Brunch Seminar Week 2

"The best male contraceptive is an empty wallet": Representation of men and masculinity in Ghana's popular culture

Speaker: Charles Prempeh, PhD

Abstract

What constitutes a man and masculinity is hardly uniform across cultures. Yet, most societies across the world expect men to undertake instrumental roles, which similarly draw out antinomy. The antinomy finds expression in concepts such as toxic masculinity and androcentrism used in both popular and academic discourses. Notwithstanding these valorised concepts, popular cultures have become major outlets for society's representation of gendered boundaries. Consequently, my presentation deploys multi-theories, including popular culture and existentialism and humour, to analyse popular narratives about men and masculinity. As sources for my data, I will rely on male-related memes and terse creative inventions that are distributed on social media platforms. My paper argues that whereas these popular narratives are superficially meant to orchestrate homour, they fundamentally communicate and represent both the explicit and implicit boundaries within which society expects men to express their maleness and masculinity