Zane Larson ‘19, “Semper Fi, Do or Die”: Hegemonic Masculinity in the Musical Dogfight

This lecture focuses on the musical Dogfight (2012) by Dear Evan Hansen and La La Land composer-lyricist duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The musical is set in San Francisco during the midst of the Vietnam War and focuses on a group of marines who spend their last night before deployment causing havoc in the name of sadistic hypermasculine entertainment. Acts of violent misogyny from individual marines cause ingroup fighting that challenges their personal conceptions of what it means to “be a man” despite their adherence to traditional norms of American masculinity. The narrative of the musical thus translates Vietnam War era masculinity to modern audiences and utilizes the stage as a space for exploration of male gendered performance in musical theater. Using a broad range of methodologies to examine the lyrics, musical score, narrative, staging, costuming, critical reviews, and interviews, Zane Larson will construct the varied ways that masculinity is performed in this musical. He will argue that the presentation of the marines as a socially dominant whole is challenged by individual marines’ performances of masculinities that are not in accordance with masculinity norms. Furthermore, Larson will demonstrate how those who occupy the status of a non-socially dominant masculinity experience gender panic resulting in violent action by means of misogyny and homophobia. This violence occurs as those situated outside of the normative boundaries of masculinity attempt to reconstruct perceptions of their masculinity to fit societal expectations of American military service members in both Vietnam and contemporary eras.

Zane Larson is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the University of Iowa. He received his Bachelor’s in vocal performance with an education minor from Luther College ’19, and a Master’s in Music Theory from Florida State University. Zane’s primary research areas are musical theater, pop music, film music, and gender and sexuality studies. Zane has presented his research on musicals at CUNY’s Graduate Students in Music Conference, on Hyperpop at Harvard’s Graduate Music Forum, and on Leonard Bernstein at the National American Musicological Society meeting in Denver in 2023. Zane’s current publications include work on Women’s Clubs in Iowa and the musical A Strange Loop, which was nominated for the Society for Music Theory’s Public Facing Scholarship Award in 2024 and the American Musicological Society’s Philip Brett Award in 2025.