Making Men - Newcastle University eTheses

328 Pages·2012·0.72 MB·English

Making Men:
Representations of boyhoods in
contemporary young adult fictions

Michele Gill

PhD in English Literature

Newcastle University

September 2009
Abstract

From the early 1990s onwards the representations of boyhoods which have been most
visible in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the USA have suggested that boys as a
group are problematic both to themselves and to the societies in which they live. Images
which have been projected from cultural spaces including film, advertising, music, and
the popular press produce pictures of danger and conversely, inadequacy. A number of
generalist books which have appeared on the market express anxieties about boys’
futures, citing with regularity problems with emotional literacy and educational
underachievement. Academic literature, in responding to these claims, has largely
become framed by the notion of ‘crisis’, giving priority either to boyhoods which are
perceived as problematic or addressing the discourse either to prove or disprove its
validity. Far less work has gone into exploring other, more positive aspects of boys’ lives
and their attendant optimistic, affirmative images with which boys can engage.
This thesis explores a neglected source of cultural images of boyhoods; novels
drawn from the genre of young adult fiction with teenage, male protagonists and
published in the UK, Australia, and the USA from the 1990s into the new millennium. In
doing so it considers ways in which fictional boys are portrayed in these texts and the
images which they are projecting about boyhoods to potential readers. My research
reveals that this area of publishing offers diverse images of fictional boyhoods, some of
which do address questions raised in the course of the ‘crisis’ debate, some presenting
other versions of being young and male. I conclude that as a body of work they represent
a positive source for images of boyhoods and, significantly, reinstate the perception of
boys as individual, unique and diverse; something which is missing from most of the
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representations which arise from the ‘crisis’ discourse, with its construction of boys as a
homogenous group whose members lack individual agency. As such, they offer readers
(male and female, juvenile and adult) an alternative source of cultural imagery - more
individualistic, more optimistic - about boyhoods, than many of the more visible and
debated cultural versions currently in circulation in the UK, Australia and the USA.
Key works discussed (listed alphabetically by author): The Tragedy of Miss
Geneva Flowers by Joe Babcock, Tyrell by Coe Booth, Blade: Playing Dead by Tim
Bowler, Doing It by Melvin Burgess, The Heroic Lives of Al Capsella by Judith Clarke,
My Side of the Story by Will Davis, Metro by Alasdair Duncan, Sushi Central by
Alasdair Duncan, 48 Shades of Brown by Nick Earls, Deadly Unna? by Philip Gwynne,
Nukkin’ Ya by Philip Gwynne, By the River by Steven Herrick, What We Do Is Secret by
Thorn Kief Hillsbery, Jack by A.M. Holmes, Mahalia by Joanne Horniman, Alex Rider
series by Anthony Horowitz, Slam by Nick Hornby, The First Part Last by Angela
Johnson, Harold’s End by JT LeRoy, Boy meets Boy by David Levithan, Indigo’s Star by
Hilary McKay, Boy Soldier series by Andy McNab, Cherub Club series by Robert
Muchamore, Monster by Walter Dean Myers, Sad Boys by Glyn Parry, The Crew by Bali
Rai, Gangsta Rap by Benjamin Zephaniah.

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Acknowledgments

Since beginning my thesis I have received support and encouragement from a great
number of people and would like to take this opportunity to thank them.

My supervisors –
Professor Kim Reynolds of Newcastle University and Professor Sharyn Pearce of
Queensland University of Technology who have both shared their knowledge and time
generously, with a great deal of good humour and encouragement.

Dr. Nolan Dalrymple, Dr. Matthew Grenby, and my fellow students in the Children’s
Literature Unit at Newcastle University.

Professor Kay Sambell, Dr. Mel Gibson, and Linda Graham at the Centre for Excellence
in Teaching and Learning at Northumbria University.

Dr. Liz Thiel and Laura Atkins at the National Centre for Research in Children’s
Literature at Roehampton University.

I would especially like to thank my parents, George and Winifred Gill - without their
support I would never have had this opportunity.

Also, a big thank you to all of my friends who have gone though the experience of
writing a thesis with me…especially Jen, Alexis and Tim who continued to ask the
questions long after they wanted to hear the answers!

And finally, to all of the boys I worked with at Uxbridge College who were ultimately the
inspiration for this thesis.

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Contents Page

Introduction p.1
‘Boys are Beautiful’

Chapter One p.54
Adventure

Chapter Two p.96
Friendship

Chapter Three p.150
Family

Chapter Four p.201
Romance

Conclusion p.271
Making Men

List of works cited p.284

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Introduction. ‘Boys are Beautiful’
December, 5 months later

It is five months since the trial, almost a year, minus a few days, since the
robbery in the drugstore. James King was sentenced to 25 years to life.
Osvaldo was arrested for stealing a car and sent to a reformatory. As far as I
know, Bobo is still in jail.
My mother doesn’t understand what I am doing with the films I am
making. I have been taking movies of myself. In the movies I talk and tell
the camera who I am, what I think I am about. Sometimes I set the camera
up outside and walk up to it from different angles.
Sometimes I set the camera up in front of a mirror and film myself as a
reflection. I wear different clothes and sometimes try to change my voice.
Jerry likes to use the camera, and I let him film me too. Whatever I do
pleases my mother, because I am here with her and not put away in some
jail.
After the trial, my father, with tears in his eyes, held me close and said
that he was thankful that I did not have to go to jail. He moved away, and
the distance between us seemed to grow bigger and bigger. I understand the
distance. My father is no longer sure of who I am. He doesn’t understand me
knowing people like King or Bobo or Osvaldo. He wonders what else he
doesn’t know.
That is why I take the films of myself. I want to know who I am. I want to
know the road to panic that I took. I want to look at myself a thousand times
to look for one true image. When Miss O’Brien looked at me, after we had
won the case, what did she see that caused her to turn away?

What did she see?

(Myers, 1999: 279-281)

Walter Dean Myers’ Monster (1999) is a fictional account of one year in the life of Steve
Harmon, a sixteen year old, African American boy, resident of Harlem, New York City.
However for several months of the year in question he has been incarcerated in the
Manhattan Detention Center, on trial for taking part in a drugstore robbery which led to
the murder of the shop owner. Steve is the narrator of the story, though Myers chooses to
present the narrative through two different forms: a diary in which Steve’s private
thoughts and feelings are disclosed, and a film script which Steve writes to relive the
events in the courtroom. Steve is described in the novel as a promising film student and
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his college tutor acts as a character witness for him in court. The interactions of the two
narratorial modes suggest that Steve uses the script to distance himself from what is
happening, to try and make sense of the chaotic situation. The emotional trauma he is
going through becomes evident in the diary entries. In terms of the narrative as a whole,
the changes in format raise awareness about perception; without access to Steve’s internal
thoughts and feelings, how do others - his father, the lawyer, the jurors, other prisoners -
make judgments about him? On what are their conclusions based? Is he really a monster?
Myers never answers this directly; the outcome is ambivalent, perhaps deliberately so,
leaving readers to arrive at their own conclusions.
Myers’ narrative raises a number of interesting questions specifically about
perceptions and representations of boyhood beyond the plot of the novel; most
importantly, it asks when looking at young men, what do we as individuals, as a society,
see? From this it goes on to question whether we position them as a homogeneous group
and judge them as such? Are we influenced by social status or race? What impact does
this have on individual boys? The title of Myers’ novel, Monster, is a loaded descriptor,
and suggests preconceived opinions and value judgments and yet, it is quite appropriate
as a precursor to my thesis which is concerned with attitudes and anxieties about boys in
Britain, the USA, and Australia. Since the early 1990s all three countries have expressed
concerns about their boys, perceiving and representing them as both troubled and
troubling. How and why this negative discourse about boys in crisis came into existence,
and how it is negotiated and translated by fictional narratives, is the central concern of
this thesis. Using evidence gathered from wide reading of novels published for the
teenage fiction market (also known as Young Adult or YA) as well as material from
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cognate research fields (Men’s Studies, Gender, and Boyhood), alongside images of
boyhood in popular culture, I consider whether ‘crisis’ is a term which can credibly be
applied to boyhood. Further, I question if crisis is a helpful framework or simply serves
to reinforce negative perceptions, encouraging societies to think of boys as a problematic,
indistinguishable group. While the thesis does consider current attitudes towards
boyhood, the main focus is on the period from the mid-1990s to the beginning of the new
millennium, for this is when the idea of ‘crisis’ was particularly prevalent. The thesis,
therefore, considers the crisis discourse retrospectively while also exploring its impact on
continuing research in the area of boyhood. In addition to the novels published during the
period under discussion I also include a number of more recent works which point to
possible future directions for debates and imagery about boyhood.
In considering ‘crisis’ in terms of a discourse, I draw in essence on the ideas of
Michel Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language
(1971), in which he explores the relationship between structures of power and
signification. A more contemporary explanation of discourse in the spirit of Foucault is
suggested by Woods (1999) who acknowledges the problematic nature of the term:
‘Discourse’ is a slippery word, but it is often understood as the
institutionalised practice through which signification and value are imposed,
sanctioned and exchanged. In other words, discourses are the variety of
different linguistic structures in which we engage in dynamic interchanges
of beliefs, attitudes, sentiments and other expressions of consciousness,
underpinned as they are by specific configurations of historical, social and
cultural power.
(14-15)

Woods’ description of discourse informs its use in this thesis in that I understand
societies and cultures to be both regulated and constructed by discursive practices which
consequently impact on and constrain the thoughts and behaviour of the individual. Barry
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(2009) captures both the diverse yet all encompassing nature of discourse as originally
suggested by Foucault:
Discourse is not just a way of speaking, or writing, but the whole ‘mental
set’ and ideology which encloses the thinking of all members of a given
society. It is not singular and monolithic – there is always a multiplicity of
discourses – so that the operation of structures is as significant a factor in
(say) the family as in layers of government.
(170)

This is especially pertinent in relation to the concept of ‘crisis’ and how it has become
increasingly associated with boyhood, a situation largely created through popular cultural
media and academic discussion.

‘Boys in crisis’
In 1996 Australian author Glyn Parry addressed the Third National Conference of the
Children’s Book Council in Brisbane. While Parry’s paper, entitled ‘Boys are Beautiful’,
ostensibly considered the subject of boys and reading, or their perceived failure to read,
he used the address to raise awareness of what he alleged was the hazardous state of
boys’ lives: not just their educational underachievement but also their predilection for
risk-taking behaviour and its consequences:
I worry when the Australian Broadcasting Authority informs me that boys
want to see dead bodies and lots of blood. I worry when I am told that boys
are more likely to be suspended or excluded from school, that boys are more
likely to commit suicide or be involved in a fatal accident, that the enemy
they kill is within.
(Parry, 1996: 57)

Delivered in the aftermath of the Port Arthur Massacre1 Parry’s address was emotional
and as such, unmeasured. Yet since then he has not been alone in suggesting that boys are

1 A massacre took place in Port Arthur, Tasmania, on 28 April 1996 when 35 people were killed and
another 21 wounded by 28 year-old Martin Bryant, who went on a shooting spree. See M. Bingham (1996)
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in trouble. For example, writing in the USA in 2000, Christina Hoff Sommers highlighted
similar concerns about the ways in which boys are perceived in contemporary society:
It’s a bad time to be a boy in America. As the new millennium begins, the
triumphant victory of our women’s soccer team has come to symbolize the
spirit of American girls. The defining event for boys is the shooting at
Columbine High.2
(18)

Sommers, then, suggests that boys have become entwined in and are possibly being
defined by a discourse which equates them with violence and failure. Like Parry, she
goes on to consider their educational underachievement and the inevitable concerns this
raises about their long term future prospects. Although different in many respects, British
author Melvin Burgess, discussing the characters in his novel Doing It (2003), suggests
that in contemporary texts, fictional male characters are represented by a very limited
range of types. He further implies that perceptions of young men in society as a whole are
inaccurate and damaging:
There’s no shortage of people willing to sneer at young men for their
clumsiness, their shyness, their lack of social skills and to attack them for
their attitude to girls. Men, perhaps not in society at large but in fictions,
often don’t get a good deal these days. There’s the action man, the cool
dude, the oaf, the wimp; not much else […] I wanted to do some
psychological realism and show that young men aren’t just blundering
buffoons, teetering on the edge of sexual violence all the time, but sensitive
as well as coarse, thoughtful as well as lustful, vulnerable as well as crude;
and above all, irreverent and funny.
(Burgess, 2004: 296)

While Burgess seeks to impress on readers the roundedness of the fictional male
character and, by implication, young men on the street, he nevertheless draws a

Suddenly One Sunday or M. Scott (1996) Port Arthur: A Story of Strength and Courage for more details
about the events.
2 The now infamous Columbine High School massacre took place on 20 April 1999. Two students, Eric
Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide. For a detailed study
of the events and the implications of the killings see, D. Cullen (2009) Columbine.
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