The direct confrontational stare, the petrol-stained face, facial hair...this is the embodiment of masculine Western ideals, physical strength and stalwartness, protectiveness (of what? Family? Property? A 'way of life'?), gate-keeping. The image in combination with the caption conveys a sort of nostalgia for a bygone-and entirely fictional-era in which dangers were clear and physically present, not creeping, insidious, and perhaps invisibly toxic. When heroism was as simple as offering your body in the name of patriotism, whether in combat or in home-front preparedness. Now that the physicality of heroics has been removed from our quotidian lives, dangerous leisure seems to have taken its place. Surfing-by choice-in contaminated waters, having your stag party in Chernobyl: these new rites of masculinity defiantly flaunt life in the face of our greatest threats.
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