Spring 2019 / LTEA 143 / REVISED Prompts for Final Paper
Due: Between Monday 9:00 AM and Thursday, 11:59 PM during the Finals Week (June 10-June 13)
[Since you can upload your paper only once, please make sure you are ready to submit it. Please do not wait till the last minute
as you will have technical difficulties.]
NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED.
Length: 250-300 words, double-spaced. (excluding the extra credit question)
Please respond to both questions 1 and 2 for Part I. For Part II, choose ONLY 1 music video out of the 2 music videos given
below. Extra credit question is optional.
Please submit your papers electronically on TritonEd, which will be open only during the period mentioned above.
Part I: Short Questions (15 pts. X 2 = 30 pts.)
Please respond to the following questions as succinctly and briefly as you can.
1. Explain how varying intersectionalities of class, race/ethnicity, nationality and sexual orientation construct asymmetrical
hierarchies of masculinities in the multiracial national and global contexts.
2. What does Romit Dasgupta mean when he writes that masculinism and patriarchy have had oppressive consequences not only
for women but also for men and that in Japan some men have formed alliances with feminist women?
Part II: Please analyze ONE of the two music videos, utilizing, applying, and revising the concepts from the list of terms below.
Select only 3 concepts that are most relevant to the music video and make sure your analysis is in-depth and succinct at the same
time. (A YouTube link will be given on TritonEd.) (70 pts.)
2 PM’s music video, “Heartbeat” OR BTS’s music video, “Boy with Luv”
List of Terms
--Performativity of gender/masculinity
--Homosociality and masculinity
--Recuperation of patriarchy and masculinism; repatriarchalization / remasculinization; expansion of masculinity and/or patriarchy:
masochism, vulnerability
--Militarized masculinity (cf. military proletarianization); Anti-war masculinity
--Gangster/ “tough guy” masculinity / Korean and Asian machismo
--Masochism/sadism
--Sentimentalization of violence; glamourization of violence; spectacularization of violence
--Primacy of the body; spectacularization of the body
--Confucian Masculinity: wen/wu; seonbi masculinity (wen); filial piety and masculinity; fatherhood and masculinity
--Hegemonic masculinity vs. subordinated masculinity
--Globalized metrosexuality
--Working-class masculinity: rural working-class, “foreignized”
--Middle-class masculinity; the salaryman masculinity: “corporate warrior” as modern, urban, nationalized
--Cross-class male bonding/homosociality
--Racialized/ethnicized masculinity
--Queer and gay male sexuality; Heterosexism, heteronormativity; homonormativity
--Globalized “Korean” masculinity
--Hybridized masculinity (hybridization or transculturation) vs. racial and Cultural appropriation
--“Manufactured versatile masculinity: flexible, transformable and hybridized”
--“bishonen”: pan-Asian pretty boy; androgyny / feminization of masculinity: “effeminacy”
Extra Credit Question On Grant Leuning’s lecture on Ieodo (2 points) [less than 1/3 of a page]
In the gender mythology expressed (and critiqued) in Ieodo, femininity is associated with a natural past of rural communities, while
masculinity is aligned with modernity, industrial production and centralized urban development. However, Kim Ki-young's film
uses sex, sexuality and sex work as the privileged location where these relationships are either qualified or completely confused.
Choose one of these moments from the film and close read some aspect of the text (which include the dialogue but also the images,
sounds of the filmic scene) to show how the mythic binary of feminine past and masculine modernity is challenged.
Spring 2019 / LTEA 143 /
“Creating Corporate Warriors: The ‘Salaryman’ and Masculinity in Japan” by Romit Dasgupta
“Introduction”
--The image of “salaryman” in the Western context vs. the salaryman as a “hegemonic ideal” in
the postwar Japanese context itself.
Question: How are they different?
--His main argument: the salaryman as a “gendered construct”
===Dasgupta argues that this has been missing in our understanding of Japan, Japanese culture
and the salaryman.
Question: Why do you think?
“Salaryman masculinity: demarcations and delineations”
--"The salaryman=kigyo senshi [corporate warrior]: archetypal heterosexual husband/father and
producer/provider”
--The salaryman: gender (masculine), sexual orientation (heterosexual), class (middle-class)
Cf. South Korea
--While the term, “salaryman,” was adopted, but not its Japanese equivalent, “kigyo
senshi”(corporate warrior).
--Instead, a modified term, “sanŏp chŏnsa” [industrial warrior] was much more commonly
used. “Industrial warrior”: used as a propagandistic term by the state and companies for male
workers, more often, in “heavy” industries.
Question: It’s curious that in South Korea, the term kigyo senshi/corporate warrior did not
become a dominant concept, although the idea of corporate masculinity of the salaryman was
clearly a prevailing hegemonic ideal of masculinity, while the term, “warrior,” was attached to
high-skilled working-class, male workers. Why?
“Modernity, the nation-state and salaryman masculinity”
Question: To what period does Dasgupta trace the origin of the salaryman masculinity? And
what were the main attributes and qualities associated with the code of masculinity in that
period?
1
Roughly during the interwar era, the term, salaryman, came to represent the “New Japanese
Male”: embodiment of a new modern, industrialized, urban Japan.
Competing masculinities of the era: “Modern Boy” [mobo]
Cf. Modern Girl [moga]
Cf. In colonial Korea: similar types, mobo and moga
Question: How does Dasgupta characterize the “Modern Boy” (mobo) ? What are the behaviors
and qualities associated with him?
--"Dandy, materialism, debauchery, anguish, feminization, androgy…”
Question: Despite the ostensible contrast between the salaryman and the mobo, how are they
related to each other, according to Dasgupta? (p. 5 top)
“Performing the salaryman masculinity”
Question: What do you think he means by this idea? How did popular culture contribute to the
construction of the salaryman masculinity and help men perform it? (p. 5 middle)
The Salaryman Masculinity as the hegemonic masculinity in the postwar era Japan
--Alternative and competing masculinities: the soldier and the farmer “neutralized”
--Japan’s “Economic Miracle” of the 1950s and 60s AND the salaryman as the “hegemonic
masculinity”
--Military masculinity no longer idealized in the postwar era. But militarization of white-collar
workers → "Corporate warrior”
Questions: How does this situation compare with the case of South Korea?
--Militarized masculinity: soldiers in Vietnam, mandatory draft
--Militarization of working class masculinity: “industrial warriors”
--Were middle-class, white-collar workers militarized as the hegemonic masculinity in South
Korea?
--What would you say the hegemonic masculinity in South Korea was during the
industrializing era?
2
“Recreating and resisting salaryman masculinity through popular culture”
Question: What are the popular cultural genres/mediums that helped to shape the salaryman
masculinity? (p. 6 bottom) How did the self-improvement publications play a role in this
process? (p. 7 top) What kinds of things did they teach? (p. 8)
Question: How would you relate all the above, i.e., the contents of these “instructions,” to the
idea of “performativity” of the salaryman masculinity?
According to the disciplinary instruction of these popular cultural productions: “correct”
behaviors → “success”
Sarariiman Kintaro (p. 10 bottom-p. 11)
Question: Summarize Dasgupta’s analysis of this manga series.
Question: In the JTB series, “A Salaryman’s Joy and Anxieties” and “Salaryman’s Blues,”
Dasgupta tells us, we encounter various gender oppressions that salarymen experience. What
are these gendered problems, issues and suffering that salarymen experience? And where does
Dasgupta locate the causes of their oppression? What types of resistance does he say these
cultural productions represent, if any?
“Decline of the salaryman”
Question: What are the historical, economic, social, cultural reasons for the decline of the
salaryman according to Dasgupta? (p. 14 top)
3
Question: How does this situation, “decline of the salaryman,” compare with South Korea? Is
there a similar trend in Korea?
From Dasgupta
“In the 1990s, various men’s groups (often with links to feminist groups or other grassroots
social movements) were established, drawing attention to the personal and social costs of
hegemonic masculinity.”
“All of these developments have allowed for a greater range of ‘voices’ to be heard and the
‘other’ masculinities that have always existed in the shadow of the hegemonic masculinity have
become more visible…. One such example is the emergence of gay male masculinity…. “
“….in a discussion of the apparent ‘softening’ of the masculine image in popular cultural
representations…… such apparently ‘progressive’ changes in masculinity may in fact work
toward ‘recuperating patriarchal ideology by making it more adaptable to contemporary social
conditions and more able to accommodate counterhegemonic forces such as liberal-feminist
ideology and gay/lesbian politics’…” ( p. 14)
4
Purchase answer to see full
attachment