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Masculinity, Morality and Male Violence: Watching HBO’s Barry
Barry wants redemption, but can he find it? This is the first part of a cultural crit essay about Bill Hader’s Barry.
American society can be widely argued to suffer from an unequal distribution of redemption. There are types of people who the masses are eager to forgive and even adore, after they commit atrocious, violent crimes. And there are other types of people who, after committing violence, are never forgiven, locked away in a prison to be forgotten. This disparate distribution has been noted by many to occur along the lines of race, class, gender and (dis)ability.
The power dynamics around forgiveness and redemption are complex, but for the sake of brevity, I will summarize it in broad terms: racialized gendered bodies are criminalized and imprisoned for their moral failures, while white, male, higher class bodies are more often afforded a chance at redemption. Of course, this isn’t a black and white rule — poverty, for example, is often criminalized independent of racial background — but these are the broad terms of forgiveness and redemption that are explored by HBO’s Barry, where the main character struggles to accept that sometimes, redemption is unavailable.
