I love tough guys. Indiana
June 06, 2002

I love tough guys. Indiana Jones, Mike Hammer, Han Solo, and James Dean are some of the coolest images around. These tough guys, td, assaulted, dominated but never beaten are terribly reassuring. I do wonder though if this or this or even this is a result of their not being enough of thisout there?

Consider for the moment the murky relationship of our popular entertainment to our popular disposition. The fact that violence in our society is tacitly more accepted than sensuality (or sex for that matter) is fairly well represented in the ratings earned by certain movies for certain subjects. To whit, a movie with nothing more explicit in it than two guys kissing receives an "R" rating, while one that showed several guys (and at least one woman) getting bashed, mauled, shot, stabbed or exploded earned a "PG-13" is an example of this rather strange priority. Taking life is rendered less offensive or controversial than sharing affection or love.

I know that there is a correlation between what we view and what we do, though it's not a 1:1 causal relationship. Just because we see something doesn't necessarily mean we'll go out and do it--unless we were looking for a reason to do so in the first place. Watching violence doesn't necessarily make one violent. If it did, hockey spectators would be some of the most violent people on Earth. (Alas, cabbies have that honor.) The world would also be a touchy-feely, socially sound utopia, what with all the ABC Afterschool Specials we endured as children. (Teen alcoholism? Gone. Drunk driving? Gone? Bad hair? Distant memory.)

Media does though open the door a bit for people to consider things outside the regular, or to see the regular that exists outside of what they consider. It also though reflects what we want to be "the regular" -- what our popular myths and beliefs tell us should be real, regular or "normal." Sometimes this is good. Often it just reinforces stereotypes and bad ideas that would have died off a much needed death had someone not recycled the idea.

It's in that later sense where I wonder if the rather narrowly defined view of how a guy can relate in the world -- dominating, conquering, intimidating -- precludes guys from ever considering the other sides of themselves -- compassionate, compromising, loving -- that are of equal value. Violence and aggression are necessary from time to time (like at a comic book auction), but compromise and understanding are more beneficial in the daily get and give of life. Our insanely high murder rate, higher than anywhere else in the West, has to be related somehow to our preference for the good, tough, silent and vaguely homicidal male ideal.

Yeah, okay. I'm just a silly fag who wouldn't mind a seeing a copious increase in the amount of pendulous peni present in films. I'm also a lefty, some-time academic who thinks that seeing "all" of a guy does much for demystification and an end to repression. Guys can't be sensual or sexual in any other sense than in possessorsory or dominant way. In the appreciative or beautiful sense, guys it's usually only spoken of in a context of titillation or cover.

If you think I'm just being "out there," consider this: With all of our recent teen murderers, beyond the conflicting music, video games, or gun classes they had, they all state that their being picked on, pressured, and derided for not being "manly" enough as the crucial reason for they're horrendous and evil sprees. Am I suggesting this as an excuse? No. With the exception of one kid who definitely showed symptoms of early on-set schizophrenia, all knew what they doing. Their own response to their own sensitivity, the choice they made in dealing with the raw anger and hatred they felt, was to respond in the most hateful way possible. That's just not right.

Yet it is telling that the onepopular and common image of how men are to respond to derision and scorn -- with aggression and an escalating infliction of pain an suffering -- that these guys chose to use. It is also interesting that it is this same way of responding that so many other men, of other ages, races and economic backgrounds, use -- again, witnessed by our murder stats. Yes, men are naturally aggressive. But this level of violence seems to be common to the United States.

Will nakedness, in both the physical and emotional sense, prevent further destructive acts? No. Of course not.

But it'd be a good way to start.

Posted by Jody at June 6, 2002 03:24 PM

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