I've long been fascinated by how hegemonic models of masculinity mediate national anxieties and cultural tensions, and how popular white, male cultural figures (like Jack Bauer) can make these tensions legible. I particularly appreciated how McPherson’s (hi, Tara) chapter brings in a third layer to this mediation, which is how the tensions around masculinity are also working out threats to the televisual medium posed by new media technologies. Here, I want to think through how this analysis might be placed in conversation with a contemporary TV show where discourses around “quality television,” political and national crises, and white masculinity intersect: Succession. While Jack Bauer navigates a post-9/11 America concerned with national security, changing gender and sexual norms, and new forms of information labor, Succession's Roy family--owners of a multinational media conglomerate-- navigate a post-MeToo, post-recession cultural landscape plagued by corporate mergers and the consolidation of power, unfair elections, the rise of fascism, etc. The show mediates a lot of the concerns of our 2020s national culture, and does so through reformulated models of white masculinity. Whereas Bauer was, as McPherson demonstrates, in some ways a return to a Reagan-era “hard-bodied masculinity” (though one particular to its post-9/11 moment and urban, information work setting), the men of Succession are woefully inadequate, and their failure to adapt to a changing society is clearly on display (McPherson 180). Roman, Connor, and Kendall Roy, the three Gen X and Millenial sons of aging media mogul Logan Roy, are all struggling to take up the mantle of the self-made, rugged masculinity he models. They are marked by failure, whether it is sexual (Roman’s sexual pathologies are a constant joke in the show), political (i.e. Connor’s dismal bid for president), or professional (the three are continually vying for the top job of CEO or launching start-ups that always end in disaster). They are out-of-touch and unable to recognize their own ineptitude in an increasingly “woke” culture that would likely deem them to be the ultimate “nepo babies.” Following McPherson, might this mediate television’s concern about its own growing irrelevance in a digital/streaming era and the changing cultural norms it heralds? Might it speak to HBO’s concern about its diminishing place as an arbiter of “quality”? One of the central through lines throughout the seasons has been the attempts by the Roy family’s company, Waystar Royco, to adapt to the changing media landscape, typically through acquisitions and mergers, which certainly reflects the tactics of major media companies, and HBO’s own uncertain future under Warner Bros Discovery ownership.
To conclude, I want to offer a clip that speaks to what McPherson discusses in regards to 24, the integration of new media technologies into the televisual form, and the tensions this integration lays bare. This clip from Season 3 of Succession displays Kendall Roy’s instability in a new digital era of content, where both white masculinity and traditional televisual forms seem under threat from a new generation of Black, Brown, female, trans, queer, or otherwise previously marginalized creators. Notably, Ziwe, who went from running an Instagram live/Youtube series that attempts to "bait" celebrities into saying something "problematic" to having her own show (Ziwe) on Showtime, is featured in this clip, playing a Succession-version of herself, Sophie Iwobi. Iwobi’s critique of Kendall’s performance of woke-ness and his “Caucasian rich brain” might also be read as a mediation and recuperation of the threat digitality poses to television on the part of "quality" programmers like HBO and Showtime.
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