Masculinity Theme Week – Page 3

The Complex Masculinity of ‘Outlander’s Jamie Fraser

This guest post by Carly Lane appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

Jamie Fraser, of the Outlander series (and subsequent television adaptation), is the quintessential romance hero. Mention his name to any fan of Diana Gabaldon’s works and you will likely hear a swoon in reply. When it comes to romantic traits, Jamie’s got them in spades. He’s a Highland warrior, a well-educated man, and he’s good with horses – not to mention easy on the eyes.

His role in the series, however – first as Claire Randall’s love interest, then as her hastily wedded husband – is anything but predictable, and it’s in looking at his story in the first book (and first season, respectively) that we realize just how multifaceted this masculine hero truly is.

When we’re first introduced to Jamie in the year 1743, he’s actually something of a damsel-in-distress; due to a dislocated shoulder suffered in the heat of battle, he cannot ride a horse without intense pain. Although Claire has been recently rattled by her time travel through the stones from the 1940s, her medical training won’t allow her to sit by and watch while his fellow Highlanders attempt to set his arm incorrectly. She takes it upon herself to put his shoulder back in place – and then to tend to him later through various gunshot and stab wounds. It’s interesting to watch the dynamic between the two characters in their first interactions together. Claire is familiar with taking charge in a situation after serving as a nurse in the Second World War, but Jamie doesn’t allow his masculine pride to get in the way of letting her help him. (Then again, given Claire’s headstrong nature, he likely doesn’t have much of a choice either way.)

And he can wear the heck out of a kilt, ya ken?

The more we learn about Jamie, the more we come to see him as the epitome of a manly man. He volunteers to take a public beating instead of a lashing for a girl accused of loose behavior, and we see him smiling even after getting punched in the face. We’re witness to his participation in a very violent game of shinty against fellow clansmen, tackling other players into the mud. He’s survived through two severe whippings at the hands of Black Jack Randall, a captain of the British army, which left him with serious scars on his back. And when he relays his past as a fugitive to Claire in private conversation, we find out that he’s had to do some pretty hairy things in order to stay alive – like eat grass, for example.

But what’s most surprising about Jamie is that he encapsulates both the (fairly) innocent virgin and the male warrior in tandem, something that has almost been unheard of in fiction. After he and Claire learn that they will need to get married in order to ensure Claire’s protection from Black Jack, she confesses that she’s not exactly a virgin due to her first marriage. “Does that bother you?” she asks. “No,” he answers, “so long as it doesna bother you that I am.”

It’s a surprising twist on the trope. Jamie is undoubtedly a force of man to be reckoned with, though the fact that he is a virgin and thus relatively inexperienced in terms of sex when he encounters Claire – the older, more experienced woman – attributes some unexpected “feminine” qualities to his character. In the wedding episode, there are several scenes dedicated to his sexual education. His comprehension of the act in itself is completely transformed – he admits to Claire that, up until that night, he had believed it was something done with the man behind the woman, “like horses.” He does make a point of reminding Claire after a particularly heated first kiss, however, that while he may be a virgin it doesn’t mean he’s been a monk.

But he is a fast learner and a conscientious partner – he listens to Claire when she tells him he’s crushing her with his weight, and he’s careful to ensure he hasn’t hurt her when she experiences an orgasm the second time they have sex, inquiring if it happens every time for a woman. That thoughtfulness and willingness to reshape his worldview is not something that often goes hand-in-hand with an uber-manly man.

He does define the meaning of "heart-eyes" from time to time. — He does define the meaning of “heart-eyes” from time to time.

That worldview is also challenged again when Claire runs away, endangering the clan in the process, and Jamie is expected to beat her as a disciplinary act according to tradition. In the beginning, he can’t grasp why Claire is angry with him for doing so – but later agrees that adhering to a custom is not always the best course of action. After a particularly intense interlude on the bedroom floor (during which Claire holds Jamie’s dirk to his throat in the throes of passion and makes him swear he won’t beat her again), Jamie understands that what may be the conventional response to something in the 18th century isn’t necessarily the right thing to do.

Jamie is not the first character to experience sexual assault in Outlander, but he is the first male character. When he is captured by British soldiers, his masculinity and how he views himself as a man are completely fractured after his traumatic assault at the hands of Black Jack Randall in Wentworth Prison. His entire sense of identity is shattered in those harrowing hours where he faces abuse after abuse, and through his recounting of the events to Claire the audience is privy to every agonizing moment. Not only is he subjected to physical violence that permanently impacts the full use of his hand, he is emotionally manipulated by Black Jack into forced climax, his body unable to stop what his mind is straining to resist.

It’s no wonder Jamie feels less than a man when he is finally rescued from Wentworth. The damage that has been done to not only body but mind causes him to pull away from Claire and any sense of shared intimacy between them. He admits that he can’t even think of returning to his wife’s bed when any attempt at sex would make him feel sick to his stomach.

Through Claire’s love, support and assertion of his masculinity, as well as his willingness to share about his experience, Jamie is finally able to begin to reclaim his sense of self – and the first season ends on a note of hope, as the two sail away from Scotland together. It is rare that a series portrays a leading male protagonist – especially the undisputed romantic hero of the story – as a survivor of rape and sexual trauma, and how he will be healing from that harrowing experience as time goes on.

At first glance, Jamie Fraser might seem like just your average hero – but he’s a fascinating, layered character who doesn’t simply fall prey to the typical traits of masculinity. In true Highlander fashion, he defies them.

Carly Lane is a writer based in New York City who specializes in obscure pop culture references and miscellaneous geekery. Her work has been featured on HelloGiggles, The Mary Sue, Femsplain and more. You can find her on Twitter at @equivocarly.

Off the Fury Road and Without a Map: Masculine Portrayal in the New ‘Mad Max’

Wrapped in a hypermasculine Trojan Horse of violence and war custom is a heady lesson about the dangers of ceding to those expectations, and about the road away from them and toward something like redemption. Here is a film where women are shown to be men’s combatative equals. Even more so, it is a film where the only way the men can escape their own oppression is to join up with, and occasionally defer to, these women.

This guest post by Zev Chevat appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

In our generation, action dominates the box office with bombast, containing enough C4 to blow up a major city, and enough stuntpeople to populate it. While it’s high entertainment, it may seem like the last place to find social progress, let alone a challenge issued to its own core values. Yet this summer’s first great critical and commercial success has done the seemingly impossible, uniting powerful messages about gender and society with enough explosions to bring people into the megaplex seats.

While much hay has been made, and rightfully so, about the women in Mad Max: Fury Road, it was the men who began to catch my interest on a second viewing. Tough, monosyllabic, and utterly capable on the surface, the main men of Fury Road are also deeply flawed individuals who have been poisoned by the expectations placed on males in their (and, therefore, our) culture. Wrapped in a hypermasculine Trojan Horse of violence and war custom is a heady lesson about the dangers of ceding to those expectations, and about the road away from them and toward something like redemption. Here is a film where women are shown to be men’s combatative equals. Even more so, it is a film where the only way the men can escape their own oppression is to join up with, and occasionally defer to, these women.

By diverging male heroes from the narrow path that action movie precedent has carved for them, and eschewing the trappings of toxic masculinity for emotionally mature character growth, this film is striking out into new, more complex territory. Critics and audiences alike have responded with enthusiasm, crowning Fury Road an instant cult classic, and lauding the potent mixture of images and ideas that set it apart. For, although Fury Road’s most obvious addition to the conversation is its women, especially Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, the portrayal of its main men is just as radical, if more quietly so.

One of the biggest complaints from opponents of Fury Road is that Max (Tom Hardy), though ostensibly the title character, is not only upstaged; they say, he’s also barely a character at all. But, if he seems like non-existent person that’s because, for much of the film, the things that make Max himself, both material and mental, have been taken away or buried far underground. Max Rockatansky’s journey, it could be said, regards the mastery of himself, rather than the domination of others. Fury Road is about many things. Among them is Max’s arc, one in which a man in shellshock re-gains his humanity through cooperation, empathy, and compassion.

First, the cooperative aspect, the lowest-hanging desert fruit on the thing-I mean tree. What gets Max that semblance of redemption he’s seeking is not simply overtaking the enemy with superior skill, though that plays a part. Nor is it taking up the mantle of despot at the film’s conclusion. Instead, the normally lone male warrior must team up with a group of women – some warriors, some escaped “Wives” – if he is to survive the coming onslaught.

Though initially combatants (their brawl upon meeting is one of the film’s most interesting set pieces), and highly suspicious of one another, Max and Furiosa quickly develop a strong respect, and trust. Recognizing Max’s reaction to her questions as evidence of trauma, Furiosa extends an olive branch of mutual trust when she tells him, “I need you here, you may have to drive the rig.” By saying, essentially, that she needs to trust him, so he better be trustworthy, Furiosa begins to help Max emerge from his shell. This is a reversal of the common trope of the in-control man who must bring a damaged woman into the fold. Here, it’s Max who has baggage, and who needs to meet Furiosa halfway. He does, and the two begin to work in deadly tandem almost immediately thereafter.

Through his interaction with the group of escaping women, not just their hard-bitten commander, Max becomes gradually more human. When it looks like Splendid (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), one of the Wives, has been bashed off the rig by a rocky outcrop, she reappears, smiling from behind the curve of the truck’s cab. Max gives her the thumbs up and, it appears, the first expression approaching a smile from him. He cares about what’s happened to this member of their group; he’s thinking about all of them, and no longer just himself. The extension of Max’s compassion culminates when Max speeds out into the salt flats after the group of Wives and Vulvalini, and convinces them to turn back instead of driving to what may well be their deaths.

All this puts Hardy’s Max in stark contrast to Mel Gibson’s taciturn cop, who swooped in to help a group of survivors in The Road Warrior. Gibson’s Max needed no one, and while he was not without heart, he was allowed to show little change. By the time he saunters off into the post-apocalyptic sunset, Hardy’s Max has not so much softened –there being no place for softness in Miller’s hyperviolent and hard world – but expanded, from bludgeoned bloodbag to being a man.

This path, though evident in Max, is even more obvious when it comes to the character of the War Boy Nux, played with glee and a certain amount of sensitivity by Nicholas Hoult. Nux is a product of a tyrannically patriarchal society, who, through equal interactions with women, instead of domination of them, has a change of heart. His turn from emotionally barren war pup to white hat with a mind of his own is, even more so than Max’s, a tale of remarkable self-mastery. As some have perceptively pointed out, the men under Immorten Joe are treated like disposable commodities, determined to find glory at the end of their “half-life.” Their entire lives are built not around heroic deeds and deaths, but around the witnessing, the verification by other men, of those deeds. In an era without written history, the men need someone to see what they do, to affirm their reality. When Nux’s chain catches on the War Rig and he falls in front of Immorten Joe, his leader, the loss of face represents a greater failure, a systemic one. Adhering to the warmongering patriarchy has led to Nux’s decline and, in a sense, exile. Abandoned by the very things that propped him up, Nux devotes himself to the cause of the Wives after Capable (Riley Keough) shows him compassion. Nux is a man so bereft of affection and touch that, when Capable puts her finger to his lips, he keeps them absolutely still in mild terror. Here is Miller’s theme writ large: that patriarchy controls us all equally, and can prove venomous regardless of gender.

As the War Rig tears a furious path of destruction through the desert, it may seem as though such sentiments are secondary, if present at all. Yet Fury Road, and films like it, are pushing the envelope of social themes as much as you can in an action movie without dissolving the very genre in a vat of metatextual acid. Sci-fi blockbusters such as Pacific Rim (where masculine angst is overridden by a literal meeting of minds), and Edge of Tomorrow (where ego must be cast off in favor of cooperation), as well as the classic Terminator 2 (where survival depends on trusting and following a strong woman) are all successful examples that are threaded with many of the same concerns as Miller’s opus. But none present their thesis as clearly as Miller does his. Here is a brutal world that has entrapped and broken men as well as women, where the way to salvation is couched in qualities outside the typical action hero mold. The lone man blasting his way through the enemy will not lead to triumph. It is only together, with care in and joint effort with women, that a man may “come across some kind of redemption.”

Zev Chevat is a writer, artist, and animator who specializes in feminist discussions of film and media. In addition to Bitch Flicks, he has written extensively for TheMarySue, Bitch Media, and Animation World Network. Follow him on Twitter @zchevat, or on tumblr at justchevat.tumblr.com.

‘Tough Guise 2’: Disrupting Violent Masculinity One Documentary at a Time

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 Culture brings 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.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/-4WEusN0MkQ”]

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 — 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.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/KTvSfeCRxe8″]

Call For Writers: Masculinity

Our theme week for June 2015 will be Masculinity.

Masculinity is a pervasive concept in our culture, setting the tone for our entertainment, our politics, and our interpersonal lives. This is because masculinity itself traditionally belongs to men who are, to quote blogger Twisty Faster of I Blame the Patriarchy, “the default human.” Femininity is often defined in contrast to masculinity, as if the two modes were binary. The traits typically ascribed to masculinity (physical strength, aggressiveness, rational thinking, and stoicism) are then seen as absent from the feminine and opposite of the traits typically ascribed to femininity (nurturing, emotional, physically weak, and irrational).

Some examples of different permutations of masculinity include the chivalrous, but monosyllabic type like Luke from Gilmore Girls, the sexually potent, brimming with physical prowess action hero types like The Rock or Vin Diesel from all The Fast and the Furious films, or the destructive hypermasculine types depicted in the dystopian fossil fuels focused Mad Max: Fury Road. In many ways, the toxic embodiment of masculinity is the strong-arm of patriarchy.

While masculinity can often be associated with power and male privilege, the expectations associated with masculinity can be limiting and oppressive just as any prescribed gender role can be oppressive. We sometimes see this in narratives involving gay and/or sensitive men (The Karate Kid) who don’t “measure up” to the expectations of masculinity. However, with the greater visibility of genderqueerness and as more people begin to see gender on a spectrum, the embodiment of masculinity is becoming similarly malleable and open to interpretation (Pelo Malo, Orange is the New Black, etc).

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, June 19 by midnight.

The Killing

Pelo Malo

Gilmore Girls

The Karate Kid

Outlander

Mission Impossible

Terminator

Beautiful Boxer

Hannibal

Ghosts of Mars

Queer As Folk

Psycho

Boys Don’t Cry

Big Trouble in Little China

Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Fast and the Furious

Mad Max: Fury Road

Death Wish

Orange is the New Black

Game of Thrones

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