Androgyny, masculinities and the re-gendered aesthetics of the new wave: Duran Duran and the second British Invasion

The early 1980s presented a reaction to the steadfast musical genres of disco and rock, along with responses to the ways that men were represented during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The genre that responded to the images of masculinity of the time was called ‘new wave’ music. This wave often made reference to bands outside the United Kingdom, in what is generally understood to be the second British Invasion. These new images of the masculine allowed young men to challenge gender norms, and the new male of the time became a visible signifier: a vision of maleness into a post-glam-rock pastiche of movement, contradictions and irony. By using the band Duran Duran as its subject of analysis, this article examines the ways by which the masculine re-signified itself, as well as ways that one can read alternative images of maleness away from the confines of a more mainstream heteronormativity. In doing so, it takes a close look at music history, images of masculinity, the new wave movement and Duran Duran, with the aim of articulating how the youth culture of the time and the second British Invasion provided necessary relief from the sometimes confining realities of maleness and masculinity found in more mainstream cultural production of the early 1980s.