Default Status

I'm finding that it's still hard for me to describe this impetus behind this film project - so far every time I try to talk about it I end up tripping over my own tongue with qualifiers and generalizations, and I wind up sounding like an idiot.

I actually think this is a good sign - because, hopefully, part of the learning process is learning how to articulate my thoughts and intentions about the project. The filmmaking itself is a process of articulation, in a way.

So I don't know that I can state my intention outright, this early on - but I can certainly begin to work toward clarity about it.

One part of the basic premise is that we haven't found a way, culturally, to talk about men. "Male" is the default setting in America, the same way that "white" is. Feminists have worked for a century to bring awareness to the fact that this default doesn't serve women, and minorities have done the same for the dynamics of race - but what is missing from the discussion is the fact that being the default doesn't necessarily serve men, either.

This is where the conversation tends to get tricky - because the point is NOT to complain about how hard it is to be a white male, even though I see how it might sound like that's where this is headed.

No, that's exactly my point - it seems that there are only two points of view in the discussion currently. One is that men and women are exactly the same, should be treated the same in every circumstance. That acknowledging any difference between the sexes is automatically sexist or chauvinist.

The other point of view is that men are from mars, women are from venus - that men should celebrate the superficial and crude distinctions between themselves and women, which seems to generally lead to an embrace of infantilizing fratboy "culture" - drooling over big boobs, fascination with sports and fast cars and explosions, a pathological inability to groom oneself or maintain one's apartment, etc. etc..

What's missing - for me anyway - is any kind of nuanced discussion of the complex emotional lives of men in our culture. It seems to me that even acknowledging the idea that men have complex emotional lives, or that there's any value in exploring them, is outrageous in a way - I don't know that I've ever heard that stated in the mainstream discourse.

So, that's what this movie about - the radical idea that men have feelings, and that it's actually healthy for them to express them rather than keeping them buried deep inside. That men might be more whole if they could share their feelings with each other.

I guess that's why "Masculine Myth" feels appropriate to me, as the title of this blog - it's going to be about the old myths of being a man - King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, for instance - and our new myths, in post WWII America - and the ways in which they serve us and harm us.

That's a start, anyway.