Fatherly subjectivities on TikTok parodies: The “typical Peruvian dad”

Abstract

TikTok’s increasing cultural pervasiveness leading to a myriad of practices and discourses turn it into a rich digital fieldsite to interpret local dynamics. Building on a more encompassing study on Peruvian TikTok and parodic motherhood (García-Rapp and León, 2024) I delve here into the emerged theme of gender issues including videos performing the relatable social identity of “typical Peruvian dad” as well as the popular “arguments between my parents” to better understand how family roles are articulated, exposed, criticized, accepted, and contested. I analyze visual and textual discourses as sociocultural processes and reflect on popular media cultures drawing from videos and user comments around the content of male Peruvian digital creator @zagaladas (Álvaro Zagal, 28, 1M followers), who uploads humorous, parodic clips of himself re-enacting his parents. With the goal of contributing to media studies and anthropology, this paper examines videos and comments filled with intergenerational tensions and implied gender differences as fruitful terrain to interpret legitimized and rejected fatherly subjectivities.