A Critical,Rhetorical Analysis of Man Therapy

Abstract

To address high numbers of suicides by men in America, the mental health promotion campaign Man Therapy attempts to destigmatize mental health as staunchly opposed to masculinity through overtly humorous constructions of therapy designed for hegemonically masculine men. Through a critical analysis of the campaign, including the interactive website, modeled as the fictitious office of Dr. Rich Mahogany, this project addresses the influences of humor within the confines of hegemonic masculinity, mental health, and suicide. The goal of the analysis is to better understand, through a critical deconstruction, the ways in which Man Therapy successfully combats stigma in men’s mental health, while at the same time, perhaps, reifying hegemonic discourses that have the potential to abject parts of the target audience.

Keywords

hegemonic masculinity mental health humor health promotion

Introduction

Welcome … Take a knee and get comfortable

—Dr. Rich Mahogany

The suicide of the beloved actor and comedian Robin Williams in the summer of 2014 gave society a glimpse into the world of depression. Williams’ death created a national dialogue, one that raised important questions about mental health, humor, and masculinity. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), men account for 79% of all suicides in the United States, and non-Hispanic White men account for the highest rate of successful suicides among men (CDC, 2012a). Colorado has an extremely high rate of suicides, ranking eighth in the United States (CDC, 2012b). To address these rates, the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention created a collaborative health promotion campaign to encourage men’s mental health, arguing that men may have a greater need for mental health services and, at the same time, are less interested in and less likely to access these services (Spencer-Thomas, Hindman, & Conrad, 2012). Their collaborative mental health campaign, Man Therapy consists of a virtual doctor’s office found at www.mantherapy.org. Unlike traditional health websites, which utilize homepages, links, frames, and text, Man Therapy presents users with a space and perspective of walking into and exploring a therapist’s office. Guiding users through the space, Dr. Rich Mahogany, a cardigan wearing, mustache sporting, barrel chested host, addresses users on issues such as depression, suicide, aggression, and well-being. Both the space and the characters found at Man Therapy embrace comically exaggerated forms of masculinity. As an interactive, comedic liaison between traditionally masculine and health-seeking behaviors, Dr. Mahogany and the Man Therapy website raise interesting question about interactive health messages. This study explores the space and discourses that Man Therapy occupies and creates at the intersections of hegemonic masculinity, mental health and suicide, and humor. The goal of the analysis is to better understand, through a critical deconstruction, the ways in which Man Therapy successfully combats stigma in men’s mental health, while at the same time, perhaps, reifying hegemonic discourses that have the potential to abject parts of the target audience.

Context and Artifact: Relevance

Virtual Office and Man Cave

Blending humor, gender construction, and mental health creates a unique space in health promotion communication. In particular, humor may play an integral part in relating to those who suffer from depression and masculinity identity issues. Nezlek and Derks (2001) found that “relatively more depressed people used humor as a coping mechanism almost as frequently as those who relatively less depressed” (p. 407). In her analysis of how humor can aid gender deconstruction, Crawford (2003) asserts that “for any socially subordinated group, developing a sense of a group identity and solidarity is the first step toward political and social change” (Crawford, 2003, p. 424). At the Man Therapy website, the mustached Dr. Mahogany directs users to explore the online office space—festooned with moose heads, trophies, leather chairs, and pipes—and to use host of games, surveys, support portals, and educational information available. Clicking on “About Man Therapy,” Dr. Mahogany tells users that “Man Therapy is a place where men come to be men. So here, we won’t be whining or moping about… we will be form tackling feelings like anger and suicidal thoughts” (Cactus, 2012).

The paradoxes created by Man Therapy’s humor and format create an exemplary site for a critical study of a health promotion campaign, grounded in communication. Dutta (2010) posits that critical scholars offer an important and unique perspective in health communication as they are equipped to “engage with the taken-for-granted assumptions that circulate the dominant ideology of health communication… Critical scholarship in health communication interrogates the structures within which meanings of health are constituted” (p. 534). As will be demonstrated in the analysis, by critically interrogating Man Therapy, assumptions about what constitutes men’s health and mental health are exposed. Understanding overlapping, intersectional networks of identity have significant ramifications for critical approaches to health campaigns. For that purpose, our analysis attempt to focus on the fissures between the means of targeting an audience and the reification of meanings of masculinity that has the potential to abject some of this audience. We do not claim that our reading of Man Therapy is the only, or even dominant, reading—or some type of truth. Instead we offer our readings as a pillar in the “process of argumentation whereby the general goal is to convince readers that their own insights into a text may be enhanced by reading the text similarly” (Cooper, 2002, p. 49). With this type of study and readings, the implications allow for the uncovering of the mechanisms of normalization and the power beneath the text, or as Avila-Saavedra (2009) states, this kind of reading “can be useful to uncover the normative themes of the narrative” (Avila-Saavedra, 2009, p. 10).

Literature Review

Health communication scholarship is plump with examinations of the effects of humor in health campaigns and strategies for addressing mental health in campaigns, with recent studies addressing issues of shame (Yoon, 2015), grandparent relationships (Mansson, 2013), and antistigma advocacy (Holland & Blood, 2009). While effects based health communication research serves to produce replicable and verifiable results, there is a simultaneous need to critically examine cultural and rhetorical manifestations of hegemony because they shape the social, political, and cultural salience that drive the effectiveness of these health campaigns, particularly within cross cultural audiences (Olivares & Pena, 2015), educational settings (Shah, Clayman, Glass, & Kandula, 2015), and disadvantaged populations (Guttman, Anat, & Aycheh, 2013). This analysis focuses on a gap in the literature, specifically the intersection of cultural perspectives on masculinity, humor, and mental health when they manifest in health promotional campaigns (Cross, 2013).

Approaching a Culture of Suicide in America

This article explores the Man Therapy campaign, analyzing the website, promotional materials, and white papers as artifacts in a critical, cultural rhetorical study—following traditions of the critical turn in health communication scholarship outlined by Dutta (2010) and initiated by Lupton (1994). Specifically, this article is part of the rhetorical tradition which has been employed in health communication to understand outcroppings of hegemonic structures in health media. Scholars have applied this approach to communication involving sensitivity in breast cancer pamphlets (Kline, 2007), to assess the public understandings of medicine (Condit, Lynch, & Winderman, 2012) or “ethnomedical” understandings (Marks, Reed, Colby, & Ibrahim, 2004), to situate the use of personal narratives of illness in health promotional campaigns (Lumpkins, 2012), and to understand how the interplay of political ideologies work to create the environment for the adoption of new vaccines (Thompson, 2010), to name a few.

Utilizing a critical cultural approach to Man Therapy creates space to deconstruct the relationships between cultures of masculinity and mental health. There is a gender gap in suicide, with 63% of successful suicides worldwide committed by men each year (Payne, Swami, & Stainstreet, 2008), and, as we previously mentioned, the gap is even more drastic in the United States. These discrepancies, according to Kalish and Kimmel (2010), should be viewed, in part, as the enactment of hegemonic gender expectations.

Hegemonic Masculinity

Hegemonic masculinity, first defined by Connell (1990), is the gender discourse which subordinates both women and nondominant forms of masculinity. As Butler (1990) demonstrates, gender is defined by the masculine in a heteronormative world, and therefore the masculine becomes the ideal. This construction makes “a petri dish for hegemonic orderings of gender, specifically hegemonic masculinity” (Mocarski, Butler, Emmons, & Smallwood, 2012, p. 251). Hegemonic masculinity is traditionally constructed around tenets of power and control, occupational achievement, and self-regulation or stoicism (Trujillo, 1991), all of which are at odds with seeking help, especially when coupled with the Cartesian dualism of gender where man is associated with the mind and intellect and woman is associated with the body and emotion (Grosz, 1994). Gough (2006) outlines further:

Mental health is reduced to the brain (not the mind), which is the same for all men (“male brain”), and used to process information (not emotions) like a computer. This is ironic because one reason why some men suffer mental health problems is an overly rational, problem-focused approach to emotional difficulties. (p. 2484)

This rationality and problem-focused approach reifies hegemonic masculinity as ideal, while reminding men that only by taking action that runs counter to hegemonic masculinity can they seek mental health. Man Therapy offers a unique site of analysis of hegemonic masculinity in a health context, as the health message of the site is couched in a comically exaggerated form of hegemonic masculinity.

Emslie, Ridge, Ziebland, and Hunt (2006) studied hegemonic masculinity and depression via secondary analysis of 16 qualitative interviews with depressed men. Their findings suggest “that depression is ‘incompatible’ with masculinity” for three reasons:

First expressing emotion and crying—common experiences in depression—are linked to femininity … secondly, masculinity is linked with competence and achievement, while depression is often accompanied by feelings of powerlessness and lack of control. Thirdly, masculinity requires men to be tough and self-reliant, whereas the experience of depression often leaves people feeling weak and vulnerable. (Emslie et al., 2006, p. 2247)

These findings echo the aforementioned studies of pop-science, which is unsurprising since men’s access to health knowledge is likely grounded in popular mediated outlets.

Humor

Meyer (1997) argues that humor sets perceptions of normalcy and then breaks those norms, which can paradoxically encourage or inhibit individuals feeling included in groups. Further, a single instance of humor can have different effects for different audience members (Lee, 2010). Thus, “humor enacts both unifying and divisive communication strategies” (Meyer, 1997, p. 638). To better understand the effects of humorous communication on specific audiences, Meyer (2000) breaks humor into four distinct functions: identification, clarification, enforcement, and differentiation. The first two functions, identification and clarification, are based on unifying effects of humorous communication, while the second two, enforcement and differentiation, produce divisive effects.

Identification effects allow individuals to self-identify as group members (Meyer, 2000), even around subjects perceived as being taboo (Winick, 1976), like mental health. Along the same lines, clarification humor builds group cohesion, but by addressing a shared situation or experience. As Meyer (2000) explains, “There is some familiarity with the issue on the part of the audience, and some agreement on the issue involved, but the humor serves to teach or clarify the socially expected behaviors relating to the issue” (p. 319). Enforcement effects of humor reinscribe societal norms and attitudes. For instance, laughing at a male child that wears a dress serves to enforce performative gender binaries by labeling an action as a deviation from an expected normative behavior. Differentiation humor clarifies group members from nongroup members by mocking those outside the group (Meyer, 2000). Thus, those within the group could feel cohesion, but clear boundaries and ridicule typically exclude individuals.

Humor research in the field of communication generally categorizes the motivations for humor into three common theories: superiority, relief, and incongruity (Lynch, 2002). “Superiority humor is usually associated with laughing at others’ inadequacies” and can be used as both “a mechanism of control or a form of resistance” (Lynch, 2002, p. 426). Relief humor “focuses on releasing tension” and “incongruity” humor “singl[es] out violations of a leaned pattern” (Martin, 2004, p. 274). Humor based in incongruity folds less into the motivation for the humor, and more into the mechanisms of the humor (although, both superiority and relief can be mechanistic as well), where the humor points out inconsistencies in the world, present situations, artifact, and so forth (Lynch, 2002). As Lynch notes and Martin (2004) demonstrates, a humorous instance does not necessarily fall into one of these three categories or theories neatly—therefore, these categories are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, these three motivations for humor intersect with the aforementioned communicative functions and oftentimes overlap. Therefore, using humor for a subject like suicide and depression is tricky. As Lester (2012) notes, “humor is one way to deal with difficult issues” (p. 673) and it can even be “a valuable tool of gender deconstruction” (Crawford, 2003, p. 1427); however, it can also abject certain members of the audience. In the analysis, Man Therapy’s humor is explored, and the overlapping effects and motivations of the humor are shown to create potential paradoxes in effects between intent and outcome and various groups of receivers.

Analysis

Constructions of Masculinity

The health promotion campaign hinges on Dr. Rich Mahogany’s online office found at http://www.mantherapy.org. One of the more striking elements of the virtual office is the overemphasis on hegemonic masculinity, both in the décor and in the language of the site. Mahogany’s office is all dark wood (mahogany) and leather, and adornments include a moose head, dart board, hatchet, doctoral degree, and mustache collection fastened to the wall; a cigar box, robot statue, and baseball on the desk; and trophies and leather books on the book shelf. Through depictions of traditionally hegemonic masculine markers of frontiersmanship, sports prowess, and professional achievements (Trujillo, 1991), the site situates masculinity as a central theme of men’s mental health. The interactive element of the site lets users navigate to the right or left, which zooms in on one of the walls. The right wall, “Gentlemental Health,” includes the bookshelf, which has bowling trophies on top, as well as a model wooden ship. There is also a parlor hanging light—one that would normally hang above a billiard’s table. As mentioned earlier, there is sports paraphernalia, including the aforementioned dartboard, as well as an umbrella holder filled with golf clubs, baseball bats, and ski poles. The back wall of the office, “Tales of Triumph and Victory,” includes a movie screen hung above a leather couch that has throw-pillows featuring cowboys and dogs. The wall-mounted shelves to the right of the screen include old movie reels, while those to the left include testimonial videos of real men that visitors can watch. The left wall, “Man Therapies,” includes three pictures of Mahogany, one a traditional portrait taken in the office (as evident by the identical wallpaper), one is of two Mahoganys doing a trust exercise with one falling into the other’s waiting arms, and one of a naked Mahogany lounging seductively amidst a pile of trophies, a couple of which are positioned to block his genitals. This wall also features a taxidermed bear and two movie theater seats, as well as Mahogany’s counseling license and a neon, flashing “Bus Depot” sign. The trophies and dead animals (also trophies, in a way) are markers of physical control, as to obtain these object, Mahogany, presumably, had to best both his fellow man and beast in physical trails. The frontiersmanship tenet is most obviously intoned in the dead animals, as they represent the wild that the frontiersman has tamed, but is also evidenced by the hatchet, cowboy motifs, and episodes in which Mahogany cleans a fish when the cursor has not moved for a couple of minutes.

With blatant symbols of physical control, occupational success, and frontiersmanship at every turn, the office constructs a hypermasculine space that conflicts with the social and cultural norms associating therapy and mental health with femininity (Barry & Martin, 2014). This incongruity primes the audience for the attempted humor within the campaign (Canestrari, Dionigi, & Zuczkowski, 2014), allowing visitors to use the rhetorical aspects of the site to potentially challenge hegemonic norms through the absurdly masculine visuals within space. As visitors interpret the hypermasculine humor they encounter, they can think critically about the content. As Canestrari et al. (2014) explain, “[t]he problem solving activity involved in humor understanding aims at resolving the incongruity” (p. 261). Thus, visitors are left to reconcile the incongruity of masculinity and mental health-seeking behavior by attempting to identify with one, the other, or both of the constructs. Essentially, hypermasculinity incongruity prompts the health seeker to stop and question their place in the space.

Mental Health Seeking as Identifiably Masculine

A 30-second commercial for Man Therapy first aired on July 17, 2012 in Colorado, statewide. This ad became a staple during Denver Bronco’s football games, as well as other traditionally male-targeted programs. The spot, dubbed a Public Service Announcement, stars Dr. Rich Mahogany and serves as the primary/introductory setting for the Man Therapy website. Mahogany sits in front of his desk in a dark leather chair, wearing an unbuttoned dark blue polo. Immediately, the audience is greeted by the exaggerated relics of masculinity that include sporting paraphernalia, dark wood and leather, and framed degrees.

Mahogany begins: “Men have a way of doing things.” He then lists a slew of banal activities that are accompanied by humorous cuts of Mahogany behind his desk doing these things in hypermanly ways. In voiceover he says “A man has a way of eating,” while he attacks a comically large subsandwich—double the width of a normal sub and at least a foot long; “Of exercising,” voiced-over Mahogany doing curls with his bowling ball; “Of keeping his hands warm,” Mahogany, in front of the desk again, leans against his desk, and puts both hands down the front of his pants; “And of straightening up,” in the most exaggerated cut, Mahogany is again behind the desk, reclining with his feet up on the desk, using a leaf blower to clear papers from the top of his desk. After the list is complete, Mahogany is again shown sitting in front of his desk and says: “So, when a man faces a serious life problem like divorce, depression, or suicidal thoughts, shouldn’t a man have a way to deal with that too? Well now he does. I’m Dr. Rich Mahogany, visit me at mantherapy.org.” As he says this last line, the website address appears on screen with the subtitle “Therapy. The way a man would do it.”

The actions act as markers of identification since the voiceover culls images of hegemonic masculinity—since “Men [DO] have a way of doing things” in hegemonic gender ordering. Male viewers are asked to identify with the idea that men have certain ways they go about their lives that differentiate them from women and nonmasculine men. Thus, masculinity becomes the entry point through which to engage visitors on mental health, by attempting to center mental health-seeking behavior within traditionally masculine forms of hegemony.

The white papers explain that “the goal of Man Therapy is to show working age men that talking about their problem, getting help, and fixing themselves is masculine” (Spencer-Thomas et al., 2012). The office creates a space where men are supposed to identify with the trappings of masculinity. Furthermore, Mahogany presents himself as someone who his audience should feel comfortable talking to and with about their problems. The comfort is derived from the absurd markers of hegemonic masculinity, and, as mentioned earlier, many men who struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts may be having trouble identifying with, or following, the heteronormative, and therefore hegemonically masculine, path.

On top of elements of identification humor are instances of clarification humor. As visitors begin to identify mental health-seeking behavior as masculine, the engagement of the health tools relies on clarification humor, within the context of hegemonic masculinity. For instance, visitors are prompted by Mahogany to take a self-assessment quiz. The first question of the survey states, “did you know that koalas sleep more than 18 hours a day? Lazy little bastards. Tell me about your sleep habits” (Cactus, 2012). By removing mental health language, like insomnia or sleep deprivation, and replacing it with mocking koala bears, the site utilizes humor to clarify the difference between masculine behaviors, like taking a self-assessment survey, and nonmasculine behaviors, like being lazy or liking cute bears.

Clarification humor to masculinize health-seeking behavior bookends the introduction to and the conclusion of the survey. Selecting the survey option causes Mahogany to display an old fashion calculator with a paper printing reel. He holds it up to show the users what he will use to calculate the results of the test and after taking the test we see a cut of Mahogany using a calculator with the sound of the paper printing. This is offered as a humorous interlude, coupled with a few more jokes (the specific jokes are dependent upon the answers given on the quiz) before he gives you your diagnosis and directs you to read your results. By using the calculator as a tool of emotional analysis, Mahogany feeds into the Cartesian dualism reified by hegemonic gender orderings. The calculator could be read as a function to flatten emotion into something that can be solved with logic, like the “computer” (p. 2484) Gough (2006) equated the “male brain” to in traditional gender roles.

Differentiation Humor

While Man Therapy has many serious tools to help combat depression, these tools are buried in the apparatus of the office itself. For instance, on the home page, there are six navigable options for the user, three of which bring the user to other sections of the office, two of which prompt Mahogany to give a short speech about the site, and one of which is linked to an 18-point quiz to help diagnose the problems afflicting the user. It is safe to say that this last option is probably the most important for the site to function properly, but it is buried beneath these other options. Even the quiz itself is steeped in humorous, nonsequitur narratives, like the laziness of koala bears mentioned earlier. Users must work through the quiz in order to get Mahogany’s “professional opinion,” which he adds up on a calculator. By burying useful information under layers of humor, the likelihood that users will encounter differentiation or enforcement humor increases. The purpose of these jokes may be to clarify acceptable behavior, or providing situations in which “social norms are illuminated while the stress is on the expected norm rather than the seriousness of the violation” (Meyers, 2000, p. 319). An integral part of the conceptualizations of manhood within this campaign is the display of masculinity, both as an object of humor and as unifying element. Instances of clarification humor within the website depend heavily on audiences recognizing the parody of masculinity. For instance, one of the opening explanations on the site has Mahogany tell users that some men are afraid that sharing their feeling makes them “girly men” but that being open and honest about their feelings is “the least unmanly thing a man can do” (Cactus, 2012). Within this discussion, Mahogany clarifies that there are things that men should never do, including riding ponies, skipping, and breaking a sweat on an elliptical machine. This type of clarification asserts that a societal expectation of masculinity in men exists, because men should never “slap fight,” but the violation of the expectation is less egregious than the violation of masculinity by seeking mental health information. Thus, the rules for what counts as masculine performance are clarified, so that therapy is ok, but “manscaping” is not. By layering these jokes on top of important mental health information, the site runs the risk of abjecting an individual visitor whose behaviors mirror those being mocked. For instance, while talking to users about a self-assessment survey, Mahogany spurts, “Oh, and don’t bullshit me, because there is nothing I hate more than bullshit. Except maybe shopping malls. And spandex” (Cactus, 2012). When Mahogany asserts that spandex or enjoying shopping are things he hates, clear lines of delineation are drawn between what is acceptable and what deviation should be mocked to be corrected. Considering that Colorado ranks in the top five states for bicycle friendliness (League of American Bicyclists, 2012), and most cyclists sport spandex (Quinn, 2010), the joke could easily be divisive for Colorado visitors who are male cyclists, thus limiting the accessibility of the site for mental health information seekers.

In specific instances, like when joking on shopping, Man Therapy runs the risk of using differentiation humor. Also divisive in effect, this type of humor isolates a specific group that is different and the target of mocking. When Mahogany states, “Did you know that men have feelings too? And no, not just the hippies” (Cactus, 2012), a specific group, hippies, is isolated from the discussion. Moreover, the site spends a considerable amount of time promoting a singular manliness. Men whose gender identity is associated with things other than traditional hegemonic masculine markers like sports, hunting, and heterosexuality are systematically abjected by the site. Essentially, the site is for men whose masculinity is challenged by mental health; therefore, the site emphasizes mental health as ultramasculine. Thus, if men seeking mental health information are not concerned with, or are opposed to masculinity in these traditional forms, they find themselves to be a group outside the humor.

Second, when the audience encounters humor at every turn, they may begin to question the validity of the mental health information within the website. In the group therapy section, where users can read posts and comments from mental health professionals and other men struggling with mental health issues, a letter head slogan reads “No kumbayas. No awkward group hugs. No soothing ocean noises. Just real man-to-man conversation” (Cactus, 2012). By heading a subsection of a subsection of the site with humor, there seems to be no escape from the humor. This type of heading is ubiquitous on the site and seems to occlude the real health information. For instance, in the aforementioned example, the user is entering an interactive message board with other users and professional staff. By prompting the users to avoid unmanly interactions, Man Therapy clarifies manly behavior by differentiating unmanly behavior. In this case, the user has done a traditionally unmanly act, seeking mental health in an interactive environment, but is told to regulate how they seek that help within the environment. This type of constant barrage of humor, even in spaces that seem like they should be solely focused on health, is a major element of the site. Even during moments of inactivity, Dr. Mahogany might move through the office operating a leaf blower tiding up, clean a fish from a small cooler, or listen to the soothing sounds of revving engines. These actions not only represent masculine activities but do so in such an exaggerated form as to be comical. Humor is attempted at nearly every turn, which could muddy helpful mental health information with the presence of absurdity.

Conclusion

Because contrary to popular belief, men can’t fix everything themselves

—Dr. Rich Mahogany

Targeting the Humor

Humor as a constitutive tactic utilized by Man Therapy does not guarantee cohesion of audience members, because masculinity is mocked and, simultaneously, embedded as a positive element of men in therapy. “Satire requires an audience to maintain multiple representations of a text” (Kreuz & Roberts, 1993, p. 101). “Therefore, viewers must have knowledge of the original acts in order to get the jokes” (Duffy & Page, 2013, p. 548). For a more insightful visitor, who is comfortable in their masculine identity, the site could highlight the absurd abstraction of hegemonic masculinity, while affirming the visitors’ construction of masculinity within their identity as a man. Herein lies the most promising aspect of the Man Therapy campaign. For individuals who visit the site to learn more about men and mental health that may not be suffering from mental health issues, the site could act as an excellent artifact for destigmatizing men and mental health. Thus, if men who value masculinity can come to see therapy as acceptable for masculine men, then they may be more helpful in recognizing and providing support for men they know suffering from mental health issues. Man Therapy has good motives, and undeniably helps some men; however, the one-size-fits-all approach is problematic.

Aside from the obvious effects of hegemonic masculinity on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) persons that sees 45% of LGBTQ youth attempting suicide versus only 8% in heterosexual youth (Hong, Espelage, & Kral, 2011, p. 885), hegemonic masculinity also pushes heteronormative men toward suicidal behavior. In their study of suicidal behavior in men, Emslie et al. (2006) found compelling qualitative evidence that suggests some of this behavior is linked to the desire to reestablish hegemonic masculinity. In other words, suicide offered control and power to the men who felt they had lost it: “Some men saw suicide as a potential means of establishing control” (Emsli et al., 2006, p. 2252). Hegemonic masculinity, as an ideal that is not obtainable, creates a world where failure to achieve this ideal corners some men into a cycle of depression. This cycle can then lead to suicide being viewed as not only an escape from depression but also a valiant act to reestablish hegemonic masculinity within their lives. Masculinity is not homogenous and while societal pressure pushes people toward a hegemonic ideal, this ideal is also not static or uniform. Demographics and history affect the ideal that men strive to achieve, and some men are trapped in a shame-cycle as the pressure of the hegemonic ideal is what pushes them toward depression. Man Therapy questions this equation but also assumes that hegemonic masculinity, particularly a White, middle class version is what its visitors are striving toward or struggling against—thereby reifying the answers to the equation.

If the men visiting the site are struggling with their masculinity as it relates to their mental health issues, the absurdity of the site may have a different effect. Specifically, visitors who do not fit traditional construction of hegemonic masculinity may see the visual and verbal representations of masculinity on the site as additional evidence that they are not masculine enough. Conversely, men who embrace traditional markers of masculinity may see the site as mocking their identity construction, or that therapy, particularly for mental health issues, is a joke to masculine men. Furthermore, suicides or attempted suicides are most prevalent “among people not in contact with mental health services” (Owen, Belam, Lambert, Donovan, & Rapport, 2012, p. 419). Since “major depression underlies more than half of suicides” (Emslie et al., 2006, p. 2247), this lack of utilization of mental health services in this population is unsurprising. In its mission, Man Therapy states that it is aimed at “working age men” (Spencer-Thomas et al., 2012), and grounds itself in a heteronormative worldview through its overt lampooning of hegemonic masculinity and lack of representation of alternative masculinities. However, given the prevalence of sexual orientation discrimination that undergirds male suicide and depression, it is impossible to ignore these discourses when studying and combating suicide in America.

In some ways, the use of humor is always a risk: “Humor is tricky” (Martin, 2004, p. 286). No matter the context humor creates an opportunity for failure because in order for humor to be successful, the audience must be on the same page as the rhetor: “One key for successful humor initiation is the condition of shared meaning between the audience and the rhetor. In other words, there must be an agreement and acknowledgement of a ‘play frame’ for humor to be successful” (Martin, 2004, p. 280). In casual, interpersonal situations, or in politics, or in popular culture, this risk is worth taking, as the negative consequences are relatively benign. But when it comes to suicide prevention, the negative consequences could be malignant, so it is vital that the messages are vetted. This does not mean that this type of humor must be funny to everyone, but it must not abject or offend anyone within the target audience, because, by definition, they are in a fragile state.

Hybrid masculinity

It should be noted that the presentation of masculinity within Man Therapy could be read as a type of hybrid masculinity. As Messner (2007) demonstrates with his analysis of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s displays of masculinity postaction movie star, masculinities that rely on hegemonic markers can extend beyond those markers with elements that defy said markers. However, Messner suggests cautious deconstruction of these types of masculinities since masculinity is not static. In the case of Schwarzenegger, he was able to move between the forms in order to weld more power and, in turn, stifle movement forward in understanding of gender. In the context of this analysis, hybrid masculinity is an interesting angle of analysis because Rich Mahogany also shifts between tropes of masculinity—as shown earlier, this is how the humor functions. Therefore, his character can be read as an attack on hegemonic forms of masculinity because he is so exaggerated and relies on such tropes that we are expected to laugh at him and therefore deride what he intones. However, like Schwarzenegger, Mahogany is not clearly undercutting the hegemonic form, as at times, as shown earlier, he embodies that form in nonironic ways. Furthermore, since the representation is humorous, this type of reading necessitates a full understanding of the humor from the start. In the end, this reading, while a potentially useful study, falls outside of the scope of this article.

Joking on Suicide

We concur with the literature which positions suicidal tendencies as based on a complex web of factors. In other words: “Suicide is clearly the result of a complex interaction of a number of precipitating factors” (Payne et al., 2008, p. 24). Part of our premise that Man Therapy walks a thin line, where it will help some and offend/abject others, fits into Lester’s (2012) observation that suicide jokes are not universally accepted, and the differences between people who find them funny and those who do not may lie in differences “in personality, attitudes, and possibly suicidal urges” (p. 672). Citing a study by Keith-Spiegel, Spiegel, and Gonska from 1972, Lester says “psychiatric patients who had attempted or threatened suicide in the past found suicide cartoons less funny than did nonsuicidal psychiatric patients and nonsuicidal insurance salesmen” (p. 672). However, other findings (this time from 1969) demonstrate “that suicidal patients were more like to have an intropunitive joke (in which any anger is directed inward toward the protagonist of the joke) as their favorite joke than did nonsuicidal patients” (Lester, 2012, p. 673). Owens et al. (2012) turn to Goffman’s theory of the presentation of self, and specifically face-work and Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, which introduced face-threatening acts (FTA), in order to ground lay communication of suicide. Specifically, they found in their qualitative study that suicidal humor could be attributed to FTAs: “Talking about suicide can be face-threatening because the potential to impose upon autonomy and challenge the public self-image of both interlocutors” (Owen et al., 2012, p. 427). Man Therapy mitigates this risk through its online, anonymous format and through the elimination of one real-life interlocutor. Instead, the site offers Dr. Mahogany, whose face is never threatened due to his fictitious nature, and his overt masculinity. However, the elimination of a real life speaker presents other problems, which manifest in the one-size-fits-all approach.

Perhaps the key take-away from this analysis is that the apparatus of a health tool must be benign and also streamlined. The flashiness of Man Therapy—humor and production value—is clunky. This apparatus creates layers and multiple readings, both of which have the opportunity to turn away visitors. On the flip side, it may also attract visitors to the site who would have otherwise not sought help, or who do not really need help but still can glean value out of the destigmatization of mental health care. Mahogany says it best himself when the results of your diagnostic test are being prepared: “as soon as I’m done jibber-jabbering …” The valuable health information and tools of Man Therapy always come wrapped in a joke or two. On top of these layers, there are constant visual cues reinforcing the overt humor, with humor embedded in the apparatus and space of the campaign. This makes Man Therapy anything but streamlined, and the singular lens to view masculinity, and the continuous, humorous hammering of this masculinity, bars off certain segments of the population—some of which are at high risk for depression and suicide.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Richard Mocarski is the director of Sponsored Programs and Research Development as well as an assistant professor of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. His research focuses on narrative inclusion and exclusion with emphasis in barriers to treatment in health in at-risk populations.

Sim Butler is an assistant professor in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Alabama. His teaching and research centers on critical, cultural, and rhetorical approaches to identity performance, particularly within the contexts of gender, sport, disability, and civic discourse. Drs. Mocarski and Butler are co-First Authors of this work.

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