Gender and Communication essay

3. Refer to the article on King of the Hill to address the following questions.

A. Explain the terms “folly” and “ambivalence as discussed in the article. (4 pts)

• Bobby hill is a current expression of the wise fool, demonstrating the fool and folly to prompt audiences to be more critical of contemporary culture, specifically gender performance.

• A folly allows for new ways of seeing and thinking

• Through Bobby’s folly, gender aspects are placed into question and loosened, enabling more fluid and diverse ideas of gender to emerge.

• Through his repetitive folly, Bobby denaturalizes masculinity, disturbs gender norms, and poses a paradox in thinking regarding the hegemonic gender

• The medium of animation works fluidly with the figure of the fool to provide a space of ambivalence where gender subversion is achieved

• The fool and animation have mutually reinforcing features that enable Bobby to habitually defy gender norms, receive reproach, and then return to transgressing gender norms again, as if nothing has occurred

• “Ambivalence” to norms and rules is one way to disrupt the cycle of iteration

B. Explain what the author means by arguing that not all men benefit from traditional, hegemonic notions of masculinity. (6pts)

• Although hegemonic masculinity is perceived as a social and political advantage to those men who occupy this position, in the last decades the US has addressed the distress faced by white heterosexual men and their contradictory experiences of power

• white men in US society have notably different experiences of power and powerlessness, based on a complex web of social relationships

C. Provide three examples of how Bobby Hill disrupts traditional notions of masculinity. (5 pts)

• Bobby’s inability to exude competence, and dominance, in the arena of sports iterate the slippage of normative masculinity

▪ Fear of being seen as a siss dominates the cultural definitions of manhood.

• On his next attempt, the golf club flies out of his hands, into the air, and hits a man, rendering him unconscious, thus punctuating Bobby’s lack of coordination. The humor elicited by Bobby’s accident indicates that his