Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood & American Culture

1. Introduction For most people the word vampire is connected to blood-drinking creatures that wander through the night and hunt down defenceless victims in order to drain their blood. Many might have monstrous figures in mind that come straight out of horror films, or maybe some others imagine a romanticised version, i.e., the protagonist Edward Cullen, from Twilight. In sum, for the majority, vampires represent blood sucking creatures that exist in fantasy, horror, and romance, but are left to be in fictional realms of literature and movies.

Crisis becomes an inescapable entity in masculinity of men. Crucial events all through the centuries such as feminism, the world wars, economical problems, etc led men toward crisis, so a man in postmodern era is in danger and must do a lot in order to protect his masculinity. Ian McEwan’s works are mostly devoted to men who try to find their places in postmodern world. This paper intends to utilize one of his novels The Child in Time and applies masculine crisis on the male protagonist of the novel. He has lost his daughter two years ago in the supermarket which is the turning point of his life and threatens his power and authority as a father.

Response The documentaries Tough Guys and Killing us Softly, really brought to light the way masculinity and femininity are represented in our society. The characteristics and associations that are made when these words are thought of are bizarre and not natural. I strongly believe that both masculinity and femininity are learned characteristics from the human environment. I often wonder if people would even have these ideas and characteristics that are associated with gender in the beginning of time, or if people have slowly began to define and differentiate the genders throughout the evolution of time.

Introduction I agree with the statement that one form of masculinity is exalted culturally than the others. To understand more, we need to be culturally and socially informed about the exploitation of this masculinity or ‘machismo’ in Mexican society. This can be described as a group of behaviours or even the roles that is associated in which a man acts. Though both sexes can demonstrate masculine like behaviour including courage, independence and assertiveness. Yet, these traits can vary by location and are influenced by social and cultural factors.

http://www.marypipher.net/About.html Dr. Pipher is a clinical psychologist and the author of nine books, including Reviving Ophelia, which was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for 26 weeks. Her area of interest is how American culture influences the mental health of its people. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with her husband Jim. Her passions are her family, being outdoors, birds, books, and protecting her state’s environment.

We live in a society that teaches men that they must be very masculine, successful, powerful, inexpressive, and aggressive. They must live in this box of masculinity and can’t step out of it. If they do fall out of the norm then they are called names like sissy, queer, wuss, and others, as a way to feel degraded for not living up to the male standard. These men are taught from a young age to construct a highly masculine identity. This is especially seen in sports like football, hockey, wrestling, rugby, boxing, and the MMA.

“The Men we Carry in Our Minds” is a narrative essay written by Scott Russell Sanders that provides an insight to the overlooked lives men had to endeavour just so they could be at peace with themselves and their families. Sanders wants to remove this misrepresentation that all men are taking something from middle-class women and that instead he believes that any boy or girl and who lived in “dirt poor” (page 332) conditions would grow up to be men and women in a society “where the fate of men is as grim and bleak as the fate of women” (page 333). He un-isolates himself from using just one argument and instead produces a convincing emotional argument by using a broad choice of personal references and historical evidence. Sanders uses storytelling

The Japanese culture of samurai always presents male image full of masculinity. The film called "The Last Samurai” will use to analyze the masculinity in Japan present in the media content. In definition, masculinity is socially and culturally constructed that exists on the basis of the biological differences. It about the traits that culture assigns to male and composed of the social codes of behavior while male learn to reproduce the traits in a particular way. The socially given ideal male is the ultra-masculine male who is powerful, strong, independent, leadership, aggressive, and have high social status.

Figuring out the roles of masculinity and trying to live up to them is a part of every boy’s childhood. Most boys find the “tests” of masculinity scary and hard to pass. In literature, masculinity is erroneously portrayed through stereotypical men; which in turn creates misconceptions in young people. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines masculinity as having qualities appropriate to or usually associated with a man. Masculinity is associated with the social roles, behaviors and meanings prescribed for men in any society at any time, meaning its definition also varies over the course of history.

Essay on Indian Camp. The author, Lisa Tyler focuses on the end of the story, she says that Nick is trying to protect himself from pain when he says that he’ll never die, mirroring his father when he says that the screams are nor important. Nick refers implicitly to the Indian man who killed himself cause he emphasized with his wife. Nick associates the emphasizing with the death, so he says that he’d never do that so he’ll never die. Tyler notices how the other Indians left the room, cause they couldn’t bear the screams.

Society tends to ignore the struggle of masculine norms men face everyday. In the film, “The Mask You Live In”, various ages of men discuss what it is like to live in a society filled with sexism and masculine norms. In the film, it is shown the impact of these norms society puts forth for men is catastrophic and negatively impacts their mental health. A few masculine norms that are found within the film are, self-reliance, violence, power over women, winning and risk-taking. Self-reliance is a big topic to cover in regards to masculine norms.

In Robert Jensen’s article “The High Cost of Manliness”, he states that the idea of masculinity is a bad thing and they should get rid of it. This article debates on the common stereotypes of men, as he states: “That dominant conception of masculinity in U.S. Culture is easily summarized: Men are assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being a real man is therefore marked by the struggle for control, conquest, and domination” (par. 4). Nonetheless, there are some traits that men and woman share, such as, caring, compassion, and tenderness. These traits often depend on the situation, since a man cannot always be this way, whereas, a woman is often expected to have these traits.

The author of this article is Robert Jensen. He is a journalist professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Jensen’s writing and teaching focus on interrogating power structures of race and gender. He also wrote and published The End of Masculinity; therefore this is a topic that he feels really strongly about. Jensen first published the article “The High Cost of Manliness” to argue for an end to the conception of manliness.