Beowulf: Symbolisms of Masculinity and Heroism - UK Essays.
The dominant masculinity in western culture is associated with heterosexuality, a unit of a man and woman from opposite axis of masculinity and femininity. For Annie Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain” complicates the gendered duality, portraying two men acting on their homoerotic desires, but also depicts them as hetero-social.
Ranging over two centuries and three continents, the essays demonstrate the power of Western concepts of masculinity while at the same time revealing their multiplicity and instability as well as the resistances they often encountered.
With the representation of violence informed by and a co-determinant of gender categories, masculinity figures strongly in most essays in the collection. Four chapters look explicitly at figurations of masculinity in 1980s and 1990s popular US cinema, highlighting a range of postmodernist constructions of male heroism, villainy, madness, and suffering.
This essay is aimed to compare and contrast the western approach to leadership represented by United States and the eastern approach to leadership represented by Japan by using Hofstede’s five dimension of culture as the factor of comparison. The essay will first explain the culture and its dimensions and then followed by the detailed.
Masculinity seems to have quite a pull on those living in and under western society. With each individual experience comes an individual struggle; in the novels Second Class Citizen, Mr. Loverman, White Teeth, and The Opposite house we grow close to characters experiencing masculinity under British rule.
Hegemonic masculinity is the widely accepted, socially dominating masculine ideal that is often White, Western, and well-educated, middle class, breadwinning, and strong, yet lean (Baron, 2006; Wienke 1998). The reason hegemonic masculinity is embodied as a muscular and lean man is because this body type gives the impression of strength.
Igbo culture tend to put emphasis on the daily actions of men, while Western culture tend to show masculinity through social and economic factors. While livelihood is used as a sign of virility in both cultures, Igbo culture focuses on work ethic, whereas Western society tends to focus on field of work.