Emotionally Labile Men

Another Recent Media Myth

“It's the worst thing ever when you open a script and read the words 'strong female lead.” - Emily Blunt

This will be a short one. In my recent analysis of Fight Club (1999) I wrote:

If I’m right there are deep biological drives within men and humans generally which require routes of expression. They cannot be erased, only channeled. The innate drives of men are being denied, suppressed, and stigmatized, and a new ideal for the adult male has been cobbled together. It’s too ridiculous and distasteful to be portrayed fully and honestly but it finds its way into films and stories and advertisements and it is the model after which many people deeply hope men will form themselves: shopping, chatting, soft creatures; emotional and agreeable and self-deprecating allies and friends without any hint of strength or aggression or inner character or stoicism; ‘men’ who do not assert, do not dominate, do not threaten, do not fight, and do not grow.

I have noticed many changes in our entertainment and cultural landscape. I cannot say if they’re planned or organic, top-down or bottom-up, intentional or inadvertent. I can say that they appear to be in the nature of trends, which is to say they are not isolated or randomly distributed through time. The biggest example of such a trend that I can think of is the ‘strong female character’. Basically EVERY superhero or franchise favorite male character has been downgraded or replaced by female leads. (The films/shows often retain their title character but he is paired with a more dominant, more capable, tougher woman). Thor, Dr. Strange, Peter Pan, Eric from the Little Mermaid, the hunters of the Predator, Echo, the characters of Star Wars, Tolkien’s Galadriel, Robin Hood… this is a brief off-the-top list of stories from just the past two years. There are dozens more examples. This has happened so many times in the past few years that if you deny this is happening I have no choice but to conclude you (1) don’t watch movies or much new television or (2) aren’t being intellectually honest. There are exceptions (the Dune films, Shogun) but they are notably rare. Oddly enough, the rarities seem to do MUCH better financially than the cheap female-insert stories… yet the girlboss stories keep coming. I could speculate about why this is (and I will) but I will end my observation with the undeniable generalization that these female characters tend to be tough, arrogant, capable, and aggressive. In other words, they’re male-coded… just without the humor and camaraderie and foibles and growth which make male protagonists likeable and relatable. It’s a mystery why no one really likes these stories!

Prey (2022) was actually a pretty good movie, in which an adolescent native American girl hunts and kills a Predator, an alien creature which successfully killed an entire squad of elite soldiers in the 1980’s. In the film she’s a super-capable warrior who wins the admiration of the braves in her tribe with her skill in killing. The unrealistic nature of the story (even according to the rules of a universe with alien Predators visiting Earth) is obvious but my only point in mentioning this film is to emphasize that this is a trend so pronounced that it’s gotten close to being universal. Women, especially young and attractive women (non-white preferably) have been shoved into beloved stories or their roles expanded to create a new fictional archetype: the Strong Female Character. It’s not that women aren’t strong or capable of killing or resilient. They are, and this reality has been noted in films for the past 60 years. The variety of female endowments has never been denied and, until recently, the empathy and life-giving nature of women also found celebrated places in fictional stories. Those feminine attributes (empathy, communal spirit, maternal care) have been gravely de-emphasized in recent years. My point is that male characters are being systematically pushed to the side while being made more uncertain, more fragile, and more emotionally expressive.

Now I will pivot to a smaller, but probably related, trend: the appearance of the emotionally labile man. They don’t just express grief with outpourings of tears and wailing… they are easily annoyed and moody. They are immature. They are talkative and rather silly. They lack the sense of composure and reserve that we generally associate with grown men. Some of the most flagrant examples appear in the recent ‘biopic’ (not really) Napoleon (2023). Aside from a hyper-energetic and brilliant 24-year old historical figure (arguably one of the most capable generals in history) being played by a sedated and bafflingly glum near-50 year old Joaquin Phoenix, Napoleon is shown as a petulant and childish man. He screams at people, he obsesses over Josephine (who he certainly seemed to love… but not enough to derail the entire Egyptian campaign over rumors concerning her), he slaps dishes out of people’s hands, he weeps and begs his woman for consideration. I’m not a Napoleon scholar but I understand that he received his commission at a very young age and was an outstanding artillery officer who was well-respected (despite being Corsican) and battle-tested. He joined the military to provide for his single mother and many siblings and saw more violent death before age 20 than half of Chicago. He was not, I feel certain, a petulant man.

Baggage Claim said it best:

In Maleness and Toxic Masculinity, I wrote that “Women [often] seem to regard their tendencies and habits as the default setting, or the ‘right’ way to be.” I will abstain from speculating as to the dynamics pushing these changes in our collective cultural narratives but I will say this: masculinity has received a bad reputation in recent years. The ‘strong, silent’ man hasn’t really been a culturally-enforced type for decades now but any relationship between masculinity and emotional reserve and inner strength appears to register as pathological and unacceptable to many people.

The reason men have been encouraged to compete and assert themselves and keep a stiff upper lip is not some arbitrary patriarchal construction. It amazes me that the people who diagnose ‘toxic masculinity’ seem to lack any curiosity about why men might have behaved in these ways for so long. The reason is that life is difficult. Life is full of trouble and death, and emotional lability is only a handicap in dealing with these things. If you’re unstable and emotional then war and killing and loneliness and risk will break you. You will be a liability to yourself and the men you’re working with. You will lose status, not because men prize emotional constipation for its own sake, but because maintaining emotional control means you’re still able to get the job done. When your job is HR manager you can afford to take a day off or devote some time to self-care or lose a little credibility in the eyes of your peers. When your job is a soldier or crab fisherman or miner this is simply not the case. The modern emphasis on emotional expression is a recently-acquired luxury of our now-easy and comfortable lives. It is not a better way to be and, in many circumstances, it is worse.

Tellingly, the people who have had difficult and pain-filled lives never seem to be the ones emphasizing the virtues of crying and emoting and endlessly expressing feelings. The people of Afghanistan, for example, tend to be very serious and reserved (the men anyway). I would guess that they have developed in that direction over centuries of living in a harsh and dangerous and poor part of the world. Obviously most of the people bemoaning the stoicism of Western masculinity wouldn’t complain about other cultures (I think) but the example stands: difficulty breeds toughness and toughness entails reserve.

I’m not saying that men should repress emotions or punish crying or shame the rare display of feeling. I am saying that there are reasons for the qualities that we associate with masculinity and you can advocate for emotional connection without promoting weakness. The most expressive and weepy and volatile people are not emotionally connected, in the sense that they lack emotional control. Yet we are expected to believe that men routinely behave this way and furthermore, in some cases, that they should. Our culture is not promoting emotional openness for men in these fictional and advertising trends. It is promoting weakness.

If you want to understand the level of emotional control and expression that men should aspire to, just look at our recent crop of female superheroes. Clearly we all know what stoic temperaments look like and we recognize their benefits, since they are being written onto every female protagonist. It makes me somewhat suspicious that the same characteristics are somehow not positive or admirable when they appear in male characters. Weird.

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