Media, Masculinities, and the Machine : F1, Transformers, and Fantasizing Technology at its Limits

Media, Masculinities and the Machine identifies a distinctive phenomenon in today's media culture - the contemporary male fantasy of 'suiting up' and pushing technology to its limits. The authors deconstruct this fantasy using two in-depth studies from American, British and global media: the social imagining of hi-tech in the long-running Transformers franchise and global Formula One motorsport , with links to numerous other areas of contemporary culture. By employing the method of autoethnography to find out what boys and men want and say, the book offers a timely contribution to our understanding of contemporary cultural attachments, as well as informative accounts of two instances united by their apparent gender focus and by their interest in ways of imagining high-tech. Tracking their theme through TV, cinema, toys, computer games, magazines, comics and merchandising, the authors raise important questions about mediated masculinities today and propose a new theoretical framework for uncovering what is going on.