Adolescent masculinity, representation and transcendence

Abstract

This thesis analyses representations of adolescent masculinity in Western culture in order to challenge normalised and restrictive discourses. It is a cross-disciplinary study which examines histories of the construction of adolescent masculinity with reference to sociological concepts of adolescence, to contemporary understandings of hegemonic masculine cultures, and to the visual representation of the adolescent male in art. Particular attention is paid to the symbolic visual representation of the adolescent male in the European iconographic history of Western art, and its implications of spiritual transcendence, and to the sociological construction of contemporary adolescent masculinity in relation to cultural discourses of the early twentieth century. The concept of transcendence is shown to be an animating trope of the representation of adolescent masculinity. Contemporary photographic and filmic art works by North American artists Larry Clark and Gus Van Sant are analysed in relation to these perspectives, and are found to engage complex and challenging articulations of adolescent masculinity, representation and transcendence. Clark's artist books of the 1990s, and his 2001 film Bully, are analysed in detail, and are found to offer important deconstructions of adolescent masculinity with reference to the physicalised adolescent male body, media­ generated imagery, and questions of violence and death. Van Sant's 2003 film Elephant, a fictionalised account of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, is found to engage adolescent masculinity with. concepts of metaphysical and sociological transcendence. Theoretical perspectives on death and eroticism, normalising and heterotopic spatiality, and concepts of sacrifice are used as tools to engage analyses of Clark's and Van Sant's work. Issues of the sexualisation of the adolescent male body, the representation of male youth suicide and alternatives to hegemonic cultures of adolescent masculinity are discussed. The thesis concludes by appealing to compassionate and heterodox articulations of adolescent masculinity. Show more