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Two lovers engage in sociologically minded discussions exploring books, movies, and whatever else fits the bill.
Well, welcome back, everyone.
Hi, Sam.
Hi Hannah, How are you doing today?
I'm great.
I'm not in India,
and I am in our apartment.
Yeah. Was that the last time
recording an episode?
I think it was before India.
And before you moved in. Oh, definitely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it has been a while. Yeah.
And I feel like we're bursting
at the seams with episode ideas.
We are bursting at the seams
with episode ideas.
and yet, despite that backlog,
what we're talking about
is something that we came up with
this morning, like today.
Yeah,
but it's been brewing for a little while.
Yeah, yeah. All right.
So some time ago, also prior to India,
also prior to you
moving in, we were watching Batman Begins,
and I had fresh in my head,
a video essay by Natalie
Wynn of Contra Points about Twilight
and The concept that Natalie
introduces in that essay is,
I mean, a lot.
She introduces a lot of concepts,
but one of them is
that of fantasy,
not simply as wish fulfillment,
but as a way to fulfill
some psychological need.
So in the example of Twilight,
we see Bella
disavowing the traditional feminine desire
that is often
seen as frivolous,
superficial, unserious,
somehow morally bad to want a big,
beautiful
white wedding where she dresses up
like a beautiful princess.
And so what the story gives us
is a sister in law
who insists upon it, dresses
her up like a pretty doll,
and in this way, by when the reader
or viewer identifies with Bella,
they get to have their cake
and eat it too.
They get to disavow the desire
to be a girly girl and feel beautiful
at a gorgeous wedding,
and they get to imagine themselves
feeling like a beautiful princess
and having that amazing wedding day.
Another example is
50 Shades of Gray.
You have this lover
who is filthy rich and insists
upon sending you private helicopters
and bringing you to four star restaurants
or five star restaurants.
I don't know how many stars
is a lot of stars for a restaurant,
but like a fancy meal, right?
While you still get to be materialistic,
that's the concept of a disavowed desire
fantasy.
The classic example would be
a rape fantasy,
but I wanted to offer other examples
because the idea of a rape
fantasy as a classic disavowed desire
fantasy is so emotionally loaded.
And so I had this fresh in my head
and we were watching Batman Begins,
and it was a fun watch.
I think you said you liked Batman Begins
the most out of the three.
Out of the three?
Yeah, it was silliest, which, honestly,
I think I might agree with.
Yeah, but something that I noticed
was that the story that is being told
is that Bruce Wayne
really wants to just be in a monogamous
relationship with his childhood sweetheart
and be faithful to her
and have an uneventful life where he, runs
a successful business and makes
boring contributions to philanthropy.
But he has this terrible burden
where he has
to be the hero that Gotham needs.
And in order to do that,
he has to stay anonymous.
And so he's just got to keep up this
fiction that he is a billionaire Playboy
who's dating a bunch of supermodels
and getting drunk
and going out on the town
and partying all the time.
And that's his burden. It's terrible.
And I was like, wow, this is a masculine,
disavowed desire fantasy.
A lot of men have the fantasy of dating
a bunch of supermodels, getting drunk
at fancy rooftop bars,
and and being in the tabloids
as misanthropes and party boys.
But to openly watch
those things is to admit
that you want to be kind of hedonistic
or that you
you desire things that are seen
as superficial and frivolous,
and so the narrative hands you a pretense
for it, that you have to play
this character in order to to maintain
your double life as a superhero.
And that got us thinking about
other common archetypes of male
fantasy, and curious about what kind of.
Psychological needs they fulfill.
Because I think there's a lot of
ink spilled about media
directed toward women. And.
What psychological needs they fulfill and
how they might be somehow corrupting us.
But we don't tend to, I mean, culturally
and in the media, right?
We don't tend to fret so much
about impressionable young boys.
Yeah, except for the video games.
Violent video games.
I feel like we do wring our hands
a lot about that.
Yeah.
Or boys who might be into, queer media.
Oh, yeah.
We certainly worry that they're
impressionable when it comes to that, but
we don't we don't inquire that much
about hegemonic or toxic masculinity
in storytelling and what psychological
needs those fantasies fulfill.
And so that's
what we're going to talk about today.
Yeah.
I was thinking about this
as you were talking,
and I don't know
if this is going to go anywhere, but
it's interesting to how
that plays out
in the characters of Batman,
especially as told in Christopher
Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy,
as compared to the character of Iron Man,
especially as told in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe,
and how the, again, you kind of
were mentioned, how
the plot necessitated in Batman for him
to have this disdain
for this seemingly frivolous life,
but ultimately to have to go along with it
so that he could keep up appearances.
Whereas in the character of Iron Man,
everyone knows Iron
Man is Tony Stark,
so those two become one.
He can be both the Savior,
and also the billionaire Playboy,
the billionaire Playboy philanthropist.
Well, yeah.
And I think that's why we have Tony Stark.
We maybe get a more clear shift
in his values.
Because, like, we need conflict.
He needs to change.
And I feel like the way that he changes
is that he has to unlearn
the idea that it's fine
and good to be an arms dealer, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, in a certain sense, yeah, yeah.
Whereas Batman or Bruce Wayne's
turning point,
however you want to think about
it, is more so
his childhood reaction to his parents
death.
Yeah. Processing his trauma.
Yeah.
So, yeah, there's a lot of directions
that we can go in with this.
And I hope that we do a lot more
episodes about it.
We can do deep dives
about particular movies or franchises
or stories,
and we can introduce more categories.
We could do individual episodes
about individual categories,
exploring them more deeply.
But I think today we're
just going to go through like our initial
taxonomy of male fantasy.
These are just the categories
that occurred to us from 20 minutes
of brainstorming
and discuss them a little bit.
Yeah.
So our first
like umbrella category is that of heroes.
So the first category under heroes
is that of the squeaky clean hero
we've got, for example,
Superman, Power Rangers.
What other examples are there
of the squeaky clean hero G.I. Joe?
Maybe.
We don't see this hero suffer very much,
and he mostly exists
for an audience of boys, not men.
Truth? Justice in the American way.
He's defending wholesome values.
Superman is wonderfully deep, but
I don't think that any Superman movies,
even the most recent one that we both
loved, make a spectacle of his pain
in the way that we see
with the tortured hero or the anti-hero.
And I think the squeaky clean hero has
a tone of wholesome, good American values.
Yeah.
And like the,
the parallel that I thought of with
this is that of Barbie.
Barbie is hegemonic ideal femininity.
And that means that she's beautiful
and glamorous.
But as time goes on, it also means
that she has all these amazing careers
and that she shows little girls
that women's can, women's, that women
can be anything
a veterinarian, a doctor, an astronaut,
the president, you know, and likewise,
I think with the squeaky clean superhero,
the purpose that he serves as that
of a role model, you need to be brave.
You need to be strong.
You need to take responsibility
for others.
You need to display, wholesomeness
and and good values.
Yeah.
It's kind of like in both Power
Rangers G.I.
Joe and Superman, and maybe even
we could include Spider-Man
to a certain extent
because this next quote
is going to come with it.
But like with great power
comes great responsibility.
So in all of these iterations, these are
all characters who have a lot of power.
And the point of it is kind of about
how they use that power,
quote unquote, for good. Yeah.
And it's aspirational. Right.
There's a lot to get into about the idea
that masculinity, that manhood means that
you are ordained with this great power
and that the system
for keeping that power in check is simply,
you just got to you just got to be good.
It's kind of like that Disney
story of like, the monarchy is fine.
The problem is not the monarchy.
The problem is that
when when there is somebody in power
in the monarchy who is bad,
the system isn't the problem.
Yeah.
It takes a very individualist approach,
I think, to
the story
where it's it's about the good people
with power fighting against the bad people
with power.
Yes, It can, I think, easily
turn into a very simplistic view
of reality in that way.
It can.
And also like something
about whenever we're talking about tropes,
I always want to like, acknowledge,
you know, an individual story
is going to be nuanced and valuable
and maybe will even at certain point
subvert parts of what we're saying.
But when these tropes and archetypes
exist across vast swaths of media,
then the totality of them builds up
a certain idea.
Yeah, So that's the squeaky clean hero.
One of his counterparts
is that of the tortured hero.
the the one that started
this whole conversation was our
our disavowed desire fantasy for Batman,
the billionaire playboy
but another one that seems to pop up a lot
that we wanted to mention
is that of the disfigured hero.
We have Deadpool,
we have the Toxic Avenger,
we have Quasimodo, and something
that you pointed out about Deadpool.
well, I actually I want to, like, maybe
flesh this category out a little bit more
I feel like the tortured genius
might kind of come into this.
Oh, totally.
With Oppenheimer, All of these are, Yeah.
Yeah,
so I think, the big part here is that it's
kind of like the dark counterpoint
of the squeak.
Squeaky clean hero in that Would be
described maybe as a more realistic view.
It's taking the squeaky clean hero story
and adding.
Maybe nuance or just groundedness.
this sense of realism that is more gray.
in their approach to how these heroes
perceive the world, I think morally gray,
but also like, literally gray,
like these are films
that are darker in theme and darker
in color palette.
Yeah, and when we say the tortured part
of the tortured hero,
I think we're thinking of,
as we alluded to earlier, like films
that voyeuristicly linger
on the protagonist's pain.
Yeah. we see him.
We don't.
We we're not going to see him cry.
All right.
But we might see him punch a wall.
We we might see him,
working out very sadly
or staring at himself in the mirror
and thinking deep, sad thoughts.
Right?
Brooding.
He's always alone. He's suffering alone.
Yeah, having to take on like,
this great power in the squeaky clean hero
Like, their power is kind of given to them
in a sense, like Superman.
He's just an alien. Spider-Man.
I mean, he gets his power.
Power Rangers, they get their power.
Oh, but with, like,
someone like Batman or Iron Man,
they have a lot of resources
at their disposal, and they choose
to take on the burden of leveraging
those resources toward vigilantism.
yeah.
And I think that could play into like,
this tortured hero aspect of it.
I guess Deadpool would be one exception
since his like.
More of power
that he's been given, I guess not
necessarily one that he's seeking out.
Well, I think Deadpool fulfills
a different need entirely.
But yeah.
So this this tortured hero.
What what need does he mean?
What what do you think that men and boys
get out
of watching the tortured hero suffer?
Besides the disavowed desire fantasy
that we were identifying
for the billionaire Playboy type.
I think it's almost like This, like,
pessimistic counterpart
to the squeaky clean hero where, like,
everything's not colorful and happy
and roses and flowers all the time.
They recognize, like, the cruelty and
the world and the darkness and the evil.
But it's even in their recognition of how,
corrupt the world is, there's
this sense that, I'm going to be the one
to make a difference
by using the power I have for good.
Yeah.
So it's a fantasy of power and control.
And it's also a fantasy of
I get the sense that it's like “for
your more sophisticated viewer”
who recognizes that life is is depressing.
Yet despite that, I'm still going to try.
I think you're describing
what makes it a really compelling story.
I think what makes it a really compelling
fantasy
is the fantasy of power and control.
And the fantasy of the brokenness
and wrongness of the world around you.
if the fantasy is telling me that
the world around me is broken and evil
and that I am both powerful and good,
then the fantasy is telling me
that I can act with impunity,
and I ought not to be held accountable
to other systems of, checks and balances.
Yeah.
Which I think that's a great segue
into the part I was mentioning about
Deadpool and how Deadpool, as a movie
that came out in 2015, 14,
16, around that time was
certainly not a response,
but Could be viewed
at from the angle of men
trying to understand
themselves in a post me-too world.
Yeah.
And I think the disfigurement
is a big part of that.
I'm thinking of Deadpool,
I'm thinking of Wolverine,
and I'm thinking of The Toxic Avenger.
I'm thinking of Quasimodo.
- Oh,
I'm thinking of The Phantom of the opera -
looking into a mirror
and seeing my mangled face and knowing
that I'm inherently unlovable.
And it's so interesting
that that's marketed
more to men than to women,
because women are the ones who,
are socialized to put more value
and investment into our appearance.
That you would think that a spoiled
appearance would spoil
a feminine identity more than
it would spoil a masculine identity.
Yeah, But I think in in invoking like
a reactionary response to me-too
I think that when men watch a Deadpool or
a, gosh, there's this Sam Raimi movie
that I'm trying to remember, Dark man.
Yeah, Dark man or a Darkman although
Darkman is, like, gets real campy with it.
But The narrative dramatizes
their pain and tells them
that they're really inherently good.
So if you're struggling
with feelings of self-reflection
for having been part of predatory
or creepy or violent behavior
toward women, this narrative
lets you imagine that as a disfigurement
that is not actually
a moral reflection on you, but causes you
to be victimized by a hateful society.
It turns the blame outward and lets you
be misunderstood,
but inside morally I think that's why
it lingers so much on the suffering.
it's telling them, you poor little lamb,
It's not your fault, you know.
And offers instead
a moral grappling with, again,
how do I navigate all of this power
that I'm imbued with
as the only morally good actor here
in this broken society, as opposed to
how do I handle all of this power
that I am imbued with unfairly
in a system that I am a part of,
that enacts violence against another group
of people that's uncomfortable.
We don't want to be engaging with that.
I think it's very notable too here that
in all of the examples we've given so far.
And I think in all of the examples
at least that we've written about,
which we will talk about soon,
these are all, white men.
you could argue maybe Power Rangers.
I mean, certainly there are Black Power
Rangers, there are Power Rangers of color,
There's famously a black Spider-Man,
there is famously a black Spider-Man.
But I think overarchingly
these are all coded as white.
Well, yeah.
And that's illustrated by the fact
that the characters were originated
as white and only became people of color
through subsequent colorblind casting.
I'm not much of an expert in superheroes,
but like, I think of Black Panther,
and I think of how that story imagines
a version of Africa
on ravaged by colonialism Yeah.
and imagines that prosperity
and how I've always seen
that as a very restorative fantasy.
Yeah, it can only be that way
because it was conceived
of from the jump
as a black and African story.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's my Yeah.
No, that hits the nail on the head. I
So we were still in our first,
broad category, which is that of heroes
and in particular superheroes.
We talked about the squeaky
clean, hegemonic role model fantasy.
We talked about the tortured hero
and disfigured hero
And now we're moving on to the anti-hero.
anti-hero.
The examples here are movies
I'm less familiar with.
We have the Punisher,
venom, and John Wick.
The Punisher I understand
to be conservative propaganda.
Venom I tried to watch
and thought it was too dumb and stopped
I shouldn't say too venom.
I tried to watch and found the tone
grating to my personal tastes.
Yes, That's what I actually mean.
And John Wick,
I just haven't gotten around to.
So under heroes,
we've gone into the subgenre
of squeaky clean, which is kind of like
your prototypical hero.
Then we went into like the tortured hero,
which is like, Let's make a hero
that's like a little more realistic,
kind of like vibes.
Yeah, realism is the aesthetic.
But in reality,
what we're getting is darkness,
and we're really lingering
on the protagonist's pain.
I feel like with Anti-Hero,
we're more lingering
on the violence that the protagonist does.
we are glorifying
and lingering on The sadism and
murderous-ness of the hero Yeah.
more than his inner life.
Which I would say generally
in the previous two categories squeaky
clean and tortured Hero.
You typically don't have these characters
like outright killing the bad guys.
Unless the bad guys are like,
you know, monsters or aliens.
I feel like Superman is the Stand in
for like the,
the prototypical squeaky clean hero.
And Batman is the stand in
for the prototypical tortured hero.
And both of those characters notably
have, like, no killing moral codes.
Yeah.
And if even with the examples
of tortured heroes who do kill.
it's more incidental.
The camera doesn't linger on it.
We don't see them
inflicting a great deal of pain
really indulgently,
with, again, the exception of Deadpool.
Oh, does he torture people?
I don't remember him torturing anybody.
anybody,
I think Deadpool, like, doesn't quite fit.
Either tortured hero or even anti-hero.
I think, in his original inception,
Deadpool was more of like a anti-hero.
He was basically a mercenary
that then got like superpowers.
And so he still has a lot of that.
Like I'm killing for fun.
That comes through in some of it.
Maybe not to the extent that,
I just feel like what feels very salient
to me for Deadpool is his disfigurement,
And maybe that that feels salient to me
because I am myself disfigured.
Anyway, anti-hero.
It's a fantasy of violence.
It's a fantasy of extreme violence. Right.
and I think the anti-hero movies
specifically
get into this idea of,
okay, yes, we're killing people,
but it's for the greater good.
it's this.
again fantasy that if we can kill the
right people, everybody else will be okay.
Yeah, yeah.
And if we're thinking of fantasy as,
like, making up a story
that creates the conditions in order
for a psychological need to be met,
I think when it comes to the anti-hero,
the psychological need is to indulge
in violence
and sadism without feeling guilty
or morally compromised.
And the way that the narrative sets
that up for the viewer
is by creating a world
where this violence
is obviously justified.
I'm not knocking it.
as you know, I have a deep and abiding
love for the saw films.
And I talk about, you know,
a shift that happens in the later
saw films are like at the beginning,
you're really empathizing
with the people in the traps
and the stories are about them.
And then eventually, you know,
one of the movies
just starts with, would you like to see
a bunch of Nazis get tortured?
Here you go. Yeah.
And we as the viewer are saying, yes,
we would like to watch some Nazis
getting tortured. Thank you so much.
so I feel like that's that need
that's being met.
But where it gets
kind of toxic is that it's not saying
we're going to punish some Nazis.
It's we're going to punish the plebs,
the sheep, the huddled masses.
I'm reminded of, like the meme-ification
of that monologue from Watchmen.
Do you know that monologue from Watchmen,
where he's going on about
like when the toxic sludge of this city
Oh, is it Rorschach,
the guy with the mask that has the.
Yeah, So yeah, in order for the
the bloodlust fantasy to work,
you have to imagine that the targets of it
are irredeemable and absolutely deserve
not just death, but pain.
And I think to go alongside that,
like another point that gets into this
especially what started
with like the dark night and.
essentially golden
era of superheroes in movies.
There was this, desire
even more so than before to, like,
make them realistic.
I mean, the MCU tended to be a little bit
more fantastical, but like, even
in the more quote unquote grounded, Batman
movies, there's still so much happening.
That is, when you look at it,
goofy and unrealistic.
this is a guy dressing up in a black.
Cape and suit and going out
and just beating the crap out of people.
there's always going to be a certain angle
where no matter how quote
unquote realistic
a movie gets, it's always artificial.
And I think that especially
that era's desire for it to,
for these movies to be more realistic.
And they're praising the praise
they got for it being more grounded.
Just further speaks
to how much this fantasy persists,
that we want these myths
to be real, these stories to be real.
Yeah.
And I think that gritty realism style
has now become.
A parody of itself.
Like people, people roll their eyes at it
a lot more easily now
because it's been done
so many times, Yeah,
and we're now even seeing that, that
being parodied in the movies themselves.
Yeah, man,
everything's a commentary on a commentary.
Let's switch gears and get out of our hero
archetypes.
Well, superhero
comic book superhero archetype.
Yeah.
So another masculine fantasy
that we wanted to talk about
is what I wrote down, the one special boy
that the prophecy foretold.
And the two biggest examples of this
that came to us were
Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter.
And this is the person at the center
of the narrative who usually it's
a coming of age narrative.
Right?
It's a hero journey, who has something
really big and important to do
that is ordained by some higher power
other than him or herself.
Usually I feel like it's like fate.
like this unspoken force of the universe
that is guiding them.
or a literal oracle or prophecy -
Oh the matrix is another example of this.
this fantasy is one of,
being relieved of the burden
of finding a purpose.
if you are the special boy
that the prophecy foretold, then
you don't have to find
or make your own meaning in life.
certainly the meaning that you find
or make in life will not be
one of interdependence or solidarity
with others.
It makes you really important and special.
But it also means that you don't have to
do your meaning making on your own.
And I think that that's kind
of a counterpoint to the romantic,
submissive fantasy
that gets marketed a lot to women.
Does that make Yeah.
The romantic, submissive fantasy
along the lines of, like, Twilight
50 Shades of Gray,
or like any bodice ripper Yeah, yeah.
BDSM fantasies. Yeah.
But then, interestingly, these types
of stories, The Chosen one,
the special boy stories
have kind of turned into this story
about the chosen girl or special girl.
Yeah.
I don't I'm, I'm not an expert in YA
literature, just as I'm not an expert
in superhero franchises.
But like the big example
that comes to mind
that signified the shift as I noticed it,
it was The Hunger Games Games.
And now there are a lot
of YA book and movie series
like Divergent
Uglies,
where there is a strong female protagonist
who is probably quite traumatized,
thinks of herself
as very ordinary and,
unexceptional, unattractive.
And everyone else sees something great
in her, usually to the point where she is
going to have to be responsible
to save the world or lead the uprising.
And I think it's
because the the need to feel special
and the need to have meaning and purpose
is just so human that this fantasy
really appeals to everybody.
It's going to be profitable,
whoever you market it to.
I mean, I think the special boy trope
is an iteration of the hero's journey,
which is,
you know, one of the oldest stories ever
let's circle back to the darker
adult fare
and talk about the fantasy
of the tortured genius.
And I should have brought up
the concept of the Byronic hero
when we were talking
about the tortured hero and the anti-hero.
So Lord Byron was a romantic poet.
And when I say romantic poet,
I mean a British poet of the romantic era
who was married to Mary Shelley,
he was dark, he was Gothic,
he was brooding, and his characters
mirrored that.
And also his characters
kind of collapsed in with his reputation
into the archetype
that was named after him.
So the Byronic hero lives
by a moral code of his own, doesn't
conform to,
to socially imposed moral codes,
and that sometimes means
that he is misunderstood
and has social consequences
that he bears with great stoicism.
He broods in private.
Oh man, I feel like
this is describing Batman to a T.
Oh, yeah, Batman is totally a Byronic Have
I told on the podcast
the story of the first weekend
that you spent here visiting me
after we first started dating?
Probably.
I don't think that means
you can't tell it again.
All right, I'm gonna tell it again.
So Sam and I started dating, and then
he came here to spend the weekend with me.
And the first day he showed up
and he's wearing a Batman shirt,
and I said, oh, were you into Batman?
He said, I sure am.
we wake up the next morning,
he gets dressed
and he's got another Batman shirt,
and I'm like, oh, that's so funny.
You accidentally wore
two Batman shirts in a row.
I didn't know that you had two
Batman shirts.
And he said, haha, yeah.
And then the next day he got up and got
dressed in yet another Batman shirt.
And at that point he did cop to
the fact that this was premeditated.
Yes. So the Tortured genius is another,
I think, modern
iteration of the Byronic hero.
The two examples that come to mind
are Oppenheimer
and Walter we could also look back
to some of the superheroes and apply this.
I think, Iron Man has a bit of this.
Certainly.
Bruce Banner, the Hulk feel like it's
the tortured genius
we could almost describe as,
like a subset of the tortured hero,
or is very similar to the tortured hero
the tortured genius.
Like the tortured
hero has this great power.
But generally
the power is stemming from their power,
not yet from their knowledge,
which, now that I say it like,
makes the character Bruce Banner
and the Hulk interesting in that,
like it's
both I think in particular for the torture
genius, his exceptionalism
alienates him from others around him.
He is not able to have intimate,
trusting relationships because people
just aren't on his level, Man.
I think that that can serve
as a post-hoc justification
for people who eliminate themselves
from their loved ones
or potential loved ones,
which is one psychological function
of the fantasy of the tortured genius.
It also, as a wish fulfillment fantasy,
allows the viewer to imagine themselves
as special and superior.
But unlike the one special boy,
the tortured genius
is not bequeathed by the narrative
with a higher purpose or goal.
Instead he suffers.
to what extent would you consider.
Victor Frankenstein a tortured genius?
Oh, it's funny that you just said that,
because Victor
Frankenstein is like an archetypal example
of the Byronic hero.
Oh, which is interesting because Mary
Shelley would have written that before.
I mean, she wrote this in her like,
late teens. No.
Was that before
she was married to Lord Byron?
I mean, I don't know, I would
I guess I would assume so, of course,
I guess marriages did happen early on, but
but it still seems like
she would have
at least had a very significant hand in.
No, I'm
pretty sure she was already married to him
because she was definitely inspired
to write that story by her miscarriage.
Oh, Right.
Well, let's see.
Oh, wait wait, wait.
Well. No, I think you might be confusing.
Yeah.
Mary Shelley.
She married the poet Percy Shelley.
Did she have a friendship with Lord
Byron?
Mary Shelley and Lord Byron
shared a pivotal, complex
literary relationship,
best known for their summer together
in 1816, in Switzerland,
alongside
Percy Shelley, are stuck indoors.
Byron challenged the group
to write a ghost story, famously inspiring
Frankenstein word.
okay, so that was wrong about who
she married, and I'm glad
that we caught that.
She did have a miscarriage.
Before writing the novel,
she suffered a devastating miscarriage
and premature death of her first baby.
Before she wrote that novel.
and before this,
she had also experienced a miscarriage.
So she'd had two
traumatic birth experiences.
And she's like, at this age,
what, like 18, 19?
I know that is crazy.
So I think, do you have more to say
about the torture genius? No.
I think we should finish
with our final category
What we're calling
this the “You miss the point”
Toxic masculinity.
these are characters who come from stories
that were written to critique
or satirize toxic masculinity
or masculinity in general,
and that end up with a fan
base of men and boys
that valorize that character.
So some examples are Walter
White, Tyler Durden, many Martin
Scorsese characters, but in particular
the main character of Wolf of Wall Street.
Starship Troopers
is less about a specific character
and more about the movie itself.
Yeah. Oh, Alex from A Clockwork Orange.
That is absolutely wild
that people valorize him Well,
and I think in all these characters, like,
specifically Tyler Durden,
I'm less familiar with Walter White,
most of the Leo
Leonardo DiCaprio characters
in Martin Scorsese movies,
like you have this very charismatic,
character
that, like, still is presented
in enough of a positive light that.
They get
misappropriated as a role model figure.
I feel like it depends
so much on your vantage point, honestly,
because
I watched all of Wolf of Wall Street
and the entire time thought that character
was nothing but odious and pathetic
and disgusting and sometimes comical.
I didn't understand how anyone could
possibly watch that and come away
with any positive impressions of him,
but but people do.
Yeah, and I think probably it speaks
to maybe a lack of knowledge
regarding the source material
I don't know, man,
because I did not have knowledge
of the source material.
I watched that movie
thinking it was fictional.
He just did not seem cool to me.
Yeah, He seemed pathetic and gross.
I mean, to be fair,
I feel like you're the last person
to get enticed by a male fantasy.
Notably, the person who watched Spider-Man
one and two,
the Sam Raimi versions and was like, yeah,
I don't know.
They just didn't do it for me.
Oh man. I would say that
I had stronger opinions than that.
particularly about the second Yeah.
Which some, some would regard
Spider-Man two, the same Raimi version
as like one of the best
superhero movies of all time.
Yeah, it's just like,
I freaking hated it.
I feel a lot of the things
that I'm saying on this specific
episode of this podcast are going to mean
that I will never be able
to run for public office.
I thought Spider-Man two sucked.
I couldn't
even get through to the end of it.
Yeah, I
guess I'm not that susceptible to what
a lot of men and boys think is cool.
if I think about my own life.
looking at these characters
and I mean, so like Fight Club,
most Martin Scorsese movies those movies
I saw, post my political awakening,
which we’ll
just say I
grew up in a very conservative household,
but I definitely saw Starship Troopers
as a kid, and I definitely missed
the point that the movie
was supposed to be a critique.
Granted, I was a kid.
I, could see how impressionable
younger boys and even younger men
would watch something like that
and say, wow, like,
I really connect or empathize
with the white male leads of this movie.
Why, Because part of the Expectation
doing satire is that it's going to go over
some people's heads.
What's really being said
in a certain sense, and in Starship
Troopers,
if the director meant for the movie
to go full
bore with American foreign national policy
I watched that movie post 911,
when we were in the midst.
Yeah.
at the heighth of nationalist propaganda.
Yeah.
So like it
fit together like it made sense.
And what appealed to you about
sense of
camaraderie Their fight against like these
big bad bugs which are like
just gross oversimplification
foreign terrorists, essentially. And.
the romantic interest between
the male and female counterparts.
So one part about this movie was so
the women that are in the military units
are kind of almost equal with the men.
So So it was
as opposed to a lot of the fantasies
that we've been talking about today,
this was a fantasy of solidarity
and teamwork.
Yes. Yeah.
think there are so many examples.
Under this.
You missed the point.
Toxic masculinity, male fantasy.
Umbrella of movies, books, TV shows
that intend to critique
some aspect of toxic masculinity,
and in doing so, tell a story
from the vantage point of that man.
I know I've seen a lot of
the only critique of obsession
that I would really take seriously
would be that it is
it is limited by its vantage point.
Likewise, Breaking Bad,
which is, I think, universally
recognized as one of the best
television series ever made.
I would agree with that assessment
its genius, is its vantage point,
also its chief
limitation is its vantage point.
Yeah.
I think that's the the tension
or the problem in the text.
And then there's a separate tension
and problem in the viewers
who valorize these characters
uncomplicatedly.
and adopt an ethos of violence
and, and misogyny
as aspirational as, as good.
And as the aesthetic of realism.
Yeah.
I think that is a dark
but fitting note to end on, honestly.
Well,
although I will also say like something.
Really optimistic, but.
Backed up,
I think, by a lot of data about media
literacy is that, when you present
kids and adolescents with stories
that show unrealistic body
images, unhealthy
romantic relationships,
violence, drug use, eating disorders.
Like any number of these things,
we have many studies
that show that kids and adolescents
are far less likely
to internalize those beliefs
if they have good conversations
about those stories.
as the person who will defend
female fantasies till my face turns blue,
I'm not going to turn around and condemn
these male fantasies.
also, as I would never do about
female fantasies,
I will never say that
they exist in a vacuum
and ought to be, or can possibly be
immune from critique and analysis.
they can be indulged, they can be enjoyed,
and we can approach them with curiosity.
And I think the larger point here,
as you said up front, maybe,
was that there's a sense in which
only the female fantasies or only the,
the wish fulfillment fantasy.
Yeah.
get put under a microscope
because the female psyche
is presumed
to be vulnerable and impressionable.
Right.
There's more going on psychologically,
like and complexity.
Like in a, clinical sense
of the female psyche when Well,
and I think also part of it is that,
like stories that are told for a female
audience are presumed to be scratching
some kind of emotional
or psychological itch, whereas stories
that are told for a mostly male
audience are seen to be art.
and like good storytelling.
And so they're less and not gendered
and not gendered.
And so you're less likely to put them
under the microscope and think like,
what need is this fantasy fulfilling?
You're less likely to think of it
as fantasy at all.
Oh, I'm sorry,
I just had a random thought.
Another example of the one special boy
is absolutely Lord of the rings.
I can't believe I forgot to mention that.
Yeah.
that was something.
Rewatching The Dark Knight trilogy with
you was how gendered they really were.
I think prior to
I just kind of viewed them as okay.
Yeah, superhero movies, somewhat
pretty significant superhero movies.
And I didn't really consider
how gendered they were, despite the fact
that, in the three movies, I think there's
maybe a total of three women
who show up and do anything.
Yeah, I
I don't think they do anything, ever.
They just are there.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Yeah, Well. I'm sorry.
Welcome to dating me.
You introduce anything to me,
and I will just say
this whole thing smacks of gender
Yeah, This was fun.
Thank you.
Listeners for bearing with us for this
episode that was much more exploratory.
And please tell us your thoughts because
I would love to keep on building on this.
I'm imagining,
like we could do an entire episode
about the masculinity of Christopher
Nolan films.
We could do a whole episode
about the Byronic hero and like,
tracing its evolution.
I mean, I think it would be worth
doing an episode on, like Black Panther
and the ways other Bipoc communities
are represented in this way.
Yeah.
And other types
of restorative fantasies. I
have a tendency of rolling my eyes
and shutting down when asked to empathize
with boys and men a lot.
I feel that they always get
a lot of empathy already
and and that they don't need
more of it from me.
I have a lot of fantasies, sexual
and non-sexual alike,
I have many disavowed desire fantasies,
I have rescue
fantasies,
I have fantasies of ideal femininity.
I have fantasies of being the one
special girl.
You know, I have all these kinds
of fantasies that I've indulged
in the media that I like to consume
or just by daydreaming,
and they're really powerful for me.
it has taken me many years
to get to the point where I can be
critical and curious about them
and also enjoy them,
use them as as information about my needs
and my curiosities.
But they've sometimes caused me distress,
and I sometimes interpreted them,
in a way that is maximally harsh of myself
or even of other people.
after this conversation,
I feel like I can more easily
and intuitively empathize with a man
or a boy who idolizes Batman
in a way that I might have before
kind of rolled my eyes at Walter
White, Deadpool, whatever.
All these characters who I think I'm like,
well, that's not my flavor of cool.
So it's dumb.
I think my instinct going forward
will probably be more to pause
and get curious about what
unmet needs somebody
with different natural inclinations
and social mores
might be getting met
from this particular story.
How about you?
Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail
on the head with pause and get curious.
I feel like that's something that we,
in one way or another, return
back to in most of our episodes.
Is that part of the way
we act more lovingly is to pause,
check our, like, automatic
assumptions about the thing
that we're having thoughts about, and
to get a little curious
about how someone else may think about it.
that doesn't mean being uncritical
of violent or
misogynist themes and stories,
but it does mean
remembering that the people who consume
those stories are people
with rich inner lives and needs
that may be met or unmet.
Yeah, I love you.
I love you, too.
Okay? Okay. Bye.