Images of Victory Images of Masculinity? Images of Victory Images of Masculinity?

The focus of this article will be on the televised constructions, both in leading American mass media and in the two leading Norwegian television networks, of Bush’s announcement of victory in Iraq on May 1 2003, on board the battleship Abraham Lincoln. The article opens with a consideration of hegemony in mass media, focusing on hegemonic discourse in general, and at times of war in particular. Looking through my ‘gendered lenses’ might reveal how some kinds of hegemonic masculinity are embedded in this discourse and regarded as universal. The intention is to shed light on how non-hegemonic discourses (such as those in Norwegian media) are restrained, in subtle ways, from being counter-hegemonic. By highlighting the gendered perspectives the article may also serve as a kind of feminist and non-military intervention in dichotomic discourses, be it the dichotomies war-peace, victory-defeat or characteristics attributed to “we” and “them”. The approach is strongly influenced by cultural analysis, critical discourse analysis as well as by rhetorics.