ABSTRACT
The 'telling' of Jesse Jones story certainly depends on multiple performative strategies that shape notions of realness in the street boy. Through the author discussions of 'the making of' Jones's documentary and readings of the music video 'Gategutt', she shows how the staging of a 'street boy' persona is grounded in appropriations of gangsta rap aesthetics, bodily display, vocal performance and the audiovisual construction of urban space. In the sound production of Jones's 'Gategutt', the sample from Lillebjorn Nilsen's song sets the tone for Jesse's lines and the refrains sung by Vinni, a recontextualizing of Rudolf Nilsen's poem in a contemporary take on an Oslo 'street boy'. As the author attempts to demonstrate, videos, 'Gategutt' and 'Kommer aldri inn', illuminate the ways in which hypermasculinity is highly contingent upon the audiovisual display of Jones's. Hypermasculinity is framed visually by macho male bodies on display, where the objectification of the female underlines the heterosexist attitude inherent in Jones' performance.
