The 2001 attacks, she claims, made American feel vulnerable and created a longing for the good old days of 'manly men. As a result ...Female heroes were ignored ...Women vanished from TV talk shows ...Grieving widows became the feminine ideal ...June Cleaver replaced Carrie Bradshaw ...The national 'bump watch' began.
It will be interesting to see the book, but my initial reaction is that Faludi's at best simplistic and at worst just wrong.
There may have been an initial "longing for manly men," but nobody wanted the "good old days of manly men." There's no going back to the good old days of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Clark Gable. It's a lot more exaggerated now--Wolverine, Rambo, Grand Theft Auto, wrestlers, and the thug universe. No more of that strong, silent type anymore. Any man who wants to be a man has to be big and loud or be fans of someone big and loud. There's no safety in current manhood styles. Because it's all about "taking names" and "kicking ass," there's a sense in which instability is needed and desired as the only way to prove your manhood. Far from being a cause of insecurity, 9-11 was seen more as an opportunity to assert manliness. We were going to kick their ass and grind them into the dust.
The longing for a reason for a lot of American men to kick ass was a good chunk of the predisposition in American culture to accept the Bush administration's campaign to promote the invasion of Iraq.
But the administration might also be killing the comic book versions of masculinity. As we draw to the end of the 9-11 decade, big talking guys like George Bush and Dick Cheney have become legendary as failures. The big-talking guys of the right couldn't cut it in the war, couldn't cut it on the home front, couldn't avoid corruption, and couldn't keep away from Congressional pages, prostitutes, and undercover cops. In the end, the only kind of manhood that the big-talking guys of the right had was talk.
That's why it looks like the decade is going to end with Hillary Clinton as our first female president.
Because of their pathetic failures, the Bush, Cheney, and the Limbaugh/Hannity posers on the right have de-legitimated the whole trend toward comic book masculinity that fueled the initial reaction to 9-11. If Hillary Clinton is elected, what the country is going to get is a different kind of toughness, a patient kind of aggressiveness that's capable of cleaning up the messes left by the Bush incompetents and making policies work. Hillary-brand toughness is something that men and women can both have. Therefore, it's not really a kind of masculinity at all.
For my money, the Bush administration has been such a spectacular failure that one of the promising outcomes of the 9-11 decade is a general disconnection of manliness from political toughness.
That's a good thing and we have the Bush administration and the right to thank for it.
Maybe I should write a thank you note to the president.
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One of the more interesting things about Hillary's brand of "toughness" is just what you pointed out. You said, "Hillary-brand toughness is something that men and women can both have." I think that underscores a deeper truth. The deeper truth in this case being that the "comic book masculinity", and the good old days of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Clark Gable...strong, silent type" were never real to begin with. The characters these people portrayed were based on an unrealistic form of masculinity that only existed in the minds of the people who wrote and directed movies, and the fans who watched them. So it is with the modern masculine model who, as you point out, "has to be big and loud or be fans of someone big and loud..."taking names" and "kicking ass." And it works in movies. I love the Die Hard movies in which Bruce Willis protrays "everyman" Det. John McClane. Inevitably, this ordinary New York City cop gets pulled into some huge catastrophe and single-handely saves the day with guns, knifes, his bare fists and it makes a great movie. But that's all it is.
Cut to the real world (not that MTV crap, the REAL REAL world). Bush, Cheney, et. al, they wanted to be seen as the guys who who were tough. "Taking names and kicking ass" Texas-style! And they sounded really tough. "I want justice...There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive,'"
- G.W. Bush, 9/17/01, UPI(http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/11/13_Laden.html) " That lasted until this, "I am truly not that concerned about him."
- G.W. Bush, repsonding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)
So, the kick-ass masculinity that is so entertaining on the big screen has completley fizzled in reality.
I am rambling here but what I am getting at is that true strength and courage are not synonymous with any form of masculinity. They never have been. And so what Hillary will deliver is level-headed determined leadership that is strong,and smart. She will not feel the need for tough talk. Her actions will show the world she is not to be taken lightly. Indeed, she has already proven herself time and again on issues of character and courage.
Given time, even her most virilent detractors will come to respect her approach to leadership even if they never see the wisdom of her ideas. Just as it was with her husband.
There may have been an initial "longing for manly men," but nobody wanted the "good old days of manly men." There's no going back to the good old days of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Clark Gable. It's a lot more exaggerated now--Wolverine, Rambo, Grand Theft Auto, wrestlers, and the thug universe. No more of that strong, silent type anymore. Any man who wants to be a man has to be big and loud or be fans of someone big and loud. There's no safety in current manhood styles. Because it's all about "taking names" and "kicking ass," there's a sense in which instability is needed and desired as the only way to prove your manhood.
This excerpt, I think, is a decent observation of the current culture. In fact, I would suggest that tis is the real hypermasculinity you like to reference. I think the root of it is in the feminization of boys. Particularly the efforts to influence them from taking risks, and the reinforcement of the idea that males are responsible for so much that is wrong in the world. There has been a concerted effort over the years to teach girls and women to be proud of what they are, but it has often been done through efforts that demean the positive quality of men. The features of our current culture that you mention could reasonably be seen as a backlash against those efforts.
What is the hang-up with Caric, Greenwald, et al., and masculinity?
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