History in Popular Magazines: Negotiating Masculinities, the Low of the Popular and the High of History
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.124275Keywords:
History magazines, popular culture, popular history, masculinities, cultural imaginaries, celebrity culture, the content of the formAbstract
This article explores how the low of the popular and the high of history intersect to negotiate masculinities in the nexus of politics and war in a Swedish history magazine. It investigates the content of the magazine’s form and argues that it produces a kaleidoscopic take on the past which begs the reader to go along with the ads to buy another book, travel to one more historical site, buy a DVD or go to the movies, to turn the page, or to buy another issue of the magazine. Two articles, biographical in their outset, provide the basis for an analysis on how masculinities are negotiated by displaying political and military leaders in contradictory ways and enabling multiple entrance points for the contemporary reader and spectator. Articles on great men produce cultural imaginaries of warlords and political leaders by drawing on layers of historically contingent ways for men to act in public and private spheres and connecting late modern visual celebrity culture to the cults of fame in earlier centuries.
References
Ang, Ien (1996): Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World, London: Routledge. [Read this article]
Annonsinformation 2009 (2009): Populär Historia.
Antoni, Rudolf (2007): “Tidskrifter”, Ulla Carlsson & Ulrika Facht (eds): Mediesverige: Statistik och analys, Göteborg: Nordicom Sverige, 105-110.
Alström, Börje & Love Hedman (2008): ”Tidskriftsmarknaden – en rörlig men glömd marknad”, Håkan Hvitfelt & Gunnar Nygren (eds) På väg mot medievärlden 2020: Journalistik, teknik och marknad, 4th ed Lund: Studentlitteratur, 197-206.
Aronsson, Peter (2004): Historiebruk: att använda det förflutna, Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Aronsson, Peter (2011): Historia, Malmö: Liber.
Barry, Elizabeth (2008): “Celebrity, Cultural Production and Public Life”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 11:3, 251–258. [Read this article]
Benwell, Bethan (2003): Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines, Oxford & Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Bergsten, Magnus (2007): “Sveriges mest spännande tidskrift”, Populär Historia, 2007:1, 5.
Bohlund, Kjell (2008): ”Bokmarknadens struktur och utveckling”, Bokmarknaden 2008: rapport från svenska förläggarföreningen, http://www.forlaggareforeningen.se/media/4433/rapport%20bokmarknaden%202008.pdf (accessed 08/12/17), 9-21.
Braudy, Leo (1986): The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its Discontents, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chukri, Rakel (2008): ”Krig segrar i bokhyllan”, Sydsvenskan 08/08/23, http://www.sydsvenskan.se/samtidigt/article360356/Krig-segrar-i-bokhyllan.html (accessed
09/10/10).
Connell, Raewyn (1995): Masculinities, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Connell, Raewyn & Messerschmidt, James (2005): “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”, Gender & Society, 19: 6, 829-859. [Read this article]
Crewe, Ben (2003): Representing Men: Cultural Production and Producers in the Men’s Magazine Market, Oxford: Berg.
Dawson, Graham (1994): Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities, London: Routledge.
Dudink, Stefan & Hagemann, Karen (2004): “Masculinities in Politics and War in the Age of Democratic Revolutions, 1750-1850”, Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann & John Tosh (eds): Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 3-21.
Dyer, Richard (2004): Film Stars and Society, 2. Edition. London: Routledge.
Edquist, Samuel (2009): En folklig historia: historieskrivningen i studieförbund och hembygdsrörelse, Umeå: Boréa.
Eriksen, Anne (1999): Historie, minne og myte, Oslo: Pax Forlag.
Fiske, John (1989): Understanding Popular Culture, Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Fornäs, Johan (2002): “Passages across Thresholds: Into the Borderlands of Mediation”, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 8:4, 89-106. [Read this article]
Fornäs, Johan et al. (2007a): Culture unbound: Dimensions of Culturalisation, Report / Department of Culture Studies (Tema Q), 2007:5.
Fornäs Johan et al. (2007b): Consuming Media: Communication, Shopping, and Everyday life, Oxford: Berg.
Gamson, Joshua (1994): Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Groot de, Jerome (2009): Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Society, London: Routledge.
Gustafsson, Tommy (2005): “Nationell ära och manlighet i Karl XII (1925) – en historisk filmanalys”, Scandia 2005, 71:1, 47-76.
Hermes, Joke (1995): Reading Women’s Magazines: An Analysis of Everyday Media Use, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hermes, Joke (2005): Re-reading Popular Culture, Malden, MA: Blackwell. [Read this article]
Hirdman, Anja (2001): Tilltalande bilder: genus, sexualitet och publiksyn i Veckorevyn och Fib aktuellt, Stockholm: Atlas.
Huyssen, Andreas (1986): “Mass Culture as a Women: Modernism’s Other”, in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 44-62.
Jackson, Peter, Stevenson Nick & Brooks, Kate (2001): Making Sense of Men’s Magazines, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jameson, Fredric (1991/2001): Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso.
Jansson, Erik (2007): “Churchills kråkslott”, Populär Historia 2007:1, 32-34.
Johanisson, Karin (2010): Melankoliska rum: om ångest, leda och sårbarhet i förfluten tid och nutid, Stockholm: Bonnier pocket.
Johansson, Alf W. (2007): ”Född till ledare”, Populär Historia 2007: 1, 23-31.
Jordanova, Ludmila (2006): History in Practice, 2. Edition, London: Hodder Arnold.
Kimmel, Michael (1993/2003): “Consuming Manhood: The Feminization of American Culture, and the Recreation of the Male Body, 1832-1920”, Søren Ervø & Thomas Johansson (eds) Moulding masculinities. Vol. 2, Bending bodies, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. 47-76. Originally published Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 1993.
Ludvigsson, David (2003): The Historian Filmmaker’s Dilemma: Historical Documentairies in Sweden in the Era of Häger and Villius, Uppsala: Department of History, Uppsala University.
Ludvigsson, David, “Diskuterade motorsågsdocenterna populärhistoria? Historiska föreningen och historikernas relation till populärhistorier”, forthcoming.
Lövgren, Karin (2009): “Se lika ung ut som du känner dig”: Kulturella föreställningar om ålder och åldrande i populärpress för kvinnor över 40, Linköping: Linköping Studies in Art and Science.
McCracken, Ellen (1992): Decoding Women’s Magazines: From “Mademoiselle” to “Ms”, London: Macmillan.
McGuigan, Jim (1992): Cultural Populism, London: Routledge.
Melman, Billie (2006): The Culture of History: English Uses of the Past, 1800-1953, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Modleski, Tania (2005):”Femininity as Mas(s)querade: A Feminist Approach to Mass Culture”, Raiford Guins & Omayra Zaragoza Cruz (eds) Popular Culture: A Reader, London: Sage s. 47-54.
Nixon, Sean (1997): “Exhibiting Masculinity”, Stuart Hall (ed.): Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London: Sage Publications, 291-336.
Nyblom, Andreas (2008): Ryktbarhetens ansikte: Verner von Heidenstam, medierna och personkulten i sekelskiftets Sverige, Stockholm: Atlantis.
Ohmann, Richard (1996): Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets and Class at the Turn of the Century, London & New York: Verso.
Oredsson, Sverker (2007): ”Sveriges fiende nummer 1”, Populär Historia 2007 8, 22-33.
ORVESTO® Konsument 2007 Helår (2007): Stockholm: Sifo Research international, http://www.tns-sifo.se/rapporter-undersokningar/senaste-undersokningarna/2009/orvesto-konsument-2008helaar (accessed 11/09/09).
Paechter, Carrie (2006): “Masculine Femininities/Feminine Masculinities: Power, Identities and Gender”, Gender and Education, 18:3, 253-63. [Read this article]
Ricœur, Paul (1984): Time and narrative, vol. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ricœur, Paul (1985): Time and narrative, vol. 2, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ricœur, Paul (1988): Time and narrative, vol. 3, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rigney, Ann (2001): Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic Historicism, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Rogoff, Irit (2000): Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture, London: Routledge.
Rosenzweig, Roy (2006): “Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past”, Journal of American History, Vol. 93: 1, 117-146.
Rosenzweig, Roy & Thelen, David (1998): The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life, New York: Columbia University Press. [Read this article]
Tamar Y. Rothenberg (2007): Presenting America’s world. Strategies of Innocence in National Geographic Magazine 1888-1945, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Rubin, Birgitta(1999): ”Förlag släcker törsten efter vårt förflutna. Historiska Media har stora framgångar i en orolig brytningstid”, Dagens Nyheter 28 June 1999.
Rüsen, Jörn (2004): Berättande och förnuft: Historieteoretiska texter, Göteborg: Daidalos.
Samuels, Maurice (2004): The Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novel in Nineteenth-century France, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Schama, Simon (2004): “Television and the Trouble of History”, David Cannadine (ed.): History and the Media, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 20-33.
Schneirov, Matthew (1994): The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America 1893-1914, New York: Columbia University Press.
Seidler Jeleniewski, Victor (2007): “Masculinities, Bodies, and Emotional Life”, Men and Masculinities, 10:1, 9-21
Sjöland, Marianne (2011): Historia i magasin. En studie av tidskriften Populär Historias historieskrivning och av kommersiellt historiebruk, Lund & Malmö: Forskarskolan i historia och historiedidaktik.
Sharpe, Joanne P. (2002): Condensing the Cold War: Reader’s Digest and American Identity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Smith, Bonnie G. (1998): The gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Storey, John (1993): An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Sundin, Stefan (2009): Den svenska mediemarknaden 2009, Göteborg: Nordicom, 2009, http://www.nordicom.gu.se/common/publ_pdf/Den_svenska_mediemarknaden_2009_20090617.pdf (accessed 11/09/05).
Wadman, Ben (2007):”Military Masculinities”, Michael Flood (ed.): International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities, London: Routledge, 441-442.
White, Hayden (1987): The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore & London: John Hopkins University Press.
Winship, Janice (1987): Inside Women’s Magazines, London: Pandora.
Winter, Jay (2006): Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2012 Axelsson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright for all manuscripts rests with the author(s). The editors reserve the right to edit manuscripts. Contributors are responsible for acquiring all permissions from the copyright owners for the use of quotations, illustrations, tables, etc. Each author must, before final publication fill, in a publishing agreement provided by LiU E-Press.
Since 2021 Culture Unbound uses a Creative Commons: Attribution license for new articles, which allows users to distribute the work and to reform or build upon it without the author's permission. Full reference to the author must be given. For older articles please see each article landing page.
