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 drawing on non-representational theory and the latest theories of affect while employing the method of autoethnography to explore what boys and men 'want' and say, the book offers a timely contribution to our understanding of contemporary cultural attachments. The book provides 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, 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.

“Fleming and Sturm have achieved a rare success in academic writing, by producing a book that is both important in its arguments and engaging in its style of writing and presentation. This book focuses on the complex relationship between humans, and more specifically men, and machines, but through their dual treatise of Transformers toys and Formula One racing, they provide insights that will have resonance with a wide variety of disciplines and subjects, including the study of masculinity, fandom, play, everyday life, material culture, technology, sport, social theory and media.” —Garry Crawford, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Sociology, University of Salford

“Like a Formula 1 driver negotiating a hairpin turn through the sheer downforce of acceleration, Fleming and Sturm stick fast to their objects of analysis and don't let go. Linking affective resonances and processual materialities with hyper-reflexive riffings on methods, theories, fans and their attachments, this book continually assembles and then reassembles itself into new configurations of meaning and intensity. This is a book not only about machines but a machinic book!” —Gregory J. Seigworth, co-editor of The Affect Theory Reader