…fits right into the “Packaging Boyhood” book messages as if you’d written the book yourself…I’m going to give you a copy the book for Christmas for putting a huge smile on my face today…I didn’t even have a chance to post all of my multiple issues with the glamorization of war (whether on the streets/gangs/thugs, etc. or on the battlefields abroad) on a gazillion marketing campaigns (you’d go nuts at the whole “Pimp Juice” energy drink promo…which some 4th graders were emulating in my counter-marketing session last season! ack!) Anyway, thanks for the validation that the cultural tipping point of toxicity being promoted for a buck isn’t just in my brain. bleh.
I latched onto this post right off. I wrestle daily with gender issues, feminism and gender-essentialism, especially in male issues–it’s a personal journey being a male in an era where social gender conventions are being reinvented for men, mostly by the most limited among us in terms of level of consciousness and to a large extent by humans who aren’t men (out of understandable frustration and impatience with our lack of progress in this arena–but we males have to do this for ourselves. We can take good advice from women and the discourse of their lived experiences, but if we don’t do it, we’re not going to be as committed to our own evolution sociologically and gender-culturally). Few men ever have the chance to articulate what they do like about themselves and when you can only create an identity by what you’re not, the path to confusion and blunted base messaging is a short one.
We’ve already had many conversation about “energy drinks” with our severely ADHD (with Aspbergers comorbids) son. He’s only recently become interested in foods other than macs and cheese so the topic came up. Thankfully (so far) he’s aware of his own wiring and knows he doesn’t need a “boost” because he has his own internal boost available on-demand. I know this is going to be an ongoing dialogue with him as he enters preteen and eventually teen and young adulthood years. We’re already having that conversation about manhood, messages and self-interest and how to spot marketing messaging and why it’s a safe bet to view them as scams, schemes to make someone else rich at the expense of everyone else (I know capitalists everyone are shuddering–oh well).
The thing that bothers me so much about contemporary male messaging is that it’s almost always crass, pandering to a base/lowest common denominator and always for a detrimental result that deprives men of genuine authentic gender discourse about ourselves and our real motivations in life. Men are constantly seen as simplistic, violent, and thoughtless and while we do have those capacities they are merely parts of a much larger whole, primarily decoupled from a more enlightened functionality. Contemporary male-messaging is threatened by that larger whole/connectedness of our male selves. Those responsible for marketing and other male-messaging believe (falsely, IMHO) that they cannot make money on the cheap by being “real” with us and targeting out fuller male motives. If only they’d take more time to realize there’s still money to be made by tapping more evolved masculinity. That they don’t or won’t reveals the result: a war on boys (and girls too, frankly).
Every spring I work with an informal group of men who reach out to fatherless boys and younger men and bring them to a Call to Adventure retreat with a more formally organized men’s group. In the informal group, we try hard to maintain year-round relationships with these guys, hoping to forge some sort of more authentic masculinity that integrates our baser urges into more evolved passions and motives, trying very hard to establish an identity based on wholeness rather than merely not-being-female or exclusive essentialism based on yesteryear’s memes (manly men, tough, soldiers, etc). It’s hard work made much harder because of the idiotic Monster campaigns and others. But that can also be a boon sometimes.
With many preteen & early teenaged boys we’ve found that playing video games, (FPS-first person shooter e.g. “Halo”, RPF-role playing fantasy types, e.g. “Fable” especially) and talking about what comes up in our bodies and our minds when we play, what motivates us and empowers us in the gameplay and where those things come from, how do we shift those motives and skills when we’re not in the game’s universe but in real life, how is that different and why must it be different, gives us a platform to then talk about male-messaging out in the real world and find ways to respond to those messages in a responsible, enlightened manner. It’s not easy and we don’t know of anyone else doing it. We’ve only recently started to think about how to write about it and share it with other people, especially other men. What few men’s groups there are in our communities are nowhere near this level of investigation and soul-searching. The ones who are nod and give us a thumbs up but won’t go there themselves for varying reasons. I dunno why.
Instead of being offended by the Monster nonsense (granted it’s often worth being offended, let me say), asking the deeper question is critically important, perhaps more so: what comes up for you when you feel juiced up by the “Pimp Campaign” or when you respond with stirred-desire to the US Marines ads in the movie theater? Where do those aroused desires take you? Is that a good place to end up or is there some other place we could end up with the very same aroused desire? Sorting out where that should be going as a healthy expression and goal is the antidote to the baser male-messaging. I can share that a lot of preteen and teenaged boys have told us, they essentially and fundamentally feel confused by their emerging sexuality and how that will take shape vis-a-vis girls/women as they get older. They know they feel powerless with girls (the gay boys we talk with don’t seem to have that same issue, theirs tend to be different given the onslaught of savage homophobia today) and their very powerful sexual feelings. “Pimps” represent empowerment–until they realize just what it is a pimp does to other human beings and himself. Do we want to feel empowered by abusing others or is there another way? Once we males find another way to be sexually empowered without being abusive, can we learn and train ourselves to laugh off/pass on the crass “pimp” messaging (knowing that for what it is on all levels) and fully live from a place of that alternative empowerment? The adult men I do this stuff with have all noticed that [hetero/homo]sexual empowerment is a living hell for us as grown men in a world where it is really hard to find a healthy female partner who is of the same mind, or be fully present with healthy male partners in a violently homophobic culture. Authentic male sexuality, as Michael Bader puts it so aptly, is simply not understood by both women and men today. That’s where the Monster and Pimp Campaigns have their power of persuasion, motivation and modeling; in the absence of full comprehension and appreciation for that authentic part of ourselves.
I think it’s fascinating too, that I find more insight into heterosexual male identity development by tapping into the gay community for introspection on who we are as gendered humans. Being a heterosexual male I know that deep listening and hearing how gay men sort out their masculinity and define themselves yields phenomenal gems that can inform heterosexual male identity conventions as we develop them.
Until more of this sort of male-introspective work becomes broader in the culture, however, the Monster panderers will rule the day. But I believe circumstances on the ground will eventually dim if not silence the current baser male-messaging, and I think with the volume of the Monster-noise turned down we’ll have a more productive time finding our healthier whole selves. Plus NOT being on such fluidic “fuel” can only help balance our limbic selves with our front lobed selves. In the meantime, men must continue to investigate, talk together, feel together, heal together and redefine our masculinity in authentic ways, even in the face of all the half-baked noise.
A long winded comment, I admit, but hopefully relevant and adding to the conversation.
Derrick, Your post led to much musing for me, and I found an article that seemed to be related. So I wrote a post in response (“Nice Guys Finish First”).
JustJack, There’s a group of men here in Madison who are delving deeply into the same issues as your group — Men Stopping Rape. Joe Weinberg has been involved with the group for years. I think he’d be a great guy to talk with. http://www.men-stopping-rape.org/
Good point, Nancy…lots of orgs tackling the violence aspect from the inside out in terms of gender roles, etc. like MenStoppingViolence.org and also http://www.mavaw.org (men against violence against women) etc., but I agree with “Just Jack” (wish I had a link to more, as we could use your valuable insights here on Shaping Youth!) we need to step back and look holistically at the greater issues of what’s being served up, how it’s landing on boys/how it makes them feel and then finding a way to ‘channel’ that ‘juice’ into a current that’s more productive and positive for empowerment!
I just wrote a piece about the new collaborative book on ‘reinventing manhood’ that’s uncorking this conversation in Australia (where males have higher incidence of suicide/depression etc. than females, analysis as to the whys, etc.) …They had 30 men share their stories in “The Perfect Gift for a Man” challenging the meanings and messages…content AND context.
Also, the Good Men Project is doing great work in transforming this conversation. It’s all on Shaping Youth in this post: http://www.shapingyouth.org/?p=9356 along with the Packaging Boyhood focus too…(Derrick, feel free to snag the content if you wish)
imho…We need to ‘shift the track’ on the runaway train in terms of where these feelings get ‘placed’…slamming on the brakes only gets everyone vaulting forward with unstoppable momentum and injury. ;-) My two cents, anyway. heh.
Great convo here, gang…keep it goin’!
JustJack–I really appreciated and resonated with your comments. Thanks so much. I hope you’ll get a chance to take a look at our book, “Packaging Boyhood” (which informed Amy’s first post on energy drinks). Do you blog?