{"id":474,"date":"2023-06-29T11:55:05","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T11:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/glare\/?p=474"},"modified":"2024-06-27T14:42:31","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T14:42:31","slug":"hegemonic-masculinity-and-the-subversion-of-gender-stereotypes-a-linguistic-analysis-of-dreamworks-how-to-train-your-dragon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/glare\/hegemonic-masculinity-and-the-subversion-of-gender-stereotypes-a-linguistic-analysis-of-dreamworks-how-to-train-your-dragon\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegemonic masculinity and the subversion of gender stereotypes: A linguistic analysis of DreamWorks’ ‘How to Train Your Dragon’"},"content":{"rendered":"

“When I was a boy, my father told me to bang my head against a rock, and I did it. I thought it was crazy, but I didn\u2019t question him. And you know what happened? That rock split in two. It taught me what a Viking could do, Gobber. He could crush mountains, level forests, tame seas! Even as a boy, I knew what I was, what I had to become\u2026 Hiccup is not that boy.” – Stoick the Vast, How to Train Your Dragon<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Toxic masculinity\u2019, \u2018alpha males\u2019 and \u2018red pill\u2019 culture are all terms which have risen in popularity within the last decade across the social sphere of the Internet. \u2018Red pill\u2019 culture refers to the behaviours and ideologies some groups of men uphold and often promote to other men and young boys typically on the Internet, in order to \u2018open their eyes\u2019 to the realities of manhood in the modern day. Andrew Tate is one such notorious Internet figure, influencer and businessman. He markets himself on his website and other platforms as an economically successful \u2018alpha male\u2019, feeding lies and brainwashing his young and impressionable audience to \u2018escape The Matrix\u2019 through purchasing his services and \u2018invaluable\u2019 knowledge. How \u2018valuable\u2019 this knowledge is can be rightly contested, as Robert Lawson<\/a> suggests, Tate is, “selling extreme masculinity to young men.” In this blog post, I\u2019m going to show how stereotypes of masculinity, toxic or otherwise, are portrayed in the Dreamworks film How to Train Your Dragon <\/em><\/a>(Sanders and DeBlois, 2010).<\/p>\n

Broadly speaking, this \u2018alpha male\u2019 persona is often associated with the desire to be the male with the most power, dominance and social status which are characteristics inherently derived from traditional gender roles. As a result of this, a number of toxic traits can arise such as a lack of emotional expression, violence and misogyny, to name a few. The strive for \u2018alpha\u2019 status and the social domination of the patriarchal figure through the practice of toxic masculinity are encompassed under the term of \u2018hegemonic masculinity\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Hegemonic masculinity generally describes the behaviours and practices that legitimise social domination of men over other genders and marginalised ways of performing masculinity. Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) define hegemonic masculinity as embodying, “the most honored way of being a man,” and requires, “other men to position themselves in relation to it,” (p. 832). In How to Train Your Dragon, <\/em>the chief of Berk, \u2018Stoick the Vast<\/a>\u2019 can be viewed as embodying the most \u2018honourable\u2019 way of displaying manhood, both physically and emotionally (as his name, almost identical to the adjective \u2018stoic\u2019, suggests). His son Hiccup<\/a>, on the other hand, is positioned far from being a hegemonically masculine figure. As a result of his small stature, lack of fighting ability and timid nature, Hiccup embodies everything Stoick is not. This results in a lot of tension in their relationship as father and son, which develops and changes throughout the film.<\/p>\n

As Milani (2014) writes, “those who contest hegemonic masculinity are punished for deviating from the norm,” (p. 14) and this is evidenced for Hiccup throughout the narrative as he experiences relentless bullying by his peers. By the end of the film, Hiccup sets a new standard for what it means to be a \u2018Viking\u2019, which ultimately changes Stoick\u2019s traditional beliefs that a Viking can only be strong and powerful, encompassing characteristics typically associated with hegemonic masculinity. Hiccup shows that although he is physically weaker, his compassion and his understanding nature towards dragons, as well as his intelligence and creativity, allows for a subversion of the gendered stereotypes his father held him to and for a new presentation of masculinity to emerge.<\/p>\n

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There have been a few studies into the subversion of gender stereotypes and the presentation of masculinity in How to Train Your Dragon<\/em> (see Assa, Yulia and Sarmiati, 2022<\/a>; Stienstra, 2022) but these are either largely lacking in detailed linguistic analysis or rooted in rhetorical criticism and interpretation. Through focusing on language in this analysis, I\u2019ll show how stereotypically gendered language use can perpetuate and uphold hegemonic, toxic masculinity in animation. Focusing mainly on language, I\u2019ll discuss the ways in which the protagonist Hiccup subverts gender stereotypes of hegemonic masculinity and how others promote it through their respective uses of language.<\/p>\n

Toxic masculinity and (im)politeness surrounding the male body<\/h2>\n

(Im)politeness strategies (see Brown and Levinson, 1987) and their relation to gendered speech has been an area of research in the field of language and gender for a considerable amount of time (see Lakoff, 1973). Benabdellah<\/a> (2018) studied this phenomenon in relation to Disney\u2019s animated films and found that Disney heroines displayed more politeness than males and also found that, “males use impolite speech acts to seek dominance, struggle and competition,” (p. 48). This can be seen in the community of Berk wherein the Viking culture seems to surround the social status one gains in killing the most dragons.<\/p>\n

Excerpt 1<\/span><\/p>\n