Even though this story happened a long time ago, it has been on my mind for a while now. A couple of weeks ago when the Giants played the Panthers there were a couple of small altercation on the field between Josh Norman and Odell Beckham Jr. that created a large media controversy questioning Beckham Jr's manhood and sexuality. For a brief little overview, throughout the game there were slurs that were thrown the way of Beckham Jr. along with a bat being brought out onto the field; further questioning his manhood. Of course, the mass media caught wind of this interaction, and ran with it. They began to pull certain videos and photos from his social media accounts of him dancing in traditionally "non-masculine" ways with his closet friends. I guess these videos were suppose to serve as conformation that Beckham is Bi-Sexual? This is where I began to question the media's judgement. Who and what determines what is masculine or not? Why can't he just be himself and have fun? Similarly, I began to interject the notion of race into the conversation, because a week after that when Channing Tatum participated on Lip-Sync battle he was praised for dressing like a woman TWICE while showing off his Beyonce moves. While Odell Beckham was defending his sexuality for millions of ignorant American's with too much free time. The media has trained the minds of American's to think that African American males should always display "manly" "strong, dominant" behavior. Needless to say, this comparison tells me something. The media has a lot of power over how we think!
Bradley, I really enjoyed your approach to this subject! I think that the media uses their heteronormative privilege to deem who or who does not fit into their framework/binary. Furthermore, the media's use of white privilege creates this hyper masculinity notion and also deems certain acts of men of color as this "black aggression." I think this is extremely dangerous because the media really has a ton of power and what we see on TV is often how we think.
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