Chapter 6. A new South African man?

In recent years, the ‘New Man’ has gained considerable momentum as a model of masculinity in South African advertising. It is with a view to better understanding what this cultural idea of the ‘New Man’ looks like that we analyse a television advertisement for a popular South African beer, Carling Black Label. Drawing upon critical multimodal discourse analysis, we show how the “new” man is not about masculinity alone, but is a multilayered discursive construction in which gender criss-crosses with social class, (hetero)sexuality, race and age. We also argue that the development of the “new” man is nothing but another manifestation of the ways in which modern power operates in a context of socio-economic change.