Connected and troubled masculinities in contemporary mountain sports texts

Abstract

This dissertation investigates masculinities and nature in mountain sports texts. Men and masculinities are disproportionately responsible for the current state of climate change and biodiversity loss but representations of masculinity in mountain sports texts and those representations’ relationships to the environment are under-researched. This dissertation therefore examines how nature and masculinity are represented in mountain sports texts. To support the central research aim, the articles gathered in the dissertation ask four questions, each one using different kinds of texts as materials: 1) How are cultural male/female and human/nonhuman borders represented in contemporary nonfiction mountain sports films? 2) How are male athletes’ embodied, connected relationships to nature represented in commercial YouTube videos produced by the outdoor gear company Salomon? 3) How are nature and the professional mountain athlete Timothy Olson’s troubled past commodified via social media branding? 4) How is the search for healing from trauma by male mountain athletes represented in contemporary mountain climbing literature, more specifically in Jeff Long’s The Wall (2006) and Tommy Caldwell’s The Push (2017)? The dissertation’s method relies on theoretical contextualization via the fields of critical gender and sports studies, ecocriticism, and trauma studies, and a multisensory close reading of multimodal texts. The dissertation’s key findings are the influence of commercial interests on representations of new hybridized, connected, masculinities in the mountains, and the way male athletes’ troubled, even traumatized past experiences frame representations of them. More specifically, some representations attempt to frame men’s relationships to nature in ecological terms by highlighting their connection to their environment and by eschewing traditional hegemonic (hyper)masculinities. Further, male mountain athletes’ traumatized or otherwise troubled pasts influence how their relationships to the environment are represented, and even how their motivations to practice their sports are framed.