Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, PLUS, Vol.

41, 2012, 41-58

doi: 10.5842/41-0-82

Deconstructing gender and sexuality discourses in Brothers for

Life: A critical look at chronotopes of consumption in HIV/AIDS
prevention campaigns1
Nobuhle Beauty Luphondo
Department of Linguistics, University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville 7535, South Africa
E-mail: nluphondo@uwc.ac.za

Christopher Stroud
Department of Linguistics, University of the Western Cape, Private Bag X17, Bellville 7535, South Africa /
Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
E-mail: cstroud@uwc.ac.za / Christopher.Stroud@biling.su.se

Abstract
Despite batteries of interventions to change the dynamics of HIV in South African
communities, increasing HIV prevalence suggests that much more needs to be done to stem
the tides of infection. Specifically issues of language and communication around HIV/AIDS
merit more attention. One aspect of the efficacy of HIV/AIDS discourses is the question of
what extent they may serve to (inadvertently) reproduce sexual practices and mores inimical
to HIV/AIDS prevention. This paper conducts a chronotopic and multimodal analysis of a
popular South African campaign Brothers for Life from this perspective. The campaign is
an attempt to promote new role models for South African men in order to get to grips with
one of the most serious factors behind the spread of HIV/AIDS, namely male violence against
women and children. The analysis suggests that past ideals of masculinity continue to find
resonance in masculinities of the present, although framed, mediated and reindexicalized in
late modern discourses of consumerism. Thus foundational assumptions on figurations of
masculinity and male sexuality appear to remain largely consistent across generations.
Keywords: Western Cape, HIV/AIDS, gender, sexuality, multimodality, male patriarchy,
violence, chronotope
1.

Introduction

South Africa has one of the highest levels of HIV/AIDS infections in the world, with the virus
affecting all segments and strata of society, old as well as young. According to the South
1

This paper is part of the first authors doctoral research that comprises an investigation into how HIV messages
are structured, reworked, circulated across different media and modes and languages, and taken up by citizens.
Ultimately, the thesis aims to contribute to health citizenship in multilingual societies. Support from NRF is
gratefully acknowledged.

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Nobuhle Luphondo & Christopher Stroud

African National HIV survey, which was conducted between 2002 and 2008, HIV infection
rates ranged from 10.7% in the country at large to 3.8% in the Western Cape province. More
recent statistics from 2010 show that the infection rate of HIV in the Western Cape has
increased to 6.12%. Despite all the interventions put in place over the years in an attempt to
change the dynamics of HIV in South African communities, infection rates are declining
slowly, if at all. One issue that merits attention in this context is the language of HIV/AIDS
discourses. Language plays a vital role in the construction of local knowledge about the
social realities of HIV/AIDS in different cultural contexts (Clemente and Higgins 2010:63).
However, much HIV/AIDS discourse remains couched in culturally inappropriate frameworks
that remain tied to Western medical science and policy models which cannot cope with a
divergent semiotics of body and illness held by much of the worlds population (e.g.
Campbell 2003). This also applies to multimodal representations of HIV/AIDS discourses
(Mutonyi and Kendrick 2010), as meanings are constructed, distributed, received, interpreted
and reconstructed in a variety of representational and communicative modes, and not just
through verbal language alone (Kress and Jewitt 2003:1).
However, although much attention to language has focused on getting the message across,
relatively less effort has been put into determining exactly what that message might be. In
fact, one question is the extent to which existing forms of HIV/AIDS prevention discourses
including those that can be considered culturally appropriate actually do succeed in
contributing to HIV-wary sexual practices, or whether they may sometimes inadvertently
reproduce sexual practices and mores inimical to HIV/AIDS prevention2. The urgency of this
question is motivated by consideration of one of the most serious dynamics behind the spread
of HIV/AIDS in South Africa, namely oppressive notions of masculinity and the male
prerogative. Each year, more than 70 000 women and girls report being raped or sexually
assaulted, a pale statistic when one realizes that only one in nine rapes is actually reported to
the police (Marais 2010:228). A distressing feature of sexual violence in South Africa is the
involvement of very young people: in the Gauteng province alone, 40% of the rapes reported
to the police in the early 2000s involved girls younger than 18 years, and 15% involved girls
younger than 12 years (Marais 2010:228). In addition, while one in ten young women had, at
some time, been forced to engage in sexual interaction, one in four young men reported
having committed rape, with half of the latter reporting that they go on to rape at least one
more time (Marais 2010:228). Such violent chauvinism has deep historical roots; in the 1940s
and 50s, sexual violence was an outlet for power and anger; it was an expression of
masculinities that depended on the submission of women (Mager 1996).
The use of violence to control women continues to be part of current constructions of
masculinity, sometimes sadly also legitimated by the victims themselves (cf. references in
Marais 2010:228). Marais (2010:228) notes how violence against women is highly prevalent,
irrespective of racial grouping, making it one of the truly trans-racial features of society.
Destructive masculinity is not solely about violence and rape, but also about whether men feel
they need to know their HIV status, whether safe sex is practiced as a matter of course, and
2

It is beyond the scope of this paper to address the question as to what extent the representation of (traditional)
male stereotypes is in itself a dynamic contributing to, or underlying, inappropriate HIV /AIDS behaviours. We
do believe that this would be a line of enquiry worth pursuing in future research, as other research does show
links between HIV/AIDS and sexual violence, on the one hand, and links between sexual violence and gendered
conceptions of masculinity, on the other.

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Deconstructing gender and sexuality discourses in Brothers for Life

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the quality of gendered relationships. Therefore, one task confronting HIV/AIDS prevention
campaigns is how to address the entrenched enactments of historical male privilege, and to
disturb the cycles of reproduction of disempowerment in which women are complicit. This is
a challenge that extends beyond creating an HIV/AIDS enlightened self, to a radically
transformed understanding of what it actually means to be a gendered self and, specifically,
a masculine gendered self. This is precisely the task that the new South African HIV/AIDS
prevention campaign, Brothers For Life, appears to have set for itself. The campaign has as its
main goals the promotion of new role models for South Africa and the inculcation of more
gender-sensitive values. However, the questions which spring to mind and which we attempt
to answer are:
(i)

How successful is the Brothers For Life campaign in bringing across alternative
conceptions of masculinity?, and

(ii) Might the Brothers For Life campaign even serve to reproduce the very same
masculine stereotypes?
We explore these questions by analyzing how one specific modality in the Brothers For Life
campaign, namely posters, provides multimodal engenderings of sexual relations and health.
In particular, we look at the ways in which gender identities are linked to sexual health
practices through representation of lifestyle and stance and how this is figured through the
interaction of language and visuals. As Milani and Shaikjee (forthcoming) remind us, if we
want to grasp fully the intricate relationships between gender and language, we cannot limit
ourselves to studying how individuals perform gender through language. Rather it is the
culturally-shaped scripts of what is believed to be masculine and feminine in particular
socio-cultural contexts that are themselves important objects of empirical investigation. It is
to these discursive formations (Foucault 1978; Milani and Shaikjee forthcoming, our
emphasis) behind the reproduction and normalization of particular constructs of gender and
sexuality that we now turn.
2.

The Brothers For Life campaign

Brothers For Life is a national campaign primarily targeting men aged 30 and over in South
Africa. The campaign was launched on 29 August 2009 in KwaMashu and seeks to address
male promiscuity and the risks of multiple sexual partners, the dangers of alcohol and drug
abuse in contexts of sexuality, and, more generally, offers advice on how to live well. It takes
up gender-based violence and promotes HIV testing, male involvement in Prevention of
Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) and health-seeking behaviours in general. The
campaign is a collaborative effort by the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC), the
Department of Health, United States Agency for International Development / President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (USAID/PEPFAR), Johns Hopkins Health and Education in
South Africa (JHHESA), Sonke Gender Justice, United Nations International Children's
Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Independent Duty Medical Technician (IDMT), the United
Nations System in South Africa, together with more than 40 other civil society partners
working in the field of HIV prevention and health (www.brothersforlife.org).
The campaign comprises multilingual and multimodal resources such as brochures, websites,
TV and radio advertisements, and posters. This varied use of mass media is complemented

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Nobuhle Luphondo & Christopher Stroud

with a personal, tutored advocacy campaign that includes a Mens Wellness Toolkit used
to engage men on a range of topics that continue to undermine (sexual) health in local
communities. The media components cover the use of television, radio commercials and print
media, designed to target a variety of audiences. In all cases, different languages, such as
Afrikaans, English, Sesotho, Setswana, isiZulu, isiXhosa, and Sign Language are used. The
deployment of various types of media reflect the key ideological role that mass media plays in
society (cf. Baker 2008; Fairclough 1995; Litosseliti 2006), producing and circulating realities
in which some identities and beliefs are foregrounded, whilst others are downplayed or even
sidelined (Milani and Shaikjee, forthcoming; cf. also Milani and Johnson 2008, 2010).
In the South African context, as in late modern societies elsewhere, a key trope in the
production and circulation of different mass-mediated realities is that of consumption.
Consumption is a central dynamic in the formation of subjectivity and identity, where
material aspirations, flushed through the possession and display of accessories such as
cellphones, sound systems, branded clothing and the latest models of cars, carry great
symbolic value and shape representations of self and discourses of identity. Media play a
central role in reproducing and organizing consumption-linked subjectivities, with adverts in
particular offering important mediated narratives of self built around the co- modification of
desire (Stroud and Mpendukana 2010; Bordo 1997).
Not surprisingly, consumption also plays a significant role in the construction, representation
and maintenance of gender and sexual identities (Schroeder and Zwick 2004). Stern (2003)
notes that advertising plays a major role in forming conceptions of masculinity at the same
time as it mediates an understanding of consumption itself, as advertising links gender
identity and sexual desire with almost any product that may be purchased: cars, cigarettes,
food, holidays, insurance, sports and hobbies, clothing, furniture, film (Baker 2008).
HIV/AIDS discourses are also increasingly couched in tropes of lifestyle and consumption.
Scalvini (2010) highlights the shift in HIV campaigns to include young, gymtoned men who
radiate health, and who are depicted in colourful adverts that exude optimism and encourage a
consumer-oriented lifestyle. Connections in these visual representations are made between the
models lifestyles, on the one hand, and consumer brands on the other (Schroeder and Zwick
2004), suggesting perhaps that HIV/AIDS is simply business as usual, and, as part of
everyday life, can also become an accessorized lifestyle.
All semiotic artefacts, including advertisements, are part of chains of resemiotized discourses
where, in order to fully interpret the message, the reader needs to be familiar with other
occurrences thereof in other modalities (Stroud and Mpendukana 2010). With regard to the
representation, circulation and uptake of masculinity in the Brothers For Life posters, what
are the connections with other forms, especially commercial forms, of masculine sexuality
and gender across space and time? What are the implications of this for notions of
masculinity? Reid and Walker (2005:2) reflect on masculinities of the past, and how they are
refracted into the present and mediated through new possibilities opened up by
democratization. More specifically, what role do tropes of consumerism play in the design of
HIV/AIDS discourses? For example, Milani and Shaikjee (forthcoming) trace the emergence
of a new man in Carling Black Label beer advertisements, contrasting this with very
different dominant representations of male characteristics found throughout different periods
in South African history. Other authors find continuity with older forms in how gender and

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Deconstructing gender and sexuality discourses in Brothers for Life

45

sexuality are represented in contemporary, consumer-oriented media. These authors argue that
contemporary depictions have a long pedigree in chains of earlier representations, both
commercial and otherwise (e.g. Schroeder and Zwick 2004).
Gender and sexuality are constructed and performed iteratively through creative deployment
of semiotic means (linguistic or visual) through which individuals align themselves with
culturally mediated models of masculinity and femininity (Milani and Shaikjee
forthcoming). With this in mind, we ask what forms of alignment between readers and the
representation of contemporary masculinities do we find in the Brothers For Life campaign;
that is, how are readers or consumers positioned vis vis culturally mediated models of
sexuality, and how does this alignment contribute to present-day semiotizations of gender and
sexuality? More generally, what are the larger socio-political ramifications of types of
consumer alignment with the local and everyday circulation of these representations of
masculinity?
These questions require an approach to masculinity in HIV/AIDS discourses that explores
how discourses of masculinity circulate across spaces, contexts and languages, focusing on
how engendered representations of HIV/AIDS are produced, consumed, modified, circulated
and taken up by target audiences. The complexity of representations in time and space, the
alignment of readers with particular depictions of masculinity, and how such representations
travel, can be captured in Bakhtins (1994) notion of a chronotope. A chronotope is
essentially a way of semiotically packaging links between particular places and times with
specific types of persona, thus highlighting how time and space connect with identity. In
Bakhtins own words,
Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, and becomes artistically visible; likewise,
space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history.
This intersection of the axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic
chronotope (1994:84)
Silverstein (2005:6) offers the following definition of a chronotope:
[T]he temporally (hence, chrono) and spatially (hence, tope) particular narrative
envelope in the narrated universe of social space-time in which and through which, in
employment, narrative characters move.
The notion of chronotope captures how aspects of personhood, subjectivity and depictions
of social relations are relative to the spatial-temporal narrative envelope, and thus provides a
means to discuss depictions of masculinity across time and space (Agha 2007). Importantly,
the interpersonal experience of a chronotope and the way in which the personae in space-time
are construed derive from the participation frameworks within which they are experienced.
Agha (2007:331) explains that encounters with chronotopes are encounters with
characterological figures (voices) embedded within spatio-temporalized locales within which
speech participants establish forms of alignments. This means that the social relations,
models of subjectivity, and interpersonal relationships established and mediated through the
participation framework are crucial to understanding how the charactereological voice
(persona) is construed and circulated (Agha 2007).

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Nobuhle Luphondo & Christopher Stroud

A chronotope is also a relevant analytical unit with which to chart the circulation and sociopolitical significance of representations. Agha (2007:322) notes that chronotopical moments
can be linked to each other through communicative chains into processes, which, through
inter-linkage of smaller scale semiotic encounters and participation frameworks, yield larger
scale socio-historical trends, and (re)produce or transform larger scale socio-historical
formations. Thus we are able to situate the Brothers For Life posters in multiple temporal
and spatial cycles, thereby capturing how their depictions of masculinity are inserted into
chains of production and consumption at different junctures of space and time, involving
different personae, and creating various alignments with consumers.
Chronotopes can accommodate diverse semiotic channels and media and, indeed, this is one
of the strong points of a chronotopic analysis. The chronotopic representation of personhood
in time and place, enacted and construed within a participation framework (Agha 2007) may
be in the form of a verbal or visual mode, or in the coordination of meaning-making in
language, image and sound (Iedema 2000). The multimodal framework proposed originally
by Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) provides a useful analytical approach to written, printed
and electronic texts where different semiotic resources including language and visual images
combine to make meaning. Key features of a multimodal analysis include the participants,
props and their arrangement and inter-relationships (the ideational and thematic dimensions),
and the way a representation engages the attention of the reader (the interpersonal dimension).
This framework is easily compatible with an approach in terms of a chronotopic analysis.
The notion of a chronotope thus provides a means of capturing the ways in which
masculinity has been represented throughout time and across different spaces. The notion also
allows us to trace these representations in space-time across reproductions, circulations and
transmutations, and to construe the nature of the different participant frameworks involved in
the reading of the chronotope. Ultimately, the notion informs the way circulations, readings
and reproductions of masculinity establish robust social categories of larger socio-historical
and political significance (Agha 2007).
3.

Methodology

The Brothers For Life posters studied here were collected from a series of HIV/AIDS
workshops conducted by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in different communities of
Cape Town. The first author attended these sessions as a participant observer3. The posters
were distributed in one of the workshops that were organized for men only, although there
were a handful of women amongst the attendees. Twenty-one participants, of which 15 were
men, attended with three workshop facilitators. The first language of the majority of these
participants was isiXhosa, although there were also some speakers of Sesotho and Setswana.
The facilitators conducted the workshop in English and the participants used English with
frequent code-switching to accommodate each other. For the purpose of this article, only two
posters are analyzed here.

This research employs a material and multi-sited ethnographic approach that departs from a position on
language as a social and cultural practice in which people make investments and display their understandings of
social events and practices, and that investigates rather than assumes what may comprise contexts for
communication.

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Deconstructing gender and sexuality discourses in Brothers for Life

4.

47

Analysis

Any representation will comprise a host of chronotopes. According to Bakhtin, (1981:252),

[c]hronotopes are mutually inclusive, they co-exist, they may be interwoven with,
replace or oppose one another, contradict one another or find themselves in ever more
complex interrelationships.
There are at least three main but intersecting chronotopes in the Brothers For Life posters that
illustrate the linked depictions of masculinity across time and space, and their framing in
different participation frameworks. These are the general chronotopes of Transformation,
how an individual becomes other than he was (Bakhtin 1994:115), with its more specific
rendition in the chronotope of the New Man. There is also the general chronotope of
Threshold, that is, places where crisis events occur, the falls, resurrections, renewals and
epiphanies, decisions that determine the whole life of a person (Bakhtin 1994:248), which
appears here under the guise of the Game chronotope. Finally, there is the Idyllic chronotope
(Bakhtin 1994:224), figured here in terms of consumption, lifestyle, and liberal political
values. We will discuss both posters in turn with respect to the chronotopes, crosschronotopic alignments and participant frameworks they comprise.
4.1
The Brothers For Life manifesto
4.1.1. Chronotopes

Figure 1. Brothers For Lifes New Man poster

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Nobuhle Luphondo & Christopher Stroud

Figure 1 visually depicts a young man in the left-most position (or position Given), sitting on
a chair with his hands clasped together, his fingers firmly intertwined. He is dressed in a Tshirt, a brown jacket and blue jeans, wearing white sneakers, a fairly standard outfit for young
men. In the right-most position, (or position New) is a written message expressing the essence
of the Brothers For Life campaign, namely, doing the right thing, respecting life, being
responsible for ones relationship, parenting and behaviour as well as living positively. The
message is written in English4 in the form of a direct quote which suggests that the young
man is speaking to us and that what we are reading are his words. The campaign slogan Do
the right thing, or Yenza kahle in isiZulu, appears in the bottom right-hand corner. This voice
presumably emanates from the third-party principal author of the message, the NGO itself.
In this representation, a predominant chronotope is the New Man, a South African male in his
mid-twenties circa 2012. This is represented in this image through the fairly classic
structuring of information in terms of what is Given and what is New. The position of the
image to the left marks it as a point of departure and is in some sense
known, whereas the textual information on the right, signals that it represents the new
information. Position New highlights that the information listing the specifics of a new man
in South Africa needs special attention, and suggests that it may also be socially-contested
information. In addition, conventional masculinity is contrasted with modern masculinity on a
step-by-step listed negation.
The character speaks earnestly to his reader (text in position New):
There is a new man in South Africa
A man who takes responsibility for his actions
A man who chooses a single partner over multiple chances with HIV
A man whose self worth is not measured by the number of women he can have
A man who makes no excuses for unprotected sex even after drinking
A man who supports his partner and protects his children
A man who respects his woman and never lifts a hand to her
A man who knows that the choices we make today determine whether we see
tomorrow
I am that man
And you are my brother
The newness of the New Man is offset in the implicit comparison and negation of the
presupposed features of an older perception of masculinity, e.g. a new man takes
responsibility whereas the older masculinity did not; the new man makes no excuses while
older masculinity presumably did; a new man never lifts his hand to his partner, whereas one
can assume that old masculinity was physically abusive to his, etc. Interestingly, all of the
listed characteristics of the New Man are constructs related to being in control, agentive and
self-sufficient. They are defined in, and mediated by, constructs such as responsibility, choice,
self-worth or self-esteem, honesty, protectiveness, respect for others, standing by ones words
and actions, and cognisance or wisdom

There is an equivalent poster in other South African languages.

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Deconstructing gender and sexuality discourses in Brothers for Life

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The other predominant chronotope is one of Transformation. This also has a fairly
conventional structuring in Figure 1 in terms of the information dimensions of Ideal and Real.
The information positioned in the upper part of the poster (the Ideal position) makes up the
force of the message which, in this case, is the attributes that infuse the spirit of the New Man.
The lower section of the poster provides practical information on how to become a New Man
namely by Do[ing] the right thing, Yenza kahle and send[ing] a please call me to 072 924
2559 or visit[ing] www.brothersforlife.org to join the Brothers For Life movement. This
part of the message links the aspirations and ideals of the reader to a concrete site and
temporal set up; in fact, it reaches out to two spaces and is thus heterotopic (English- and
Zulu-speaking) along multiple axes of time5. These two chronotopes complement each other
and intersect in that the chronotope of the New Man here links eternal and idyllic values of
honesty and the like to a new spatio-temporal anchor, namely present day South Africa and its
new masculinity.
There is a third chronotope here that contributes to the mix, namely an Idyllic chronotope that
appears here in the form of a utopia of consumption, style and liberal values. This resides in
the choice and agency of the figure, the anonymity of his surroundings and the
individualization (even loneliness) of his aspiration. His depicted desire to tap into and
recycle common tropes of late modern consumerism appear ungrounded in any specific time
or place, and are thus atemporal and aspatial.
4.1.2. Participant structures/interpersonal relationships
We noted above how the chronotopes of the New Man and that of transformation are also
cleverly interlinked, or cross-aligned, in the way the representation is structured as a
narration, linking past and present features of masculinity in a trope of change rather than
continuity in values. This cross-alignment is mediated through both the alignment of the
chronotopes in the representation, as well as in the way in which the participant structure, or
interpersonal relations, of the reader is structured as a narrative. Perrino (2011:93) has noted
the variety of ways in which storytellers align the chronotope of the story and the chronotope
of the here-and-now story-telling event, capitalizing on the fact that stories are interactive,
dynamic events which are co-constructed by the interactional text (Bauman 1986); that is, the
interpersonal or participant relations are present in the story-telling event itself. This is
accomplished by storytellers aligning the narrative event with the narrative itself, or, in other
words, aligning the representation with the interaction. In Figure 1, we find a story-telling
device of alignment of interlocutor with story representation similar to what Perrino (2011)
calls participant-transposition which is a practice in which narrators blur the boundary
between story and story-telling event [] by moving the interlocutors into their stories
(2011:97). There are various ways in which this device is utilized in Figure 1. Firstly, the
narrator refers to the viewer or reader at the end of his narration with And you are my
brother, which directly serves to assign a role to the reader of also hosting the characteristics
and entertaining the value of the New Man, and creating direct interpersonal involvement on
behalf of the reader.
Other features that contribute to the narrative participant structure (interpersonal
relationships) in Figure 1 include the urgent, yet simultaneously relaxed, body posture of the
protagonist. The way in which the protagonist learns forward in his chair towards the reader is
5

The salience of this information is ensured, even though it is written in a small font size, through the use of the
colour white which coheres with the colour of the shoe worn in the visual image.

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a pose reminiscent of a story-telling posture. This suggests that we are about to be told
something important that requires our focused attention. As the aim in this particular set of
posters is to present and persuade, the interpersonal dimension plays a particularly important
role. The feature of body posture is reinforced in the size of the (textual) character depicted in
the representation, the perspective and the angle from which the reader is positioned to view
the composition, and the engaging nature of the gaze of the actor depicted. In fact, the way in
which gaze has been modelled is particularly effective here. The composition portrays direct
eye contact with the viewers which serves to invite interaction (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996)
and encourages engagement with the composition. Kress and van Leeuwen describe this as a
demand image (1996:122-123), where the participant seems to demand something of the
viewer, in this case, a social relationship. The combined effect of all these visual features in
the composition is to create a visual form of direct address, which is repeated in Figure 1s
text I am that man and you are my brother (our emphasis).
4.2. The Game Of Life
4.2.1. Chronotopes
Figure 2 is ostensibly a poster promoting HIV testing. Three prominent South African
sportsmen are used in the presentation of this message: (from left to right) Teko Modise, a
professional football (soccer) player; Graeme Smith, a professional cricket player, and John
Smit, a professional rugby player.

Figure 2. Brothers For Lifes The Game of Life poster

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Deconstructing gender and sexuality discourses in Brothers for Life

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There are two main chronotopes here. The first is that of Threshold, or the times in which, and
places where, crisis events occur, concretely carried by the chronotope of the Game. The
second is that of Transformation, as carried by the New Man chronotope. The Idyllic
chronotope also intersects with these two main chronotopes. A game takes place over a
specific period of time and at a predetermined place. It is bound by rules that must be
honoured, and a good game builds on the display of thorough prior planning, strategic
thinking, team spirit and the integrity and brotherhood of the players. The outcome of a game
is generally not known in advance, and small victories do not necessarily mean an overall
win. Excitement, tension and anxiety as to outcomes are all features of games shared by most
participants, players and spectators alike.
The Game chronotope is thus ideal for the message of HIV/AIDS testing that the poster
carries an emotionally-charged, spatially- and temporally-bound strategic event that
metaphorically captures the HIV/AIDS diagnostic dilemma of South Africa and possibly, the
world. In the game of life, you may win or lose knowing your HIV status is a strategic move
that could tip the balance in favour of a win. The Game chronotope clearly depicts the point
of transition where crisis events may occur and decisions are made that may determine the
life of a person (Bakhtin 1994:248). The main feature of the composition is that it allows us
to identify the chronotope as a game, the participants as sportsmen, and the names
accompanying each figure.
The New Man chronotope is also present in that the figures may be interpreted as tapping into
the desirable attributes of the responsible man in 2012. All participants depicted are
sportsmen representing South Africas three major sports. The connotations of sport are
many, but energy, integrity, team spirit, self-sufficiency, sacrifice, hard work, and discipline
are some of the more common attributes associated with playing sport. As games seldom, if
ever, involve both men and women playing on the game team (especially games such as
rugby, football and cricket as associated with the poster), players in these sports also lend
themselves to associations with male bonding, as exemplified in the slogan Brothers For
life. Through the chronotope of the Game, these attributes are projected onto the players
themselves, thus inscribing the values of the New Man into the bodies and psyches of the role
models with which aspiring adepts for new manhood may identify.
Besides the Game or Transition chronotope, the Idyllic chronotope contributes the most to the
organization of the composition. Firstly, the choice of participants and props clearly craft an
idyllic situation for many readers. Sports stars are publicized, praised and glamourized and
enjoy fame, fortune and a magnificent lifestyle of consumption. They are featured guests in
both womens and mens magazines, as well as serving as role models for the youth. The fact
that no props are present other than the sportsmens attire reinforces the idea that the
participants are located in a time-out space, where they can address unhindered the
underlying and valued attributes of sportsmen (such as honesty and fairness) unencumbered
by the vicissitudes of any particular game. In other words, the narrative framing removes the
sportsmens attributes from the actual game itself, which would otherwise have put a more
explicitly competitive and aggressive spotlight on the events, and perhaps drawn attention to a
specific game.
The Idyllic chronotope is most salient in the general structuring of the composition. Figure 2
has a different organization to Figure 1, namely the prominence of a Centre-Periphery layout

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around the Ideal-Real axis. In Figure 2, the placement of the sentence In the game of life
know your HIV status represents the idealistic situation and the information in the bottom
segment of the composition, Yenza kahle, Do the right thing and www.brothersforlife.org
represents the Real information, that is, information on the concrete, strategic steps that need
to be taken to attain the ideal. The Ideal information in the upper section of the text paints the
perfect or aspired to situation, not what the situation is at the present time (Kress and Van
Leeuwen 2006). This information is written in capital letters and with a bigger font. The
nucleus of the poster is taken up with a powerful visual image of the three sportsmen,
illuminated as though under a floodlight with a penumbra of white light, reminiscent of early
portrait photography. The effect is to awaken associations in the reader of, for example, the
biblical three wise men or some other portent gathering. Another cross-chronotopic feature is
found in the use of colour and typography in Figures 1 and 2, such as the predominance of red
and white on black background, and the use of capitals and italics in the text (cf. Machin
2007). Kress and Van Leeuwen (2002, 2006) distinguish between two types of saturation with
different meanings. There are highly saturated colours which give salience to parameters of
positivity, exuberance and vulgarity and low saturated colours which give a subtle and
tenderer meaning. With this in mind, it is clear that these posters use low saturation colours.
Kress and Van Leeuwen (2002, 2006) view these colours as representing fantasy rather than
reality.
4.2.2. Participant structure/interpersonal structure
In comparison with Figure 1, the relationship between the reader and the participants in
Figure 2 is less demanding and attention-grabbing, and more encouraging of reflection and
mutual contemplation. This composition includes a type of gaze representation that Kress and
Van Leeuwen (1996) call an offer image (1996:124). The angle from which the photo is
taken in Figure 2 is a medium-shot image, in that the figures are captured approximately at
knee level. The sportsmens crossed arms and upright postures signal authority and measured
composure, something that is underscored by the visual association with a trio of prophetic
messengers.
The position of the hands is an interesting feature in both figures. In Figure 1, the models
hands are folded, while in Figure 2, the hands of all three sportsmen are hidden. These
positions significantly allow the orientation of the bodies to be interpreted as free from sexual
connotation, (see below) and can instead be interpreted as postures of authority and narration.
The models folded hands in Figure 1 create a picture of a relaxed and casual narrative style,
whereas the folded arms and hands in pockets in Figure 2 create an air of relaxed authority.
Thus, in Figure 2, the traits noted for the New Man in Figure 1, (e.g. responsibility etc.) can
be interpreted from the posture of each of the sportsmen.
The position of the protagonists hands, and accompanying postures, is intriguing also in how
it serves to draw attention to the clasped hands in the Brothers For Life logo. At the same
time, the folded arms or interlocked hands (i.e. no open palms or arms hanging by their sides)
signal a typical posture of those who are going nowhere for the moment, who are attentive to
the reader, and hence suggest a time-out scenario of peaceful communion. These men are
bonding meaningfully, either with the reader or with each other, which is also reinforced by
the Brothers For Life slogan as well as the actual name of the campaign. At the same time, the
representation exudes authority and voice all in a mellowed and socially-tempered
expression of authority by respected figures in communion.

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53

Discussion

We now return to our two research questions posed above, namely, how does the Brothers For
Life campaign depict masculinity in the New Man, and how does this connect to other
depictions in other modalities, genres, places and times? Marais (2010) refers to work that
traces patriarchal ideals of masculinity in South Africa back to the disempowering roots of
colonial and apartheid emasculation (black Africans) and to the militarization of society
brought about by a defensive apartheid (white males and females). In these contexts, notions
of manhood increasingly emphasized available resources such as courage, strength, risktaking and male camaraderie, while women and their bodies were often instrumentalized.
Masculinity was equated with skill, bravery, power, passion and strength (Milani &
Shaikjee forthcoming:20). The New Man campaign clearly challenges some of the most
extreme expressions of masculinity, but the image of the New Man across the board is very
much one of traditional heterosexual masculinity, albeit in ways that are more in tune, as
Milani and Shaikjee (forthcoming) point out, with middle-class consumerist aspirations than
was previously the case. Schroeder and Zwick (2004:44) note that consumption, or at least
representation of consumption, shifts hegemonic masculinity from the realm of aggression,
bodily force, competition and physical skills to the domain of consumption, including taste,
expertise, discernment, and bodily appearance (cf. also Benwell 2002, Gill 2003). And
although patriarchal and chauvinist practices are rejected in the Brothers For Life campaign,
this rejection takes the form of an affirmation of, arguably, the same basic values that underlie
traditional masculinities male camaraderie, strength, endurance, foresight and the
invisibility and ownership of women, which all remain paramount.
Both Figures 1 and 2 promote male bonding and a celebration of team spirit. The New Man
finds physical articulation in the bodies of sports celebrities, a common feature of HIV/AIDS
posters, and more generally, a common feature of most advertisements. The three sportsmen
in Figure 2 are more than likely to be associated in the minds of the general public with
healthy and mindful living, and to be associated with desirable characteristics of team spirit,
such as commitment to the sports that they play and, in this case, their respective partners.
Just as importantly, there is a sharp male-centeredness in the way these values are depicted; in
the text accompanying Figure 1, the model talks of his woman, the number of women he
can have, support[ing] his partner and protect[ing] his children (all emphasis is ours). Both
representations work through the creation of a comfortable masculine space, something that is
also depicted in the ambiguity of the advertisements signum, Brothers for Life. Far from
leading to competition among the brothers, the hegemonic masculine ideals being pedalled
are the very foundation for their bond as brothers. Thus, despite a recontextualization of the
meaning of masculinity in genres of consumerism, the male values which are promoted
here still construct a particular ideology of controlled and agentive masculinity through which
women are defined.
Looking at other recent representations of masculinity in South Africa, it is noticeable that the
Carling Black Label advertisement also strongly emphasizes values of bonding which are
almost identical to those depicted by the Brothers For Life posters referred to here (Milani
and Shaikjee forthcoming). Milani and Shaikjee (forthcoming) note in the Carling Black
Label advertisement how women figure, if at all, as the mens protected accessories. Thus,
they come across as objects of male patronage and subjects of interpellation solely through

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Nobuhle Luphondo & Christopher Stroud

the male voice6. Although these values are refracted through tropes of consumption, they
nevertheless remain conventional, and Brothers For Life is fundamentally a (re-)
contextualization of traditional masculinity. Therefore, the male remains in control and
rational in Brothers For Life, and does not show emotion freely (cf. Schroeder and Zwick
2004:44). Neither is there any visible presence of female dialogue that could temper this
monologic voice.
How then are readers or viewers aligned with the chronotopic representation of masculinity in
the Brothers For Life posters? How are social relations and roles constituted through
participant frameworks? In addition, how do the alignments mediated through participant
frameworks contribute to the figurations and readings of masculinity? In the Brothers For Life
posters (as well as the Carling Black Label advertisements), male bodies are the objects of the
readers gaze in some cases, even demanding the gaze, with an energy and inspiration
perhaps taken from gay iconography (Schroeder and Zwick 2004:44). Although men are
increasingly encouraged to view their own bodies as sites of management (Schroeder and
Zwick 2004:25), Dyer (1982) suggests that images of men specifically designed to be gazed
upon and admired nevertheless unsettle patterns of gendered gaze, producing a certain
instability. According to Dyer, the only way to maintain gendered power relations and avoid
feminization of males, while simultaneously representing men as objects of desire or gaze, is
to explicitly disavow elements of passivity. Historically, representations that positioned male
bodies as objects of elicited gaze belonged to the genre of pin-up posters, where male pin-ups
designed to be desired diverted their gaze away from the reader. In the Brothers For Life
posters, a disavowal of passivity is cleverly accomplished by inverting desire and
consolidating conventional male authority by having the protagonists in both posters direct a
powerful gaze straight at the reader, thereby signalling power and integrity. Together with
gaze, male integrity is also rescued through individuation of the participants; all three of the
male figures in Figure 2 are known to the general public and are also named in the posters
themselves, which means that they are not abstract and anonymous objects of fantasy and
desire, but fully socially-named and interpellated individuals with public biographies.
Furthermore, the homo-social bonding implicit in a brotherhood for life avoids any
connotation of (homo)sexual desire through having the participants not showing their hands.
This is because, as previously mentioned, the way in which the hands are clasped in front of
the body, hidden away from sight in trouser pockets, or resting in folded arms contributes to
perceptions of body posture in terms of (narrative) authority. Over and above this, however,
the poses are also significant markers of standoffish non-intimacy, perhaps stereotypical of
heterosexual males. Finally, the campaigns choice of sportsmen as protagonists also
contributes to readings of conventional masculinities in both compositions.
The larger scale historical and socio-political significances of these representations of
masculinity across genres, times and places reaffirm conventions in the construal of the public
body. There is a continuity of forms of representation across time, adopted in commercial
advertising, and more recently also increasingly prevalent in non-commercial media such as
public health and lifestyle information that articulate some basic societal values in how, and
which, bodies are represented in public. Schroeder and Zwick (2004:30), have noted how the
portrait photograph remains encoded within the context of the painting, hence the complexity
and contradictions: artfully arranged manipulation of visual elements; and how the early
6

The authors refer here to an image of a woman about to set off on a bicycle and holding the handle bars has her
hand protectively covered by that of a male who is carefully supporting and guiding her.

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Carte de Visite involved a prior rigid regime of the posing stand, where men and women
[] created a powerful visual discourse of the body leading to the emergence, reproduction
and circulation of a socially and culturally respectable type of body. These forms of
representation meant that the bodiless middle class became embodied, and the middle class
subject became gendered and racialised (Schroeder and Zwick 2004:31).
The Brothers For Life posters also reflect a select construction of bodies for public circulation
on the basis of class, gender and race. The proven regimes of posturing (Schroeder and
Zwick 2004) reproduced here draw attention to middle-class status. The demographic profiles
of the male protagonists are racially either black or white, and in the age range of 28 to 40
years. What is interesting is that there are no representatives of the so-called Indian,
Asian or Coloured groups here (for no discernible reason, as there are in fact Indian
cricketers and Coloured football and rugby players who are very popular and who could serve
as enticing role models)7. The choice of participants reflects the most sexually-active ages,
which could be considered to enhance the readers identification and engagement with the
message.
However, and perhaps just as importantly, the target group is the most consumptionorientated, and the group most likely to pay attention to posters of this type. Thus, the
representation constructs a target group, defined both racially and in terms of age, which is
both sexually and consumption-orientated. Furthermore, the common underlying values of
masculinity and consumption (i.e. individual agency, choice and responsibility) are tied to a
particular social class. The middle-class lifestyle that the depictions of masculinity share
across sites and chronotopes also comes with the values of choice and temperate taste
associated with aspirations and valuations of luxury (cf. Schroeder and Zwick 2004:45). Both
the Brothers For Life posters and the Carling Black Label advertisements (cf. Milani &
Shaikjee forthcoming) appeal to our inherited and late-modern values of rationality and
reflexive subjectivity, and to an orientation towards moderation in consumption that typify the
aspiring classes stances towards luxury. Ultimately, these values also underlie the liberal
notion of a person as free and rational, values that are also masculinised here, in a way that
depicts the consumer market as mainly masculine. In the long run, even female destinies are
constrained or led by male choices in Brothers For Life with what it means to be a woman
ultimately the outcome of male free will. The timeless values of modernity and neo-liberalism
are also affected through the lack of detail in the posters. We noted how these celebrity
images differ from many other images of these types in that they lack the variety of common
material items which people generally aspire to, such as cellphones, musical instruments and
fast cars (Banda and Oketch 2011). One reason for this is the nature of the particular lifestyle
item in focus here, namely an HIV/AIDS-free future. However, this lack of props
simultaneously contributes to a spatial and temporal non-specificity that accords these values
and underlying rationalities of choice and reflexivity a universal and indisputable generality
indicators of the human condition more than just of human contingency.

This finding echoes the point made by Milani and Shaikjee with respect to the Carling Black Label beer advert
that has a similar demographic and age bias. In that context, these authors note that this reflects who drinks or
would drink this particular brand of beer. This is not obviously the case here, although the similarities do raise
some interesting possibilities for conjecture around how public subjectivities for whatever purpose and on
whatever forum are intertwined with/conflated with, desire, aspiration and consumption.

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6.

Nobuhle Luphondo & Christopher Stroud

Conclusion

In this paper, we have explored what we believe to be, an overlooked aspect of HIV/AIDS
discourses, namely the tendency to couch such discourses in semiotic framings modelled on
multimodal representations of consumption and lifestyle. These tendencies reproduce patterns
of male patriarchy while at the same time ostensibly claiming to promote a New Man. The
importance of this remains to be investigated, especially with regard to what extent such
representations impact negatively on attempts to foster alternative sexual perceptions and
practices
The analysis was based on an investigation of the chronotopes that appear in different
contexts of production and consumption, and how these relate to each other and reinforce or
transform general perceptions and practices of masculinity. What was noticeable throughout
the analysis was the complexity and entanglement of a seemingly simple composition. We
cannot easily say that these representations are novel; they are neither wholly traditional nor
fully contemporary. The masculinities portrayed in these HIV/AIDS posters are recognizable
across different forms of public representations of masculinity, and are continuous with the
earlier depictions thereof; that is, combinations of old and new representational systems
which Polan (1986) calls complicated contemporaneity.
However, the complexity has been reworked into traditional and conventional notions of
sexuality and gender. Naturally, there is little space here for queering sexuality or for
deconstructing potentially harmful ideas about gender. We ask, given the complexity and
diversity needed to produce the uniform and conventional, what would it take to craft a
position on diversity?
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