Why nine year old me needed Rey from Star Wars
How the media’s depiction of masculinity doesn’t reflect the sensitivity and insightfulness of children and teenagers.
Earlier this year, while working in a public high school, I taught a Year 8 English unit on media. The class was made up of a broad range of students with a variety of abilities and backgrounds. Teaching this unit I learnt a number of interesting things, the top four being:
- The baby Jesus scene from Kath and Kim is actually far too clever for a group of 13 year olds;
- Never try to bond with kids by telling them about a prank you did in high school because they will immediately recreate it (I apologise to any other teachers that day who were on the receiving end of the ‘alarm clock in a locker’ situation);
- Mr Bean is universally entertaining and is often the only thing that will quiet a room full of screaming teenagers celebrating a successful prank;
- Young people will never cease to surprise you with their hidden astuteness and sensitivity.
Whilst number one was the most shocking revelation of the fortnight, number four was the most thought provoking and came from the most unlikely place.
I had decided to run a series of lessons on the representation of women in the media as part of the unit. I had previously experienced some push-back from the students when attempting to include a critical gender viewpoint in our lessons, but glutton-for-punishment feminist that I am, I soldiered on.
One of the lessons involved a class brainstorm on the female archetypes they encounter in the media. The whiteboard was soon filled with suggestions: nurturer, damsel in distress, man-hater, sex object. We then moved on to identifying examples in different forms of media. A few minutes into the discussion a male student, whose sole purpose in our classes up to this point had been to vandalise desks, throw water at other students and play on his phone, put his hand up:
‘Motorcycle gear logos, miss. Sometimes they, like, make the name of the shop out of a woman’s body. It’s that sex object thing, right? It’s like they’re trying to own her body or use her or some shit like that’.
The discussion that came out of that was incredible. The male students started engaging in a genuine critique of the shows they watch, the brands they buy, the music they listen to. One lesson on gender and the media turned into a whole week. Analysis and evaluation of the Bechdel Test, rewriting movie plots to be more gender-equal, a class-wide argument that took up most of recess about whether The Blind Side was feminist or not. These students started thinking about the world in terms of objectification, equality and fairness. And while it’s likely that by now they’ve entirely forgotten that week, it still felt like a victory. It still made a small difference.
How is it that we create society where domestic violence is so rife, violence against women is endemic and the suicide rate amongst young men continues to rise, when it is actually possible to for a young man and his peers to be so insightful and engaged? Why can they do it but our adults can’t? Imagine if we opened up the dialogue.
Young people are capable of so much. Last year I had a male Year 10 student who was the stereotypical ‘bloke’. Every lesson he would turn up to class 10 minutes late, swaggering in with his soccer ball in one hand and his sports gear in the other, slump into a seat and proceed to give the most impressive display of manspreading this side of John Wayne. But he was also capable of producing a creative piece that entered into the mind of an emotionally scarred woman who had been destroyed by her interactions with the men in her life, that elicited incredible sympathy and sadness.
Children and young adults of all genders are able to be sensitive and insightful, and yet we don’t give them the chance. Instead we expose them to a mediascape that tells stories indirectly designed to push that sensitivity all the way down.
Recently, I had a couch day watching movies with a group of close friends: The NeverEnding Story, Blade Runner, Demolition and Approaching the Unknown. Without meaning to, I realised we had created a theme for our viewing; male outsiders seeking self-fulfilment in a world that either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want them.
These films span three decades, numerous genres and are directed at very different audiences; yet they all used their female characters solely as drivers of the men’s stories. Stories that were eerily similar.
Atreyu and Bastian in The NeverEnding Story are fighting alone to save the princess, Blade Runner’s Deckard is (often violently) obsessed with a woman who was literally created as an object. In Demolition, the death of the protagonist’s wife is simply a foil for Jake Gyllenhaal’s character to find escape in solitary acts of extreme masculinity, whilst Approaching the Unknown is one man’s mission to ultimately escape Earth. The only women that appear on-screen in Approaching the Unknown are a teenager asking a question and the female astronaut following behind, who he still somehow manages to save ‘damsel in distress’ style. Because no film is complete without the hero saving a lady, even if that lady is also an incredibly capable pioneer.
These films were at the front of my mind as I finally got round to watching Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople last week. A visually stunning movie that definitely made me laugh, it nonetheless is a perfect example of the types of stories we continue to tell our young men. Early in the film, one of only two female characters suddenly die, leaving the two male protagonists alone with each other. This film is a typical male bonding movie, with emotion being kept to a stoic minimum. Whilst this is meant to lend a tone of profundity, it serves to make displays of emotion appear strange.
In an early scene, the younger character, Ricky watches from behind a shed as Sam Neil’s outsider male, Hec, sobs and wails over his wife’s body. The viewer never fully sees this scene. It is shot either from afar, behind a corner, or out of focus. This moment, the only one where we encounter an extreme emotion other than violent rage from this character, adds to the sense that sadness and sensitivity are things that a man does not make public. By fully displaying the character’s intense grief, the film would be validating his tears. And tears do not make a man. Further into the movie, as the two characters bond, the only time they come close to truly expressing their emotions they are in bunk beds, which saves them from the horror of actually having to actually look at each other. Indeed the climax of the scene involves the older Hec calling Ricky ‘pretty likeable’. This scene, which is meant to be moving and emotionally charged, instead emphasises the inability, or inappropriateness, for a man to lay bare his feelings.
I understand that the movie is meant to show a particular type of stoic, rural character. And to play it up for comedic effect. But when was the last time we saw a movie or a tv show where men spoke honestly with each other about their emotions? In her feminist treatise, Fight Like a Girl, Clementine Ford roundly criticises those people who mock her for loving the 1980s classic Beaches:
‘Why does every single man breathing in the world today get to list The Shawshank Redemption as one of his favourite movies and not be shamed for it, but women are supposed to roll their eyes at Beaches? Shawshank is basically a celebration of the same thing (thirty years of platonic friendship and its various trials and tribulations), it just had to be set in a prison so men could give themselves permission to cry over it’ (p.77).
And Ford is right; why is it that male characters have to be like Red and Andy Dufresne in Shawshank or mimic pretty much every Clint Eastwood character ever? What would happen if instead of falling back on this ‘strong silent hero’ archetype we created characters that spoke to each other? For the sake of the mental health of young men and the empowerment of young women can’t we present emotionally intelligent male protagonists, capable female protagonists, and movies that show partnership and collaboration?
And I’m not talking about just remaking movies with female characters. As much as I enjoyed Ghostbusters, ultimately all it did was reverse the trope. The female characters objectified their male assistant who was blonde, idiotic and required saving. I won’t be surprised if the upcoming Ocean’s Eleven remake, Oceans’s 8, is much the same. What would these movies be like if we busted the trope instead, to the benefit off all genders?
There is hope in the interactions I have had with students, and in the conversations I have with the young people I know. Hearing my friend’s ten year-old daughter admonish him for conflating sex and gender, for example, was a hilarious and wonderful moment. We just need to ensure that we encourage these moments and continue to provide our young people with stories that break the tropes we have grown up to see as natural.
