Male Weepies: A Misunderstood Genre

I've got a podcast called rehash I co-host it with my friend Hannah and it's all about internet phenomena that get us all up in arms only to forget about them within a week so we rehash them as they say we just wrapped our fourth season which is all about schmecks on the internet the symbiosis of Humanity's two most Basic Instincts Innovation and getting off we cover everything from Pam and Tommy to Tumblr to fosta sesta go check it out this video is brought to you by movie a curated streaming service showing exceptional film from around the globee get a whole month free at movie.com broedel imagine you're a little boy the year is 1996 and your old man just popped a tape into the VHS player Donnie it's time to show you my favorite movie on the screen appears Kevin CER as Ray canella a mulleted middle-aged father walking through his Iowa cornfield suddenly to his surprise Ray hears a voice that tells him if you it he will come without a second guess he surmises that the voice is telling him to build a baseball field on his fertile Farmland at Great Financial Risk to himself and his family since Ry is currently in a place of deep regret about having lost a relationship with his late Father John a smalltime baseball player himself and not yet having achieved anything of note in his life he decides to build the field with the support of his wife and daughter and in doing so discovers that he summoned to the ghosts of several legendary baseball players including the disgraced Shoeless Joe Jackson Joe Jackson is a contentious figure for Ray since a disagreement about Joe is what led to his estrangement from his father nevertheless he persists and decides to keep the field with the hopes that it will become a pilgrimage site for all the Americans who wish to relive their childhoods near the end of the movie as Shoeless Joe Jackson and the others disappear back into the corn for the night a masked catcher appears on the field Ray is confused at first but then the catcher reveals himself to be Ray's father realizing that the prophecy was referring to John all along Ray stops him and asks dad you want to have a catch the two play the game of catch Ry has so longed for and we pan out to see the headlights of cars lined up outside the field as far as the eye can see the screen Fades to Black and your old man looks over at you a single tear rolling down his cheek Field of Dreams which came out in 1989 and was directed by Phil Alden Robinson has long been cited as the movie that'll reduce even the strongest men to tears what you might even call the quintessential male weepy and it's no wonder the past Century and a half has not exactly been great for men think about it you're on top of the world everyone respects you or is forced to you're considered a hero a Prov provider and a protector and then all of a sudden it comes crashing down de-industrialization comes and turns many traditionally masculine jobs obsolete everybody else starts getting political rights and entering the skilled Workforce women are allowed to attend the same colleges as you and then slowly begin to surpass you in academic performance in graduation rates hell even in sheer attendance numbers in 1958 Arthur Schlesinger Jr warned the masses that the male role has plainly lost its rugged Clarity of outline because the ways by which American men affirm their masculinity are uncertain and obscure there are multiplying signs indeed that something has gone badly wrong with the American M's conception of himself and that certainly may be true it seems that today men are mired in malaise as idri khon recently observed in the New Yorker men are increasingly dropping out of work during their Prime working years overdosing drinking eles to death and generally dying earlier including by Suicide now many will attribute the malays of the Contemporary man to toxic masculinity and the fact that within this Paradigm men are not allowed to cry or talk about their emotions and that is true in most areas of life but if there's one area of public life men are allowed to cry it's the dark quiet seats of a movie theater in my May December video I talk about the ways that tearjerkers like Stella Dallas commentate on women's sociopolitical positions by drawing extreme emotions and POS from the viewer these movies earned the name tear jerkers for as scholar Tom Lutz puts it their ability to make women cry by staging crises of female role performance well with some earlier exceptions as the liberationist 1970s came to a close and we entered the more traditional era of the80s a bunch of movies started popping up that seemed tailor made to make men ball like babies why do you cry that can really only be characterized as male Weepies these movies are similar to women's melodramas in their overt sentimentality exaggerated emotions and long-suffering protagonists not unlike Field of Dreams again it's no wonder this movie brings men to tears in a time when it feels like masculinity is in crisis a film that strikes at the center of these fears without ridiculing them is sure to get men going the male WEEI is no doubt hyper masculine its protagonists can be stoic yet prone to volatile outbursts they're often emotionally hardened and hardbodied their feelings are often externalized through tangible events like sports and War the male weepy can also be very nostalgic about hyper masculine eras take Field of Dreams by resurrecting these hardened men from what is regarded by many as a greater time in America's past it puts on full display a yearning for a time where rugged masculinity was championed Joe Jackson especially who was baned from playing baseball after conspiring to fix the World Series is someone who was emasculated in his lifetime by having his vocation taken away from him his resurrection in Field of Dreams is an attempt to restore that Stolen Valor getting thrown out a baseball was like having part of me amputated I'd wake up at night with the smell of the ball park in my nose this theme is quite prevalent in sports melodramas generally like Rocky Rocky came out over a decade before Field of Dreams in an era where the shallow foundations of American greatness were beginning to crack a time that exposed the artifice of democracy faltering nationalism in lie of a senseless war and to top it all off an economic recession and so as Chuck Tron writes this political context helped to establish Rocky as inherently nostalgic for a golden age of boxing and of Economic Opportunity that no longer seemed to exist an age where like the grid of oldtime baseball players men could look each other in the eye and go fist to fist but it's not all about sports if you want to talk about that whole Roman Empire meme look no further than Gladiator if there's any period more strongly defined by rugged masculine Valor it's ancient Rome a time where men wore armor over their chiseled bodies and proved their strength through head-to-head combat as Rome colonized the Known World in Gladiator we meet our protagonist maximus in 180 ad at the end of Marcus aurelius's Imperial Reign and the beginning of the end for Rome Maximus is posed against our antagonist comus Marcus aurelius's conniving son who's portrayed by wae Phoenix as Slender wet eyed and meek next to Russell Crow's Grizzly machismo so it's not hard to read Maximus as an avenging Angel for the waning masculinity of Rome so male Weepies allow men to to yearn for a long lost past where brute masculinity was valued and admired of course this comes with its criticisms many were quick to point out that Rocky who's framed as the disenfranchised Underdog next to Apollo Creed an arrogant black boxer with great physical prowess is a standin for the newly insecure white masculinity it is a coincidence that you're fighting a white man on the most celebrated day in the country's history of course it's widely documented that black workingclass men were the first to be hit by the effects of de-industrialization an emasculation that rocki very much obscures by centering on the economic disenfranchisement of a white Italian man and turning a black Boxer into the face of the boxing establishment likewise the choice in Gladiator to insert a situation in which a Roman general escapes execution becomes enslaved and then emancipates himself into real Gladiator history a history where many of these Fighters were enslaved people from the very territories that maximus's Army would have called ized has been called into question scholar Martin fradley argues that the movie represents a significant narrative thrust towards the casually naturalized reentering of white masculinity these criticisms are founded as men's dissatisfaction with their social standing grows so too does their resentment emboldened by populist politicians and self-help grifters more and more men of all Races Creeds and classes are joining the manosphere and the Divide between men white men especially and the rest of the world feels wider than ever so a genre of movies that encourages men to cry about their Stolen Valor can easily appear to perpetuate these sentiments but critics of the male weepy tend to allude to the notion that because of these hyper masculine and nostalgic qualities the male weepy perpetuates a retroactive toxic masculinity and while the narrative may seem so critics of the male weepy are not looking into the emotional core of these films with a closer look you'll find that beneath its hyper masculine armor the male we's vision of masculinity is less so toxic than it is aspirational the narrative thrust of gladiator is an action-filled epic about a man who loses everything and fights his way back to Glory but the emotional thrust is a man trying to keep a promise to an old friend and to his people both of these are hyper masculine but one takes that hyper masculinity and uses it for good the concept of toxic masculinity was coined in the 1980s by psychologist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement Shephard Bliss and it's used to describe behavior that diminishes women children and other men for Bliss it's a way to describe that part of the male psyche that is abusive when masculinity is discussed in mainstream culture it often appears in this form in the chauvinism of Andrew Tate in the paper thin machismo of Jordan Peterson in the hateful corners of men's forums online it's actually so abundant online that a study this year by King's College London found that UK boys and men aged 16 to 29 were more negative about feminism than men over 60 human beings need codes to live by and the codes for men are either disappearing or getting more and more warped by the day but in an incredible essay for the Atlantic writer Caitlyn Flanigan argues that masculinity is not inherently toxic instead she posits an alternative heroic masculinity which she describes as the opposite of toxic masculinity it's all around us she says you depend on it for your safety as I do it is almost entirely taken for granted even reviled until Trouble Comes and it is ungratefully demanded by the very people who usually decry it meaning that as we conflate masculinity with toxicity we've begun to ignore its virtues in another Atlantic article 21 readers of the magazine give their opinions about today to's masculinity crisis and one person Glenn argues that boys and men aren't Jing with today's moral culture he says that there's a difference between being loved and being respected and that most men if given the choice would choose to be respected the issue Glenn writs is that modern culture gives men plenty of opportunities to be loved but little opportunities to be respected give them an opportunity to earn respect and watch them Thrive respect is not antithetical to love it is to some extent an expression of Love written in a masculine emotional language and I actually think one place where this pathway for respect and heroic masculinity can be honored is the male weepy [Music] so let's break it down shall we a major theme of the male weepe is camaraderie the emotional core of maximus's story is the Deep friendships he forms throughout his journey having already commanded the Loyalty of an entire Army Maximus quickly gains the respect and camaraderie of his fellow enslaved people the most notable being Juba an African gladiator from Carthage it's through Juba and the other Gladiators undying loyalty to Maximus that we understand why Marcus aelius wanted to make him emperor in the first place we see it from the moment the film begins as Maximus walks through his ranks and the camera dances across a sea of smiling faces all pointed towards their General faces that will soon be wiped out in the following battle you seem upset I lost many men and we see it again when Maximus finds himself at the basest level of Society cast among the most disenfranchised lot of the Roman Empire and is able to form a deeply bonded unit of fellow Gladiators who willingly sacrificed themselves for Maximus and his cause just as the soldiers did and for many people the most heart-wrenching scene of the film is not when Maximus dies but when his friend Juba returns to the Coliseum to bury the figurines of maximus's wife and son the film ultimately closes on a note of homosocial love I will see you again in an increasingly individualized World camaraderie and Community are becoming harder to come by and when paired with the fact that men often have a difficult time being emotionally vulnerable with one another it's no surprise that we're hearing about a male loneliness epidemic very few of the men in my life will seek their male friends out if they're having an emotional crisis instead relying on the women they know they also struggle with making friends something that already feels impossible to do as an adult but when they do form friendships it's often through organized activities like joining a sports League all this considered it's no mistake that male Weepies are so often war or Sports films of course war with all its death and destruction will never not be sad but the war films characterized as Weepies are ones that place a greater focus on combatant camaraderie a film like Saving Private Ryan for example s centers itself on the networks of trust built between a group of soldiers in World War II and their brotherly commitment to risking their lives for a man they never met War films Like Gladiator or Saving Private Ryan or Sports films for example Place their male characters around a common pursuit or activity that force them to be emotionally vulnerable with each other and yet another Atlantic article Peggy orstein talks with over 100 American boys aged 16 to 21 about their thoughts on masculinity love and friendship and she finds that when asked what they liked most about being a boy the most frequent response was Sports when orstein speaks to one interview e Cole about his experienced rowing crew she observes when he raced he imagined pulling each stroke for the guy in front of him for the guy behind him never for himself alone it's through these goal oriented scenarios where belonging is built in that emotions are allowed to come through the one constant through all the years Ray has been baseball baseball has marked the time this game is a part of our past Ray if you reminds us of all that once was good it's the ideal setting for a male melodrama of course this can spill over into toxicity as well as Cole reflects crew demands you push yourself to a threshold of pain and keep yourself there and it's hard to find something to motivate you to do that other than anger and aggression this is something explored in the claw our most recent male WEEI based on the real horrific story of the von Eric wrestling family we see how the sport of wrestling comes naturally to some of the von Eric brothers and is forced on the others by their domineering father who pushes them beyond the threshold of their capabilities resulting in unfathomable tragedy here we see the tenuous relationship between toxic and heroic masculinity and how easily one can spill into the other but as this sport destroys their minds bodies it's not enough to destroy the unshakable bond between the brothers the emotional centerpiece of the iron claw is when Carrie von Eric is reunited with his brothers in the afterlife including the older brother he never met and again we end on a note of Brotherly Love I used to be a brother and uh now I'm not a brother anymore [Music] male Weepies are stories of perseverance whether that's through the pursuit of a greater cause or a personal objective heroism a theme that appears quite often in tearjerkers is defined by a sense of Duty but it can often look different between men and women in the heroic masculinity article Flanigan describes women's heroism as a form of self-defense specifically from male violence the number of women who have rised everything and in many cases lost their lives in self-defense is Without End and the number who haven't thought twice about throwing themselves between their children and great threat is all you need to know about female courage and sacrifice this description fits very well with what we see in Stella Dallas Women throwing themselves in the line of fire for their children making sacrifices to Shield them from a male-dominated world but Duty also comes up in her description of heroic masculinity in the sense that heroic masculinity uses men's strength to protect and advocate for others heroic masculinity is selfless as Flanigan writes on 9/11 343 New York City firefighters died at Ground Zero and there wasn't one of them who didn't know or at least suspect that he was climbing to his death they didn't do it because of a Union contract or an employee handbook they climbed those Towers because they knew that it must be written into the American record that Heroes were there that day and that the desperate people inside those buildings had never not once been abandoned maximus' martyrdom for Rome reflects this idea Maximus has everything taken away from him his power his land his family his dignity yet through this adversity he perseveres again when you strip away all the action in Bloodshed and Gladiator you find a simple story about a man's commitment to his friend and a commitment to the people of Rome who will suffer under a weak-minded self-interested leader of course a significant contributor to men's anxiety IES is the pressure to be strong for others without having anyone to be strong for you so perseverance in the male weepe doesn't only have to come through martyrdom perseverance also comes in the form of a commitment to oneself a dream Rocky and its 2015 spiritual sequel Creed are about this very thing in this incredible article for the Washington Post Christine emba interviews a number of men about their ideal model to masculinity and reports that in addition to qualities like agency problem solving into physical strength many of them cited a desire for Personal Mastery like many Sports melodramas Rocky is a rags to richest story Rocky Balboa is a listless 30-year-old man who is emasculated by his lower class status he's a loser who makes his money the wrong way as a leg breaker for a local L shark but if he applies himself he has the potential to take his boxing hobby to the next level and make an honest living and so when the champion boxer Apollo Creed randomly selects him as an under dog opponent for his next match Rocky sees this as a chance to prove himself the iconic training sequence in this film has become synonymous with overcoming ODS and the film is filled with symbolism about the American dream from Apollo dressing up as Uncle Sam to the Statue of Liberty ring girl to imagery of Rocky preing in the toilets before the match Rocky doesn't win his match with Apollo but he accomplishes his personal goal of Going the Distance and proving I weren just another bum from neighborhood Rocky is a classic story and a great film but what makes Creed more compelling to me is that it complicates this American Dream narrative in the classic story our protagonist is a nobody plucked out of obscurity to challenge an arrogant opponent but Adonis is Apollo Creed's illegitimate son who struggles in his early years in foster homes after his mother passes away but is taken in as a child by Apollo's Widow and then raised comfortably in LA Adonis is chastised by his opponent Ricky Conlin who comes from hard background for being nothing but a name this may be true but from the beginning of creed to the very end Adonis is unwavering in his desire to be a great boxer and despite being beaten down in the match like Rocky before him he confesses what kept him standing I'm not a mistake this is the moment that makes people cry this moment of recognition appears in Goodwill hunting as well like Rocky Goodwill Hunting was written by virtual unknowns in this case Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who had to fight their way into starring in the film and it's famous for making men cry will is a workingclass guy from Boston with a troubled upbringing who just so happens to be a self-taught genius Will's friend group is present in the film but like Rocky's friend Paulie they're there to show us what will or rocky could be if they didn't surmount their odds Will's best friend Chucky actually tells him what the best part of my day is for about 10 seconds from when I pull up to the curb when I get to your door CU I think maybe I'll get up there and I'll knock on the door and you won't be there just left Will's challenge is that he's susceptible to ambivalence and so what he needs to strive towards is believing that life is worth living that he's deserving of that life and unlike his friends he has the chance to rise above his circumstances the realization comes during this moment with his therapist Shawn where will confesses his feelings of Abandonment and tells him it's not your fault I know no no you don't it's not your fault relieving will of his self-loathing and allowing him to move forward you don't know about real loss cuz that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself something that struck me about Field of Dreams is how single-minded Ry is in his project to build a baseball field in a more typical story our protagonists will falter or second guess themselves and then have a moment of affirmation that carries them to the end of their goal but for the most part in Field of Dreams Ry and his family don't question the prophecy the film contextualizes The spirituality with the fact that Ry and his wife are former hippies but Ray's bright-eyed excitement to follow this dream is something you wouldn't often see from a middle-aged Midwestern father and definitely not in the male protagonist of a sports drama and when I thought about this a bit more it made sense to me that Ray is so single-minded like I said at the beginning of this film he reflects on the feeling that he hasn't yet achieved something great and this is where we get to the next theme of our male weepe purpose but you got your whole future ahead of you mine back there like all them guys on that wall in the back when we meet Rocky again in Creed he's an old man he's been out of the boxing game for some time now and although he owns his dream restaurant and lives more comfortably than he did in the first film he's also very lonely the people close to him Adrien Paulie and Apollo have all passed away and so when Rocky is diagnosed with cancer Midway through the film he denies treatment because he doesn't feel like he has much to live for everything I got is moved on and I'm here if I break if I'm hurt whatever I ain't going to fix it why bother that is until he's swayed by Adonis Adonis is like Ray in his single-mindedness but we never at any point feel like he lacks Direction remember the movie is about Adonis but Rocky is the subject of this franchise and so this Gap in adonis's character is filled by Rocky adonis's goal to prove himself also becomes Rocky's goal and it gives him purpose but purpose is actually present in adonis's Arc too the film places a focus on the concept of a deteriorating body you know how many times I had to carry your father up these stairs because he couldn't walk yes you want brain damage yeah you do I got Progressive hearing loss so was Progressive So eventually yeah Rocky himself has experienced brain damage from boxing actually Sports dramas so often Center on boxing and wrestling because their deleterious effects make it so that players have a very short shelf life which gives way to themes of lost Glory potential for a comeback pushing yourself to your limits the key difference here is that unlike the Von Erics for example Adonis is not boxing for anyone but himself Adonis leaves his koshy well-paying job to pursue boxing full-time a decision that's often questioned in the film and one that we question ourselves as viewers but his love interest Bianca who aspires to be a musician despite her Progressive hearing loss answers this question for us I always knew would happen eventually so plan has always just been a do what I love for as long as I can because he's a nobody Rocky's challenge with his own masculinity is external he needs to prove to the world that he is not in fact a nobody but because Adonis is already a somebody and is fighting with the ghost of his father his challenge comes from within so unlike so many other players not even the young Rocky Adonis does not step into the ring for survival knowing what this sport could do to his body and his mind he steps into the ring because it instills within him an internal sense of drive a need what I love so much about Creed is how internal its Stakes are when we think about the past decade as male loneliness in the manosphere have become so prevalent Creed is a preent reminder that reckonings with masculinity cannot just come from society they must also come from within an inner purpose you see this guy here staring back at you yeah that's your toughest opponent I believe that in boxing and I do believe that in life this is even more evident in Goodwill Hunting will and Rocky oddly have the most similarities of our male weepy protagonists they're both from workingclass East Coast cities and workingclass themselves and they're both in a period of directionless Rocky of course finds boxing but Goodwill Hunting isn't a sports drama and instead provides us with a less clear answer throughout the film will is asked a similar question to one that Adonis has asked about boxing why would he ever choose to work in a thankless bluecollar job when he has the opportunity to pursue a better one his mentor Professor Gerald Lambo is incensed by Will's obvious disregard for his own gift with Will constantly undermining every interview and therapy session that's offered to him and yet when will meets his therapist Shawn who himself has never amounted to the heights that his old classmate Gerald had and who gave up several important years of his life to care for his ailing wife will ask sha if he has any regrets here Shawn could be positioned similarly to Rocky and express feelings of defeat but instead he tells will this well I got regrets will but I don't regret a single day I spent with her will has all the smarts you could ever imagine and yet these skills haven't given him drive he's already so assured in his own abilities that he doesn't need a training montage what he needs is someone who loves him unconditionally of course his friends do but will needs love and compassion from someone who can meet him on his level and that person is Skyler so like who gave up a chance to see a historic Red Sox game to be able to meet his future wife just slid my ticket across the table and I said sorry guys I got to see about a girl will foro his job offer to see about a girl so purpose doesn't have to come from a tangible dream like sports or a job it can come from something simpler like Maximus dreaming about his family like will reuniting with Skyler orstein points out a fascinating Paradox in our social conception of masculinity if the right on the wall tells us that men are currently lost there should be more discussion about where they could go orstein writes we have to purposely and repeatedly broaden the masculine repertoire for dealing with disappointment anger desire we have to say not just what we don't want from boys but what we do want from them emba also Echoes this and suggests that traditionally masculine qualities should be worked with not against but only if they take on a pro-social aim the male weepy nurtures the same its tears well from a place of belonging and self assurance the idea of being found of finally knowing what to do how to do it and most importantly how to be I want to be you when I grow up I'm so do if the male weepy charts out a blueprint for how men could live it needs to present its viewers with a role model someone who embodies an aspirational masculinity what many of these articles and studies about the masculinity crisis point out is that men especially young men are sorely lacking in positive role models a great deal of the Zoomers from that study who Express negative feelings about feminism also expressed positive feelings about Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson figures who I call grifters because they make a living stoking the fears of impressionable young men these are men who embody traits more akin to toxic masculinity so what are the traits of the role models in male Weepies and by extension an aspir ational masculinity a role model can of course be our protagonist like I said Maximus is the ideal male hero because on top of his inhuman combat skills he possesses a great deal of compassion and an immutable moral code but for the most part it isn't the protagonist of the male weepy who functions as a role model for most of their films will is a pretentious prick Adonis is quick-tempered and sulky and young Rocky is well he's kind of a weirdo and a little questionable when it comes to women no if the women's tear jger centers on the undying love between mother and daughter the male weepe concerns itself with the father figure or the absence of him one of the men who spoke to emba brings this to light when I talk to my friends I can literally count on one hand the number of friends I have who have a good relationship with their dad and actually have learned things from him so the blueprint is literally sketched into the films themselves as our protagonists start off without a father figure of any kind and eventually meet the person who can fill this role giving them and by extension the viewer a code to live by Ray's unconscious feelings of regret about his father are likely what spur these premonitions to build the field but at the end of the film when he isn't offered to go into the corn with the baseball players he realizes that what he needs to do now is not about baseball at all it's about being a good father to his own child the father he wishes he had Creed distinguishes itself from the rest of the rocky franchise by reorienting its narrative towards the concept of fatherhood and all its attendant baggage Adonis never met his father Apollo who died in the ring shortly before Adonis was born and so throughout his journey Adonis grapples with the contrasting feelings of reverence and resentment towards Apollo on the one hand Apollo was a great boxer who Adonis aspires to be and on the other Apollo cheated on his wife with adonis's mother and could never take part in adonis's life so Apollo's absence is filled instead by Rocky who we've watched throughout this 40-year franchise grow into the man he is today on top of the physical training Rocky provides Adonis with advice and guidance understanding when necessary and unlike his own Mentor Mickey women weaken leg encourages Adonis to invite romantic love into his life having become aranged from his own son Rocky understands the crushing weight of living under your father's Legacy so he urges Adonis to forgive Apollo and release himself from the burden of fighting a man who's no longer here to defend himself like Ry Adonis has to make peace with a father he couldn't have Robin Williams stepped into this Father Figure role a couple times in his career in Dead Poet Society arguably another male weey where he plays an English teacher who inspires his students through the unconventional teaching of poetry to put them on a path not only to success but becoming better men and then again in Goodwill Hunting as Shawn there are many people in Will's life who contribute to his final decision Chucky Skyler but no one has as great an impact on will as Shawn does will is disaffected by the other therapists he meets in the same way he is with Gerald because he looks down on them as soft snoody privileged men Shawn however wins will over by speaking his language the wrong books what are the right books will he's from the same workingclass neighborhood as will he lifts what you lift yeah what do you bench 285 what do you bench and he isn't afraid to challenge will with physical violence something that of course could be seen as negative but as Flanigan points out toxic and heroic masculinity can easily exist in the same man there are plenty examples of a bad man who sees something unjust and who suddenly if only for the minutes takes to stop another man from harming someone puts a stop to it for that tiny stretch of time he is connected to Greatness while he oversteps when pushed to his limits in this moment boiling over the edge when will insults his wife Shawn is of course not a bad man and so In This Moment will isn't so much impressed by Shawn's brute strength as he is by his naked vulnerability he is flawed and can therefore relate to Will and for the duration of the movie he uses these flaws to lay what he's got on the table and Break Down The Walls that will has built around himself like Adonis will needs a man in his his life who can connect him to Greatness and I don't think he understands the importance of this until he learns why Skyler is able to afford College my father died when I was 13 and I inherited this money that I would give it back in a second if it meant I could have one more day with him but I can't even the self-sufficient Maximus finds a father figure in Marcus aelius someone who's not only given him a sense of purpose in appointing him as general but also a person who serves as a grounding Force whose stoic ideology gives maximum is Something to Believe In his death marks not only the upending of Rome but of maximus's life in a pivotal early scene when Marcus aelius tells kodus about his plan to pass his powers onto Maximus kodus tells him you wrote to me once this thing the four Chief virtues wisdom Justice fortitude and Temperance as I read the list I knew I had none of them it's through Marcus aurelius's eyes that we see what makes a fair and benevolent leader the virtues of a heroic aspirational masculinity like Stella Dallas these father figures or Role Models often take risks in order to nurture their surrogate Sons Marcus aelius takes a risk one that costs him his own life in choosing Maximus as his Heir Shawn goes out of his way to stay on as Will's therapist a job many men Decline and Rocky risks his personal health to train Adonis the surrounding characters in these movies stand in for the men are protagonists would become if they stay on a certain path and the men they could be if they choose another what they could be is embodied in figures who possess the traits of heroic masculinity as Flanigan cautions if we don't give these boys positive examples of strength as a virtue they will look elsewhere it's me Will remember we went to kindergarten [Music] together one man orstein interviews a college sophomore from Chicago tells her that when his parents divorced he found that he couldn't cry despite desperately wanting to so to make himself cry he told her that he streamed three movies about the Holocaust in order to get the tears flowing orstein has trouble understanding this referencing that by way of her gender she has always had permission to weep this is why melodrama is so integral to the male WEEI as we saw in the May December video melod drama tries to force the Unthinkable and repressed into the realm of representation it places characters in situations that Target something buried deep within the viewer and bring that to the four and it doesn't even have to be tragic to get there as I said in that video we're unsure at the end of Stella dallis whether or not it's a tragedy so with melodrama our tear can mean many sometimes contrasting things many people remember the film as ending with Stella standing behind the fence crying and Rain soaked as she she watches her daughter Laurel get married through a window but what most don't remember is the shot that comes after of Stella walking away with a triumphant smile on her face Stella Dallas is as much about women's ambivalent position under patriarchy and the pathetic nobility of self-sacrifice as it is about the Beauty and the strength of the maternal oath the same goes for the male weepy the tears come less so from a sadness towards the events than from a feeling of being seen it's the tears for adonis's troubled past as well as his bright future for the downtrod in every man in Rocky and the pureness of his delight at having lost a fight for the death of Maximus and the beginnings of what he died for for Chucky losing his friend and the smile on his face when he does as Hughes concludes a good weepy makes you smile through the tears regardless of gender genre or generation of course I'd be remiss not to point out that hyper masculine films should not be the only outlet for men to cry there's still a lot of work to be done in the realm of breaking down the artifice of gender rules a world where we all feel comfortable leaning on each other without having to justify it forging healthy relationships with our parents and vice versa and weeping without popping in a VHS tape is a better world indeed but shunning masculinity entirely is not the best start so people will see men crying at these movies and assume that they're crying about some lost power some ret ractive Nostalgia for a time when men ruled the world but if we probe a bit deeper and look beyond the surface of a sports film like Rocky let's say or the Hokey sentimentality of Field of Dreams we get a better understanding of where those tears are coming from the former view would look at Goodwill Hunting and only see will getting into fist fights on the basketball court or rocky punching a slab of meat until his hands bleed or Adonis punching out the headliner of his girlfriend's show and not everything these moments are couched within these movies are hyper masculine sure but they're largely positive depictions of masculinity of men who are providers and protectors who are goal oriented agential and courageous who look out for others for their family their friends their brothers and arms but also know when to rely on others for help these are men who are respected but also loved deeply in spite of their flaws even Nostalgia isn't all bad yes nostalg can be a distortion of the past but it's also been found to be a motivating force Nostalgia for One's best self tends to motivate people to pursue an idealize self in the future so if men truly are lost then the male weepe might just provide a road map out of the darkness this video is sponsored by movie a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great Cinema from all around the globe it's for lovers of grade Cinema and those who don't know they love grade Cinema yet because the beauty beauty of movie is that it exposes you to Artful thought-provoking and Innovative films you would never think to watch one movie I'm really excited about right now is how to have sex a movie released directed by Molly Manning Walker it's about three teen best friends who travel to a resort in Greece with the hopes of partying their summer away but things get a bit too real too quick how to have sex is hands down the most brutally accurate depiction of female adolescence I have ever watched drawing for us a hyper realistic portrait of teen Rebellion friendship and the tenuous lines of consent Manning Walker's gentle grasp on this coming of age story will have you holding your breath and yet somehow laughing in spite of it all this is one of my favorite movies and you can find it right now on movie discover the best of cinema at your fingertips streaming anytime anywhere you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com brel that's mubi.com broel for a whole month of great Cinema for free special thank you to Sayad Hassan Mel pery Morgan Cooper Stimson Nadia C Nick Jenny Eller J Frost mcfinnigan Gabriel M the whz Daniel Edward Yu Andrew nuan Connor O'Keefe Sharma Daniel sardonis Jenna Naomi nakagawa Scott Barnett Julia compana Alexis napis bulock Carrie Gavin RSS Fri Al Holstrom Alex and Kelly wolf for supporting this channel

Channel: Broey Deschanel

Views: 164,330

Keywords: gladiator 2, gladiator, creed, rocky, rocky balboa, matt damon, ben affleck, robin williams, good will hunting

Id: 4maNSmRPGEE

Length: 43min 26sec (2606 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024