Your Masculinity Is Not Defined By Violence | The Odyssey Online
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Politics and Activism

Your Masculinity Is Not Defined By Violence

A critique of Breitbart's message to men.

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Your Masculinity Is Not Defined By Violence
The Nice Guys Movie

When people claim that feminists are ruining Hollywood because Hollywood isn't depicting men as more violent...they do realize they're equating masculine identity to level of violence, right?

There are also still plenty of movies and TV shows with males killing/attacking each other, so I don't even really know...what is this argument? I'm so confused.

This topic was inspired by an article called "Outsourcing Masculinity: Where Have All the American Action Heroes Gone?" The article, published by Breitbart, was written by Lisa De Pasquale, who pretty much just writes poorly-argued opinion articles bashing millennials and feminists. This particular piece was about the movie "The Nice Guys." I had seen it in theaters, and it was a pretty funny and awesome movie (in my opinion). It also fared well In reviews by IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.

However, the writer is complaining that it (God forbid) didn't have as much violence as other action movies. The author doesn’t say this word for word, but it’s implied.

“Over 40 years of American culture and education run by liberals and feminists has shunned masculine traits in favor of the beta, feminized male. Ryan Gosling in "The Nice Guys" is a single, well-dressed dad who is in touch with his emotions and relies on brains rather than brawn. Make no mistake, his character has flaws, but the contrast between him and Russell Crowe’s burly character is stark (and is what makes the movie so entertaining)”

So having emotion and intelligence is apparently characteristics of a “feminized man”? The movie didn’t have as much “brawn” in it probably because it's more of an action comedy, like "Rush Hour," not "James Bond" or "The Expendables." The author goes on to imply men from my generation are not manly enough because they’re dominantly the feminized men that feminists and liberals created.

In the author’s opinion, the feminized man is supposed to be represented by Ryan Gosling's character because he shows a little bit of emotion (he only has one emotional moment during the entire film, and it's very brief). Meanwhile, Russell Crowe's character represents the older, more manly generation of men because he's “burly.” In this movie his character is more experienced and aggressive than Ryan Gosling’s character and that's really the only difference.

The author then blames the loss of masculinity on lack of masculine role models in personal life and film (because forget the Marvel and DC franchises completely). She also claims American male actors don’t play in as many action roles because American men aren’t allowed to be “sweaty and stoic” here. OK, Breitbart. I guess this means Batman's "no killing" rule is emasculating as well?

Anyway, I think our generation of "liberal" men are probably going to do pretty awesome things with or without violence. I mean MLK and Gandhi were pretty outstanding men that didn't use violence to get their point across. But ya know, whatever. If this generation's men end up accomplishing better and bigger things with less violence involved than the flawless generations before us filled with "real men"--as a feminist, I'm actually completely okay with being blamed for that.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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