Narrator Jackson Katz uses visuals and film clips to argue that such a view of masculinity is creating a crisis in young boys as they grow up being made to feel that violence=agency and that rape is just fine because you should get what you want—and if the answer is “no,” then you just take it.
Written by Colleen Clemens as part of our theme week on Masculinity.
In a much-needed update to its 1999 predecessor, Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood, and American Culturebrings to light the horrid ways masculinity is constructed in the media. Narrator Jackson Katz uses visuals and film clips to argue that such a view of masculinity is creating a crisis in young boys as they grow up being made to feel that violence=agency and that rape is just fine because you should get what you want—and if the answer is “no,” then you just take it.
The film begins with footage from the cafeteria in Columbine High School when two students slaughtered their peers and teachers. Katz uses this scene to exemplify the crisis America is facing at the hands of young boys who are taught that in order to have agency, one must need to “man up.” And if people won’t listen to you, then you have every right to use violence to get them to listen.
Throughout the film, Katz works to show how violence became framed as a “women’s issue,” allowing men not to care about the violence they were perpetrating. (Think self defense classes for women on campuses instead of sessions with men about consent.) This feminization of the problem allowed the media to continue running two storylines side by side–violence against women and men acting violently—as two separate stories that the media depicted as parallel lines instead of intersecting ones. Katz argues that we can no longer consider violence against women as a women’s issue but as an issue related to the violent masculinity being constructed all around us.
Katz draws attention to the media’s coverage of mass shootings in their pathetic attempts to figure out why such violence continues to occur. In an I-would-laugh-if-this-weren’t-so-sad moment in the film, Katz shows a newspaper article that tries to make connections between the shooters—in parentheses is their maleness. Katz argues that the parenthetical, the throwaway, is the answer—not the sideline. That all but one of the mass shootings in recent history have been perpetrated by a man or men is the obvious answer to Katz. The film then uses a variety of films
—from Fight Club to Kung Fu Panda—
to illustrate his point that violent masculinity is reified from the earliest of years in a young boy’s life, and that to undo such a terrible programming feels impossible. Yet our culture relies on us undoing it. One of the many examples Katz investigates is the Western, the quintessence of manhood construction in early cinema. John Wayne, Katz argues, is the “real man,” the one who solves problems with a gun. He is the essence of American “toughness, manhood, and violence.”
Wayne in The Searchers
Katz does little in this film to educate the viewer on what to do next. The film is a long argument defining the problem without offering much of a solution. While Katz gives talks on campuses around the country to discuss what to do, the film leaves the viewer feeling more bereft and shocked than empowered. When I co-hosted a viewing of it at my child’s school (and how cool is a school that wants to investigate issues of gender!), I sent parents to Katz’s TED talk to give them the next step.
The parents wanted a prescription, an antidote to the awfulness they had just witnessed—and I can’t blame them, even if a film shouldn’t have to do such work. I suggested starting with undoing the “boys will be boys” mentality on the playground as a great place to start…
…because boys can be so much more if we open the construct and give them room to feel without embarrassment, to cry without reproach, to love without fear. Boys who feel don’t need to “grow a pair.” Boys who cry aren’t “pussies.” Boys who love don’t need to “man up.” We need more representations of boys and men that undo the terrifying construct Katz unpacks in Tough Guise 2 if anything is going to change our culture of violence.
It likes to think of itself as a progressive, meritocratic industry, but I don’t think any thoughtful person would dispute the fact that Hollywood remains a racist cultural institution. It continues to produce racist films, and it continues to shut out talented people of color. In fact, even those of us who have not bought the myth that Hollywood’s a liberal place full of cool, open-minded individuals have not fully recognized how deeply ingrained its racism really is. Here are just a few sobering reminders from history and the recent past.
It likes to think of itself as a progressive, meritocratic industry, but I don’t think any thoughtful person would dispute the fact that Hollywood remains a racist cultural institution. It continues to produce racist films, and it continues to shut out talented people of color. In fact, even those of us who have not bought the myth that Hollywood’s a liberal place full of cool, open-minded individuals have not fully recognized how deeply ingrained its racism really is. Here are just a few sobering reminders from history and the recent past.
Poster of Birth of a Nation
Promoting a White Supremacist Ideology
The two most repellent films I have ever seen are Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) and D.W. Griffith’s TheBirth of a Nation (1915). Both films have been long recognized by film critics and scholars as technically innovative and both prompt feelings of overpowering nausea. Triumph of the Will is a German propaganda film that (re)produces Nazi discourse. Experiencing the terrifying soullessness of Nazi ceremony on display is a simultaneously sickening and numbing experience. Praised by generations of film scholars as a masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation is the most rabidly racist movie ever made in the United States. Set in the Civil War and Reconstruction era, it is, in fact, a revisionist, white supremacist movie that portrays the Klan as the good guys. The story of the The Birth of a Nation’s reception is also astonishing. One of the first films to be screened at the White House, it reportedly received this response from President Woodrow Wilson: “It was like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is so terribly true.” The racism in The Birth of a Nation is of the vilest kind: Black men are portrayed as rapacious creatures fixated with white women while the Klan are celebrated as gallant saviors. Promoting a Fascist racist ideology, the film seeks to normalize ideas of white superiority. Its poisonous impact cannot be overstated. The Birth of a Nation was a huge commercial success and hugely influential. In fact, it was used as a recruiting tool by the Klan. Think about this: this was one of America’s first “great films.”
Tippi Hedren
Propagating Racist Norms and Ideals of Feminine Beauty and Sexuality
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the accomplished directors in cinema history but he has also played a dominant role in constructing and reinforcing Anglocentric norms and ideals of female beauty and sexuality. It is well known that Hitchcock preferred blonde actresses to play his leading ladies–they were part of his sadomasochistic aesthetic vision and the object, it is said, of a quite pathological obsession in his personal life–but I have yet to read any film scholar or critic underscore the director’s essential racism. In an interview with fellow director Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock explained, “You know why I favour sophisticated blondes in my films? We’re after the drawing room type, the real ladies who become whores once they’re in the bedroom.” There is, you can see, a strong linkage between Hitchcock’s racism, sexism, and classism. The director, moreover, espouses a very specific white self-love. Consider the following statement: “I think the most interesting women sexually are the Englishwomen. I feel that the Englishwoman, the Swedes, the northern Germans, and the Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the Latin, the Italian, and the French woman. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you, and to your surprise, she’ll probably pull a man’s pants open.” His take on Anglo-Saxon and Nordic women is an expression of his own fantasies but he also advocates here the chauvinistic, Anglo notion that non-WASP European women are sexually vulgar. Women of color are noticeably absent from his misogynistic erotic musings, as they were from his films. Hitchcock’s blonde, WASP female characters–slender blonde women, I should add–typified by Tippi Hedren in The Birds should not solely be seen as fetishistic products of his imagination. They are a product of a racist, sexist, and classist mindset. It could be argued that Hitchcock played a key role in Hollywood in propagating narrow, racist ideals of feminine beauty. The attitudes he propagated have had a toxic, long-lasting influence on the American cultural imagination.
John Wayne
Romanticizing Racist Stars
John Wayne was not only one of the most popular movie stars of his time; he also represented a romanticized kind of robust, individualistic American masculinity. Wayne, indeed, personified the country itself for both compatriots and viewers internationally. Behind the mythic America the star was intended to embody, are, however, the historical truths of genocide and slavery. The icon himself never recognized these truths. In a 1971 Playboy interview, John Wayne stated, “I don’t think we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. Our so-called stealing of this country from them (Native Americans) was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.” This mind-blowing comment is worth breaking down. Wayne employs a Darwinian justification for the atrocities of his ancestors, an ideology devoid of morality and humanity. It is also, quite simply, as perverse as siding with a rapist calling his rape victim the aggressor. In the interview, he also shifts attention away from contemporary American atrocities in Vietnam, namely the My Lai massacre. On the civil rights struggles of Black Americans, he ever so vaguely acknowledges the anger of his fellow citizens before making this statement: “I believe in white supremacy until blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” Here we have a Hollywood icon clearly articulating white supremacist thinking as late as 1971.
Black Hawk Down
The Utter Indifference to the Deaths of Enemies and Civilians of Color in Hollywood War Movies
You can find numerous illustrations of American exceptionalism and selective empathy in Hollywood movies. The wildly popular, revisionist American Sniper (2014) is only the most recent dangerous example. From The Deer Hunter (1978) to The Hurt Locker (2008), there are many unsettling cases but there is one that I would like to presently highlight–the racism informing Black Hawk Down (2001). Directed by Ridley Scott, Black Hawk Down concerns the 1993 raid on Mogadishu. Like the vast majority of American war movies, Black Hawk Down never attempts to explore war from the perspective of the enemy soldier or civilian. It is solely dedicated to glorifying the sacrifice of American blood. The close of the film perfectly sums up white Hollywood’s absolute indifference to the deaths of enemies and civilians of color. We are told, “During the raid over 1,000 Somalis died and 19 American soldiers lost their lives.” Black African Somali Muslim deaths are solely an afterthought.
Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman
Erasing Interracial Relationships
Over the years, Hollywood has done an effective job in erasing interracial relationships from mainstream American culture. The lack of interracial relationships in Hollywood movies not only shows shameful cowardice on the part of the studios; it also reinforces racist norms and denies an increasing demographic reality. Every kind of relationship–sexual, romantic, and marital–has been deliberately obscured. With movies like 5 Flights Up (2015) and Focus (2015), there are indications that this may be changing but current depictions only serve to highlight the shortage. Certainly TV programs such as Grey’s Anatomy have depicted interracial relationships with greater regularity but Hollywood still has a long way to go. At the moment, they are not fully representing intimate human relationships in America.
Hollywood is, as you can see, an industry that has, from its very infancy, regurgitated racist cultural products, as it has shamelessly sought to provide narcissistic identification for white people. If there was ever an industry that needs to face its past and recognize its essentially backward, intolerant nature, it is America’s dream factory.
In honor of Henry’s wives and the #filmherstory campaign, here are six Royal women overdue the Hollywood treatment. To help with your visualizing, I’ll even toss in a pitch, director, and star.
Oh, not ANOTHER one
Damian Lewis smirks at me from a magazine rack under the caption “Damian Lewis Makes Henry VIII Sexy!” Déjà vu. Clearly, I’m missing the exciting difference between Wolf Hall‘s sinister-but-sexy Henry VIII and Eric Bana’s sinister-but-sexy Henry VIII inThe Other Boleyn Girl, which rewrote Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ sinister-but-sexy Henry VIII in Fifty Shades of Tudors (OK, OK, Natalie Dormer did rock), which updated Richard Burton’s sinister-but-sexy Henry VIII inAnne of the Thousand Days, which critics agree was sexier than Charles Laughton’s Oscar-winning sinister-but-lovable Henry VIII inThe Private Life of Henry VIII. It would be easy to make this a feminist issue, considering that chronic womanizer Henry VIII executed two wives for infidelity, despite having won the right to divorce them. However, 18 actresses have immortalized Queen Elizabeth I on screen, earning Oscar nominations for portraying the woman who presided over campaigns of religious persecution and expansive colonization as heroic, or sinister-but-lovable at worst.
Nowadays, we theoretically agree that colonialism was a bad idea. Our conquering heroes have become conquering antiheroes. Yet antiheroes actually command empathy as effectively as heroes. A study by Chippewa researcher JoEllen Shively found that 60 percent of her Sioux focus group, viewing WesternThe Searchers, identified with John Wayne’s viciously racist (and misogynist) Ethan Edwards. While conflicted, “half breed” sidekick Martin Pawley is cited as evidence that the film is “morally complex,” according to Shively, “the Indians, like the Anglos, identified with the characters that the narrative structure tells them to identify with.” Tokens represent no-one, only their author’s urge to appear liberal, while vicariously identifying with conquerors. Meanwhile, today’s White Saviors admirably rescue natives from evil colonizers, thereby ironically reinforcing the colonialist assumption that white heroes should control the destinies of the colonized.
Women of the Third and Fourth World are doubly marginalized; they are the damsels-in-distress for the natives-in-distress for the White Savior: #filmheranticolonialstory. Here in Ireland, our anticolonial icons remain unfilmed, apart from Irish director Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, but entry to the EU Colonizer’s Club has entitled our Mr. Rhys Meyers to play colonial icon Henry VIII (progress!). So, while I would love to see Fiona Shaw as Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley, storming fortresses and sailing to London to confront Elizabeth I (thereby nailing the elusive Royal Bechdel), it matters more to invite audiences to identify with female leaders of the Third and Fourth Worlds. In honor of Henry’s wives and the #filmherstory campaign, here are six Royal women overdue the Hollywood treatment. To help with your visualizing, I’ll even toss in a pitch, director, and star.
Ava DuVernay’s Nzinga
The plot: Queen Nzinga Mbande fought and maneuvered in 17th century Angola. Serving as diplomatic envoy for her brother, Ndongo’s King, Nzinga personally negotiated a peace treaty with Portugal, sitting on a willing follower when denied an equal seat by their governor. Taking the throne in 1626, Nzinga forged alliances with African neighbors and Portugal’s Dutch rivals, scoring a victory against the Portuguese at the 1647 Battle of Kombi, and personally leading troops in battle until the age of 60. Building her base, Matamba, as a strategic trading port, the abolitionist Queen resisted the Atlantic slave trade and foreign rule throughout her lifetime, dying peacefully in 1663.
The star: Lupita Nyong’o is an internationally celebrated African star, noted for her regal style on the red carpet as well as her Oscar-winning acting. Playing an actual queen is the logical next step.
The director: Ava DuVernay’sSelma shows she can find interesting humanity in inspirational icons. In her hands, Nzinga could be a pragmatic political player, juggling conflicting alliances, more than a romantic ideal, and shed light on African colonial history from a fresh angle.
Ang Lee’s Cixi
The plot: Chinese historian Jung Chang‘s biography of Empress Dowager Cixi highlights her role in industrializing the country, opposing foreign rule, banning torture and foot-binding, educating women, establishing a free press and initiating China’s transition to parliamentary democracy. This semi-literate concubine forged a stable alliance with the Emperor’s wife (another Royal Bechdel), loved and lost a palace eunuch, whose execution was ordered by her own brother-in-law, faced down continual threats to her power and was driven by European encroachments to back the devastating Boxer rebellion. Not forgetting a Japanese invasion, a rebellious Emperor’s gay love affairs and Cixi’s final decision to prevent her reactionary adopted son from undoing her reforms by poisoning him. Drama!
The star: Michelle Yeoh should be in everything. From her delicate portrait of repressed longing in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to her commanding turn inThe Lady, Yeoh is the natural choice.
The director: With a heroine forced by convention to rule from behind a silk screen, this demands a director like Taiwan’s Ang Lee, who can make gripping drama out of restraint.
Deepa Mehta’s Lakshmibai
The plot: Though Rani (Queen) Lakshmibai was the heroine of India’s first technicolor epic, 1956’s Jhansi Ki Rani, she deserves Hollywood stardom and a grittier reboot. After her Maharajah husband died, Lakshmibai’s claim to rule, as regent for her adopted son, was denied by the British East India Company to justify their annexation of her state, Jhansi. Learning martial arts in childhood, Lakshmibai became a major leader of the 1857 Indian Rebellion, training women to fight in her ranks. Her role in a mutiny that massacred British forces at Jhansi’s fort remains unclear. Fighting off invasions by two neighboring rajas, her city finally fell to British heavy artillery. Lakshmibai fled in male disguise with her infant son, joined the rebel army of Tatya Tope and died fighting in the battle of Gwalior.
The star: Shriya Saran, who played Parvati in Mehta’sMidnight Children, showed the determination to prepare for her role by working for two months in Mumbai’s slums, and has an athletic body trained in Kathak and Rajasthani dance, with the striking beauty that even her British enemies admired in Lakshmibai.
The director:Deepa Mehta has tackled epic narratives of India’s Partition inEarth, taboo sexuality inFire, the cruel treatment of widows in Water, and the diaspora experience in Heaven on Earth, but never explored British colonial rule. Like Sam Mendes directing Skyfall, putting Mehta in charge of an action epic could bring psychological depth to its high-octane clashes. Lakshmibai is so iconic in India that she is almost saintly, but Mehta has the guts to give her human flaws and delve into the brutal dilemmas of warfare.
Shonda Rhimes’ Ranavalona
The plot: “I will rule here, to the good fortune of my people and the glory of my name!” Ranavalona I has been labelled the “Mad Queen of Madagascar” for overseeing religious persecutions, inquisitions under torture and sweeping purges of political enemies, just like sinister-but-supposedly-sexily-sane Henry VIII. Rising from a commoner’s background, marrying the king and seizing absolute power on his death in a masterful coup, Ranavalona murdered the father of her child for his infidelity (*cough* Henry VIII), and harnessed French lover Jean Laborde to oversee Madagascar’s industrial revolution. Her later years were marked by excess, with numerous Malagasy dying to construct a road for her buffalo hunt, but Ranavalona foiled all plots to overthrow her (including ex-lover Laborde’s) and kept Madagascar free from colonial rule. There was method in her madness.
The star: Angela Bassett’s Emmy-nominated voodoo queen, Marie Laveau inAmerican Horror Story: Coven, shows she can be commanding, scary and sympathetic in turn. Ranavalona is the role she was born for.
The showrunner: Ranavalona’s journey to the dark side deserves a Tudors-style series to fully develop. InScandal and How To Get Away With Murder, Shonda Rhimes has proved that she relishes antiheroines and moral ambiguity. Ranavalona would take Rhimes into the lush historical epic, too long monopolized by white royalty.
Steve McQueen’s Nanye-hi
The plot: After snatching the rifle of her dead husband and rallying Cherokee warriors against their Creek rivals to win the 1755 Battle of Taliwa, Nanye-hi was elected Ghighau (Beloved Woman), heading the Women’s Council and sitting on the Council of Chiefs (OK, the Cherokee were too advanced to technically have royalty, cut me a break). Nanye-hi, also called “Nancy Ward” after marrying settler Bryant Ward, was a political moderate juggling extreme pressures, alerting settlers to Cherokee plans for a massacre, saving a white woman from burning at the stake and personally negotiating the peace treaty of 1781, but strongly opposing the sale of Cherokee lands and petitioning against plans for removal, which would culminate in the Trail of Tears after her death. Nanye-hi would showcase Indigenous traditions of “petticoat government” that inspired the first suffragettes, within a tense drama of compromise and resistance.
The star: If you’ve seen her powerful performance in Blackstone (lucky American readers can catch up on hulu), you know Michelle Thrush should be in everything that does not already star Michelle Yeoh (actually, I just had a great idea for a buddy cop movie). She’s a natural choice to capture the strain of Nanye-hi’s political conflicts.
The director: I haven’t yet seen Georgina Lightning’s Older Than America, so I can’t suggest any Native American women to direct. However, Steve McQueen’s treatment of the Irish Troubles in Hunger, and American slavery in12 Years A Slave, prove the British director is unafraid to tackle controversial history with an outsider’s fresh eye. Lupita Nyong’o’s Oscar, for her first major film role, also shows his talent at coaxing raw performances from his actresses. Disney’s Pocahontas this would not be.
Timur Bekmambetov’s Khutulun
The plot: Mongols were pretty imperial, what with the largest land empire in history. But Central Asia’s absorption into the Russian/Soviet sphere has made it invisible, with Sacha Baron Cohen selecting Kazakhstan for Borat because “it was a country that no one had heard anything about” despite being the ninth largest in the world and launching the first man into space. Played by the physically slight Korean actress Claudia Kim, as a supporting character in Netflix’sMarco Polo, champion wrestler Khutulun deserves solo stardom. Excelling in battles against the armies of her cousin Kublai Khan, this Mongolian princess demanded that suitors beat her in wrestling, or forfeit 100 horses. She acquired 10,000 horses before making a politically strategic match of her own choosing. Nominated for khanship after her father’s death, Khutulun reportedly backed her brother Orus’ bid in exchange for being appointed Commander-in-Chief of his army.
The star:Mongol actress Khulan Chuluun was mostly stuck in the love interest role, but showed flashes of stubborn spirit. With a director like Bekmambetov, known for making action heroes of character actors like James McAvoy, could she train up and become an icon?
The director: Kazak director Bekmambetov’s talent for tongue-in-cheek, inventive action would be perfect for the unbelievable legends that have grown up around Khutulun. Witness his wild portrait of his namesake, Central Asian conqueror Tamerlane (Timur) in the opening ofDay Watch. He’s also a great director of women, from Galina Tyunina’s scene-stealing Olga to Angelina Jolie’s tough-but-fair Fox in Wanted. Movie, please.
So, who would be your historical (anti)heroines? For the Soska Sisters to realize their dream to film Bathory? Michelle Rodriguez in Robert Rodriguez’sMalinche, as a punk survivor of sex trafficking who wants to watch the world burn? Gong Li as Zhang Yimou’s Wu Zetian? Kerry Washington in Fanta Régina Nacro’s Mama Yaa Asentewaa? Saoirse Ronan as a young Countess Markievicz for Juanita Wilson? Iman as Hatshepsut? Join the conversation – #filmherstory.
Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and memorizing lists of forgotten female leaders (Brigit McCone is an extremely dull conversationalist).
