Are Men Emotional? A Tale Of Two Brothers.
It’s timely that the teaser for the new Star Trek series, Picard, has recently been released because the location that we see in the trailer is set on the Picard family vineyard, which is the setting that spurred the idea for this essay in the first place.
I’ve recently been rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and there was an episode that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about because of how impactful it was. It stuck with me for an unexpected reason; it got me thinking about the correlation between violence and emotion.
If that sounds weird, let me explain. I’ve always been fascinated with the portrayal of brothers in television and film, which I’m sure is due in no small part due to the fact that I have five brothers of my own. As you can expect, we were quite the handful to my father and my long-suffering mother. As such, I’m always drawn to stories that have brotherly relationships that ring true to me based on my own personal experience.
Which brings me back to Star Trek.
This particular episode revolves around the relationship between Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his brother Robert who runs the family vineyard in Picard’s home village back on earth.
The episode in question is called “Family” and directly follows the dramatic events of “The Best of Both Worlds” where Picard gets assimilated into the Borg collective.
After his ordeal with the Borg assimilation, Picard is clearly distraught and suffering from some form of PTSD. As such it comes as no surprise when Deanna Troi, the ship’s counselor, approaches Picard about his plans to visit his brother, Robert, back on earth.
For a dedicated captain who generally refuses to take vacations, Deanna reasons that the captain seems all too eager to run away to his family estate in an effort to forget the trauma that he’s experienced. To Deanna, Picard is choosing to escape rather than come to terms with his experience with the Borg.
After Picard insists that he’s getting better and that the recovery process is taking place, Deanna — clearly not believing him — takes issue with his plans to return home.
“The choice of where you’re going could stand some scrutiny,” she says.
To Deanna’s credit, Picard could have gone anywhere, but he chose to go home. Why? Did he choose to return home to run away, or because he knew that there was something there he needed to confront?
While it’s obvious that Deanna has the best intentions and wants what’s best for the captain, she makes it clear she doesn’t approve of Picard’s decision to go home.
This sort of interaction between Deanna and Picard has become quite the cliche in television. So often when a man experiences a death in the family or some form of traumatic event, the wife, girlfriend or…counselor, tries to get the man to open up about his feelings. This usually sounds something like, “Why can’t you just open up to me?” or, “It’s not healthy to keep your emotions bottled up,” or, “You need to feel your emotions, not push them away.”
What this is indicative of is the modern idea that men need to be more emotional…like women. The thought is that if men expressed their emotions in much the same way that women did, then men would be happier and more emotionally healthy. This stems from the theory that men suppress their emotions because of societal pressure; because it’s taught to young men from an early age that men don’t cry…presumably from other men.
What these theories and ideas fail to account for is that men are just as emotional — if not more-so according to some data — than women.
But this data can be deceiving. Just because men experience emotion as much as women, then shouldn’t they express that emotion in much the same way as women? If they don’t, then aren’t they merely suppressing their emotions?
Well, no.
Not only do men generally express their emotions differently than women, the way they process emotions vastly deviates from women as well.
So how does this play out with Picard and his return home?
When Picard finally reunites with his brother, he finds that Robert is still the hard-nosed and resentful person that he’s always been, proving that the two brothers are nothing alike in temperament or personality.
Robert lives in the past while Picard lives for the future.
Picard strives for excellence while Robert lives for routine.
As we see between these two brothers, paradoxical feelings can exist simultaneously.
Conflict and love.
Jealousy and admiration.
It becomes instantly apparent that Picard and Robert don’t have anything resembling a close or loving relationship. In fact, it’s more antagonistic than anything. Through their interactions it is obvious that tension exists between the brothers and that there are unresolved issues between them. At any moment we as the audience feel as though one of them is going to snap and an all out verbal war is about to take place.
After spending several days visiting with the family and meeting up with old friends — one of which offers Picard a cushy job opportunity working on an underwater scientific venture — we find Robert and Picard taking a walk across the estate grounds. Before long — and not unsurprisingly — the two brothers end up verbally sparring with each other, bringing up their past histories as children and the jealousy that ripped their relationship apart.
“Why did you come back, Jean-Luc?” Robert finally asks. “Did you come back because you wanted me to look after you again?”
“Damn you!” Picard yells before punching Robert squarely across the jaw. Before long, the two brothers are wrestling in the mud just as they probably once did as jealous children.
For a moment it seems that there will be no salvaging the brother’s relationship now. It seems certain that at this point that Picard will leave and never speak to his brother again.
But then a surprising thing happens.
The brothers start laughing, and what could have ended up as a tragedy ends as a tender brotherly moment as the two giggle in the mud at the ridiculousness of their situation.
But there is another unexpected turn of events when Picard’s laughing melts into tears as he mournfully confesses his utter shame at not being able to resist the mind-bending powers of the Borg.
Notice the progression of emotions.
Anger.
Happiness.
Sadness.
In a very short period of time, Picard’s fight with Robert was able to unearth something that Deanna Troi’s method would have taken months or years to accomplish. If Troi had had her way, Picard would have spent months or years being prodded about his feelings, being chided for bottling up his emotions.
But in the end, it was an act of violence — that Picard started mind you — that led him to come to terms with the pain and shame he was trying to sort out in his own mind.
His brotherly fight with Robert helps Picard realize that the trauma of the Borg assimilation isn’t something that he will be able to fully overcome in his lifetime. Whether he abandons Starfleet and retreats into the depths of the ocean with his newly offered job, or returns to his rightful place as the captain of the Enterprise, his experience with the Borg will always be there in the back of his subconscious like a permanent nightmare.
With Robert’s help, Picard came to realize that even if he ran away from Starfleet, he can’t run away from his feelings or emotions; that no matter what he does he will have to come to terms with his shame one way or another.
Surprisingly, the only thing that was able to bring him to that realization was a good old fashioned fight with his old fashioned brother.
From the beginning of the episode, Picard knew instinctively that he needed to return home, even if he truly didn’t understand why.
But after a good fight with his brother, everything became clear.
Here’s the thing with many men and their emotions. Men talking about their feelings doesn’t have the same cathartic release that it seems to for women.
This isn’t a societal thing, it’s biological.
Men quite simply don’t like to be prodded about their emotions. Simply trying to talk to men about their feelings will rarely yield the results that women or therapists desire.
Men often experience their emotions through action.
While the TNG episode “Family” is what got me thinking about this subject in the first place, there is no better example of this phenomenon than the Mixed Martial Artists (MMA) themed movie, “Warrior” which starred a hulking Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton.
The premise of the film is that two brothers who were obsessively trained in MMA by their strict and abusive father end up fighting each other for the championship of the biggest MMA tournament in history.
But while “Warrior” is a movie that revolves around MMA, there’s a lot more under the surface of than gut punches and kicks to the head. Like Sylvester Stallone’s, Rocky, Warrior isn’t really about fighting. It’s about something more more.
Speaking of men expressing their emotions, I have to admit that personally I’m not much of a crier, and as such there are very few movies that make me to do so. But like the ultimate “Man” movie, Gladiator, Warrior is one such film that puts me on the verge of tears every time I watch it.
To many women it might seem strange that a movie about two brothers beating the crap out of each other could bring grown men to the brink of tears, but ultimately, Warrior isn’t a movie about fighting and pain.
It’s about letting go of pain.
Much like Picard and Robert, it’s about two brothers becoming brothers again.
This idea is taken to its absolute limit when Tommy’s brother, Brendan, has to literally beat Tommy into submission before he is finally able to comes to terms with his emotionally damaged state.
No psychiatrist could have done to Tommy what his brother was able to do in five minutes. Just like Picard and Robert, it took two brothers coming to blows to resolve their differences which allowed the brother that is hurting to be able to express himself emotionally before being able to move on.
Therapy didn’t do that.
Brotherly affection did.
To the characters of Warrior, they go into the tournament thinking it’s either about the fighting or the money, but by the end nobody cares about either of those two things.
For the older brother, Brendan, the fight broke down his internal barriers and finally gave him the ability to say something that was long overdue.
A simple, “I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m sorry.”
And then he finished the fight.
But not by a punch or a kick, but by simply saying, “Tap, Tommy. It’s okay. I love you! I love you, Tommy!”
Brothers fight because they care. If we aren’t willing to fight, then you can know for a surety that we don’t care. Men’s emotions can get all muddled up, and it’s not easy to always express those feelings, but we fight for the things we care about, or the things we believe in.
Not only is it difficult for men to organize and process their emotions, it can sometimes seem even more impossible to communicate those feelings to others. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not because society has taught us to suppress our emotions, but because it’s hard to sort them out in our own heads without the proper conditions.
There is something about being a man that makes our emotional states extremely simple, and yet infinitely complex.
Expressing our emotions is almost never as dramatic as what we see in Star Trek or Warrior, but when brothers fight, sometimes it’s not about just fighting.
Sometimes it’s about something more.
