This guest post by Alize Emme appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.
Setting aside everything there is to know about the current television landscape, the Starz series Outlander might seem like a completely modern story about two people navigating the start of a new relationship — minus the time travel, two husbands, and lack of indoor plumbing. Outlander, the tale of Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) the Englishwoman who accidentally leaves the 20th century and her husband when she travels 200 years back in time and meets Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) and a love she cannot deny, actually is a modern portrayal of sex and gender on TV. But what makes Outlander modern is also what makes it rare: Masculinity as told for the female gaze.
Ronald D. Moore, Outlander’s creator, deserves credit for fully developing the masculine men Diana Gabaldon established in the book series of the same name. On one end of the masculinity spectrum there are characters like Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies), Claire’s husband, the scholarly gentleman who is considerably more sexually timid than his wife, and Ian (Steven Cree), Jamie’s brother-in-law who is remorseful after murdering a man and befriends a criminal because he’s the only one who treats him like a man. On the polar opposite end of the scale are Dougal MacKenzie (Graham McTavish), kin to Jamie and recreational adulterer at large, and Captain Jack Randall (also Menzies), an 18th century version of Dog the Bounty Hunter mixed with one of the Hulks buttoned into a red tailored coat whose very layered homoerotic tendencies make him a predator for women and men alike. Somewhere in the middle of this virility brigade is Jamie Fraser.
Jamie completely redefines the nuances of masculinity and what it means to be a man on screen. Where the traditional television narrative would dictate Jamie pushes, he instead pulls; where he could take the easy road, he takes the high road. Jamie challenges Jamie as much as any outside force and reveals himself a better man each time. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s built like a Greek god, with the hair of a cherub, eyes like the sky, and more often than not is covered in blood, sweat, or mud. Outwardly, Jamie is masculinity personified.
Inwardly, Jamie reserves no ego about being a virgin exploring sex and sexuality with his new bride and more experienced partner, Claire, on their wedding night. He takes the warnings from his fellow male friends that women don’t care for sex to heart when he sees this could be true for Claire. Jamie doesn’t just use Claire for his own agenda and roll over and leave once he’s satisfied; he cares for her in every sense that there is to be a lover. He wants to learn from her. He is swept up by the mysticism of their unusual love and doesn’t mind how it looks to serve Claire publicly or please her privately.
To the hyper-masculine Dougal, who knows the “importance” of keeping a woman waiting so she doesn’t fancy herself with too much power or control over her husband, this is a sign of weakness. But Jamie’s defiance of the MacKenzie Clan’s male domineering agenda is clear. “I said I was completely under your power and happy to be there,” he tells Claire after eagerly returning to her.
The rules of how to be a man have been clearly ingrained in Jamie. He struggles with the idea of how to uphold a masculine image while also respecting his wife. While Claire persists with being a huge factor in challenging Jamie’s pre-set thinking. Where Jamie sees fit to reprimand Claire for putting herself and others in danger by archaically spanking her, Claire bucks at this tradition and uses it as an opportunity to renegotiate the rules of their relationship.
Claire will not remain idle while Jamie follows blindly the regressive ways of his predecessors. She challenges him. She reminds him a woman’s voice is just as important as a man’s, that wives are not property. She is the force that whispers in his ear to pull when the status quo says to push. Instead of digging in his heels, Jamie takes a vulnerable turn and admits to Claire that the thought of losing her scares him. He is a man who can show emotion and understands that love allows for forgiveness.
“I saw a ridged man bend,” Jamie says before realizing traditions are not set in stone. Jamie comes to the conclusion that in order to make his marriage with Claire formidable, he cannot continue to abide by the rules of older generations. His mindfulness leads to the pledge that he will never again raise a rebellious hand to his wife.
By nature Jamie is a protector and he fiercely protects women. He takes two floggings to protect his sister, he takes a beating to protect Leary (Nell Hudson), and he’s married Claire to protect her from the Red Coats. Jamie quite easily fills out the honorable male role of providing security. The idea that women want to feel secure is sometimes correlated with money, but as true love stories go, Jamie can offer Claire only the skill of his two bare hands.
“You need not be sacred of me nor anyone else as long as I am with you,” Jamie tells her shortly after arriving at Castle Leoch. Despite the wealth of safety Jamie provides for Claire, she also saves him. She is as much his savior as he is her hero. She sews his wounds, she rescues him when he’s captured, but most importantly, her love sparks new life within Jamie. She gives him something no one else can; with her he is whole. Jamie doesn’t shy away from Claire’s ability to help him. But he does show resignation when he cannot provide for her.
After realizing his father’s savings, originally endowed for Jamie and Claire to raise a family, must now go to staving off a low-life criminal out for the bounty on Jamie’s head, Jamie tells Claire, “I’ve let you down”–words most men on TV never utter. His humility shows the side of a man who understands the weight of his actions and the reach of their consequences.
Jamie is an amalgamation for this time. He has taken the old traditions of patriarchy and retained only what is needed to be a survivor. He has expanded his own notions of male dominance and marriage for the woman he loves. He is tender, but still commanding. In many senses, Jamie is the evolution of the perfect modern man. And instead of being the hero at the end of the story, he is in turn, the victim.
Throughout this first season of Outlander, Jamie and Randall have crossed paths in a twisted juxtaposition of showmanship. Both of these men tether the series as pillars of opposing masculinity. Randall is filled with brute strength fueled by a sadistic mind charging at anything he wants to possess. He holds a sadistic domination over Jamie having personally whipped Jamie within an inch of his life.
During an exchange at Fort William, Randall taunts Jamie: “Who’s the man in this match, Fraser?” Jamie’s unwillingness to fight Randall is seen as weakness; he is less a man for not desiring bloodshed. While war and murder are commonplace in this time period, Jamie derives no pleasure from the passing of men, like Randall who feeds off the weakness of other. Jamie is a valiant warrior on the battlefield but when the opportunity presents itself for Jamie to avenge himself with Randall, he doesn’t follow through. “It never occurred to me to kill a helpless man, even one such as Randall,” Jamie says. This logic makes the brutality of their final meeting all the more agonizing.
As these things go on television, women are shown as the victims of rape and sexual assault. Outlander has plenty of this as well, and no matter how accurate it is to the time period, the bodice-ripping and men treating women like objects is still the show’s greatest fault. Men prove themselves in this era by taking whatever they can dominate, women or otherwise. And in a different twist on this theme, the show’s final culmination of sexual violence occurs not between a man and a woman, but between two men.
Through disturbing mind games and gruesome treatment, Randall breaks Jamie. For a series where the entire show is a metaphor centered on power and dominance — countries over countries, men over women, lairds over tenants — this is the ultimate domination.
The two men who have foiled each other the entire season act out the most gruesome rendition of good versus evil, Christ imagery and all, and evil triumphs. For Jamie and his traditional masculine mentality, this is a loss only death can free him from. He is defeated, victimized, and literally crippled, and the one person who can save him is Claire.
“What is her power over you?” Randall chides Jamie during his psychological torture. As manly as Jamie likens to be, he long ago surrendered himself to Claire’s power over him. In his deteriorated state, only a woman can heal this broken man. While Jamie’s brokenness is wholly justifiable, his extremist way of thinking shows his ideas of masculinity will need to continue to evolve if he wants to fully regain his soul. As will Outlander itself, if the series wants to show concern for victimization, parity is still needed.
How do you redefine masculinity on television? Outlander has only scratched the surface of potential for shows to portray more evolved men on screen. Jamie is the kind of man women want to watch. But he should also the kind of man other men want to emulate. A little old, a little new–a modern man for our modern world.
Alize Emme is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. in Film & Television from NYU and tweets at @alizeemme.
Well now I HAVE to watch this show! Top stuff. I have never understood the argument that masculinity precludes empathy. Or that femininity cannot also be inherently “strong”. Empathy is not weakness and emotional repression in not strength and so it goes on