De-mythologizing the Image of War Hero as Dominant Hegemonic Masculinity (With Special Reference to David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel)

This article endeavors to analyze how de-mythologizing the image of war hero as dominant hegemonic masculinity is staged in David Rabe’s play, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, and therefore takes into its ambit Louis Althusser’s views of ISAs (Ideological States Apparatuses) and theory of hegemonic masculinity concerning social discourses and gender construction. Hegemonic masculinity emerges and develops from the social and cultural settings and has its own defining. The influences of family, pop ular culture and media as an organization which create systems of ideas and values are very noteworthy in The Basic Trainig of Pavlo Hummel. Hegemonic masculinity acts as an ideology and therefore is shaped and constructed through ISAs, institutions such as family, arts, and media that produce ideologies and individuals internalize and act in accordance with. In The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, male subjects are depicted as figures who try to act according to the dominant discourse and a set of masculine traits attributed to traditional macho male but their attempts are in vain and ineffective since the myth of American values concerning manliness is put into question or deconstructed in this play.