Workers Online
Workers Online
Workers Online
  Issue No 45 Official Organ of LaborNet 10 March 2000  

 --

 --

 --

Technology

Building The Hypermacho Man

Extracted from Cracking the Gender Code - Who Rules the Wired World?

In a stinging critque of the 'Wired' culture, Melanie Stewart Miller argues digital cultural is creating a new super-Man.

 
 

The intensity with which Wired discourse consistently excludes, degrades and attempts to destroy difference is equalled only by its almost obsessive reconstruction of white masculinity in a new, quintessentially hypermodern form.

This new hypermodern machismo combines the mainstays of the emerging digital culture with very traditional constructions of masculine power, frontier mythology and technological transcendence. What emerges is an image of a hypermacho man who uses new forms of technology to reassert power. He dominates older forms of capital and the nation-state for the benefit of his new digital economic frontier, and reasserts traditional gender roles that protect masculine privilege.

The Wired man is the creation of visual and linguistic devices combined with the long-standing symbolic associations that govern hegemonic western culture. The resulting discourse reaches out and tries to grab the reader personally, invoking images of hypermasculinity and supplementing these with very political, ideological content.

Attracting the Right Readers

Although Wired's design screams for attention, the high-tech intensity that characterises the Wired look does not appeal to all potential readers. In fact, the style is uniquely designed to attract a particular brand of reader, namely, Wired's self-proclaimed constituency and readership, the digital generation. It is this digital generation that is to find itself and reality it understands graphically reflected in the magazine's design. As we have seen, other potential readers are often turned away at the first sight of Wired's cover.

As a result, the significance of the cover, as the primary identifier, cannot be underestimated. The basic elements of the cover do not stray from the conventions of commercial publications: a primary graphic features the character, author, personality or issue being highlighted in the magazine and a series of headlines entice the reader below a consistent, easily-identifiable banner. What most dramatically distinguishes the cover of Wired on the newsstand is its colour intensity, the unusually provocative headlines and the creative, frequently computer-generated, cover image. Together, these elements create a strikingly unreal or hyper-real visual image that either attracts or repels potential readers.

In order to understand how this is done, it is useful to once again compare Wired with a more familiar and ubiquitous magazine genre, the women's fashion magazine. According to Ellen McCracken's useful study of this genre, the cover image of a model on a so-called women's magazine represents a "Window to the future self," a symbol of what the reader can achieve by consuming the magazine's content. The cover of Wired serves an analogous function as both the window to the individual reader's future and to a more generalized future world.

The cover does more than simply catch the eye of the casual passer-by. Wired's cover graphic, which most often depicts a celebrity of the digital generation, challenges the (presumed) male reader to emulate the characteristics and achievements of the cover "model," who is almost always a white male. Just as the cover model of Cosmopolitan comes to signify the "Cosmo girl," and all the values endorsed by the magazine, so the figure on the cover of Wired represents elite members of the digital generation.

And, like the model on the cover of a fashion magazine, the image on Wired's cover plays on the vulnerabilities of its intended readers in order to draw them in. Female readers of fashion magazines find themselves drawn to the unrealistic, fantastic images of the current feminine ideal and their attendant promises of happiness and adoration; so the digital generation likewise sees on the cover of Wireda graphic representation of all that they (apparently) want to be. While the fashion magazine promises to replace anxiety and emptiness with the adulation that cosmetic beauty provides, Wired promises to replace a sense of lack of control or fear of emasculation with a reinvigorated form of masculine privilege in a digital world. How is this achieved?

Like the Cosmo girl, the Wired man is a figure who is mediated by the commercial products and themes that fill the magazine. Yet while female cover models wear the products that the fashion magazine advertises and project the flawless, current fashion image, Wired's cover model is frequently depicted through a technological lens; he is shown superimposed on a surreal hypermodern background, or he is represented as a computer-enhanced image. He becomes a symbol of technology's wonders and a testament to the joys of a digital future.

The Wired cover model does not need to wear any particular products, because he himself is infused with the most important product of all: technology. This association is enhanced by the fact that Wired's cover models are usually leading technology gurus and futurists like Nicholas Negroponte or George Gilder, or computer game creators like John and Adrian Cormack and John Romero, or corporate leaders like Bell Atlantic's CEO Ray Smith, or Citicorp/Citibank's CEO Walter Wriston. These figures are depicted as obvious masculine personas.

However, unlike so-called cover girls, Wired cover icons look directly into the camera. They do not avert their eye coyly or present a subordinate sex symbol image that invites the male gaze. Their stance is authoritative if not outwardly aggressive, and their facial expressions reveal self-confidence and power. Unlike the nameless Cosmo girl, the Wired man's name or professional affiliation is prominently displayed in a short headline that situates him as an important figure in digital culture. These headlines affirm the power and prestige of the featured figure, while connecting him to the Wired world. For example, Walter Writson's image is accompanied by the headline, "He was the most powerful banker in the world. So why is he talking like a cyberpunk?"

Rather than suggesting passivity and availability, the Wired man is definitely active, physically or intellectually flexing his muscles in a hyper-modern Wired world. Despite the fact that his image is digitally altered or that he is flanked by an artificial background, he appears to remain in control of the image and the technology presented. He is not made attractive by "scientific advances in skin care" like the models in fashion magazines or patronized by hairspray's "bendy-holdy technology stuff" like models on TV ads. The viewer does not gaze at him but is confronted by him. As a result, the reader enters the Wired world as a challenge, not as a voyeur. Together, these elements reinforce a long-standing, exclusive cultural association that links technology with masculine power and privilege.

Of course, not all covers of Wired feature the elite members of the digital generation. The privilege has also been enjoyed by some more mainstream cultural celebrities. They too have been subject to the wonders of digital photographic manipulation and high-tech effects.

For example, the race car driver Jacques Villeneuve becomes "wired" when he is represented in a highly stylised, technologically mediated image that links him to digital culture. The fallen sports star O J Simpson is worthy of a Wired cover only when every aspect of his face (lips, nose, eyes) is technologically altered to portray hymn as a white man. Even when Wired has no human subject on its cover at all, its technological preoccupation is clear as is its provocative, aggressive tone. Covers that feature cartoon images or bold graphics are less direct representations of the digital generation and more symbolic of the extent to which technologies, rather than people, are central to the Wired world.

The accompanying headlines pitch stories in a dramatic way, frequently using war imagery or hyperbole to emphasize their significance. For example, one cover that generated controversy and resulted in a flurry of letters to the editor in the following issue features the Apple computer logo wrapped in barbed wire. Beneath it is a single word: "Pray." The image emphasizes the technology-related content of the magazine and reflects the construction of corporate competition as an exciting, take-no-prisoners battle in which only the powerful will survive. Apple's shrinking market share, it would seem, makes it a candidate for divine intervention. The tag lines that accompany the Apple logo on this cover are typical Wired fare: "Starwave's Jocks Score," "The Summer's Best Special Effects," "Telco Terrorism" and "Exclusive: Jacking into China." In these lines, technology combines with corporate power games and male sexual imagery to construct one of Wired's dominant equations: technology = power = masculine privilege. Even when the face of the digital generation is absent, its interests and self-image are reflected on the cover of Wired.


------

*    Purchase Cracking the Gender Code

*   View entire issue - print all of the articles!

*   Issue 45 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Interview: Working Women
Nareen Young talks about how services are being delivered to our most vulnerable workers - and what unions need to do to make them their own.
*
*  Unions: Into the New Frontier
IT professionals are part of the new workforce that unions need to win over - and while they are often contractors, they're workers too.
*
*  History: Handling The Ladies
1943 - women were filling the gap in the workforce left by the diggers abroad and Australian managers needed some advice on how to deal with these strange creatures.
*
*  Technology: Building The Hypermacho Man
In a stinging critque of the �Wired� culture, Melanie Stewart Miller argues digital cultural is creating a new super-Man.
*
*  International: The Long March Home
Trade union women round the world used International Women�s Day to launch the World March of Women Against Poverty and Violence.
*
*  Satire: Kerosene Dilution Racket
The nursing home industry has been rocked by a new scandal with the revelation that some unscrupulous proprietors have been diluting their patients� kerosene baths with illicit liquids.
*
*  Review: Power and the Back Bar
In an upcoming book, Julia Gillard argues the ALP retains a male culture that is fast losing step with contemporary society.
*

News
»  Services Threatened Over Olympic Bonus
*
»  Games Edict: Dance for Free
*
»  Revealed: Secret State Transit Corporatisation Plans
*
»  Women Demand Better Pay from Faye
*
»  Telstra, Banks Whack Rural Australia
*
»  Casuals Inquiry Still On Union Agenda
*
»  Shaw, Sams Pay Tribute to John Whelan
*
»  Teachers� Website Mysteriously Blocked
*
»  Cash Bonus for Bilingual Workers
*
»  Women Demand Better Pay from Faye
*
»  Shareholders Push Global Action
*
»  Fair Wear Conquers Schools
*
»  TWU Calls on Workers to Steer Clear of Woolworths
*
»  Push to Strike Out Parrish Directors
*

Columns
»  The Soapbox
*
»  Sport
*
»  Trades Hall
*
»  Tool Shed
*

Letters to the editor
»  TV Show Seeks Bankrupt Worker
*
»  Crosby Spot On
*
»  Confused About Workplace Rights
*
»  Global Campaign Against Yahoo!
*
»  Teachers Row
*

What you can do

Notice Board
- Check out the latest events

Latest Issue

View entire latest issue
- print all of the articles!

Previous Issues

Subject index

Search all issues

Enter keyword(s):
  


Workers Online - 2nd place Labourstart website of the year


BossWatch


Wobbly Radio



[ Home ][ Notice Board ][ Search ][ Previous Issues ][ Latest Issue ]

© 1999-2000 Labor Council of NSW

LaborNET is a resource for the labour movement provided by the Labor Council of NSW

URL: http://workers.labor.net.au/45/c_historicalfeature_wired.html
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005

[ Privacy Statement | Disclaimer | Credits ]

LaborNET is proudly created, designed and programmed by Social Change Online for the Labor Council of NSW

 *LaborNET*

 Labor Council of NSW

[Workers Online]

[Social Change Online]