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 pushing technology to its limits. The authors offer two in-depth studies: 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 drawing on non-representational theory and the latest theories of affect while employing the method of autoethnography to explore what boys and men 'want,' the book offers a timely contribution to our understanding of contemporary cultural attachments. Tracing these through TV, cinema, toys, magazines, merchandising, and the culture of the gadget, the authors raise important questions about mediated masculinities today and propose a new theoretical framework for uncovering what is going on. Concerned with the 'staging of affect,' the book offers its own staging through its innovative form.