IN RESPONSE TO THE GOOD MEN PROJECT’S “One Thing Men Want”:
The concept of “a good man” is not the 1950s upright and church-going patriarch. Today that person might be seen as self-righteous, dull, a blinded-by-ambition capitalist, a narrow pillar of a superficial society. The 1960s began the erosion of the traditional gender roles (there were always variations, but not in the public eye) and the 1970s further alienated people from the American archetype. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin was that new kind of man: long hair flowing, howling like a spirit possessed, gyrating like Elvis with electrical nodes attached to his joints. In 1955 — hell, in 1962 — they would have locked him up, but by 1972 he and his bandmates were celebrated millionaires. There were still truck stops in Nebraska who wouldn’t serve them, but the new American archetype of a man was a tricky character to describe: and maybe it was different things to different people.
I won’t guess at what “women” want because “women” are not a single entity with aligned preferences. There is a theme, however, among men, who often discuss how they define a man, and I have heard some women express agreement with different parts of this. Beyond looks, and regional lifestyles, and the acceptable roles instilled in the populace of a given area, the “man’s man” is described as confident, comfortable in his own skin, authentic, has values he will stand up for when needed, takes responsibility for whatever he’s involved in, chooses a higher purpose above his individual needs. He may be a race car wizard with a crew cut in Abilene, a cosmic traveler with hair down his back in San Francisco, the tortured, closeted gay man of Boys in the Band who faces his true self for the first time, or Jack Nicholson as the OCD-rattled paranoid paralyzed by fear and routine, who falls in love and tells Helen Hunt: “You make me want to be a better man.”
Ironically, the full embodiment of this new vision of manhood may be the first: James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, a 1950s film where traditional manly elements (leather jacket, cigarettes, tough guy exterior, fast cars) were infused with a depth of emotion and an ability to express pain that is as manly and courageous a portrayal as I have seen. Watching James Dean in Rebel is to witness the close of one era and the dawn of another all within a single man, to experience the deepening transformation of the American soul. It would take awhile, and was hard to recognize sometimes (Jon Voigt in Midnight Cowboy, Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate) until the through-line grew clearer with Paul Newman as Cool Hand Luke, Mickey Rourke in The Outsiders, and just few years back, Michael Keaton in Birdman, a complex mixture of delusion and raw emotion that took being a man to places it had never been. Or Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy, the criminal drug addict who gives it all up in an instant — the chemicals, the lifestyle, the woman — who when he is visited by Kelly Lynch in his decrepit apartment after a long day of factory work, tells her, For the first time I wake up every day with the feeling that something good is going to happen. Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Denzel Washington in Man on Fire ….. all part of the new archetype: able to cry and love and be sensitive, while protecting and competing and fighting when need be. Yet despite all these examples, it is so difficult to grasp the essence of this: I guess we know it when we see it.
Final word: A man who knew about his monstrous crimes would have stood up to Harvey Weinstein. That’s the standard for today’s man: when do you step in and stop evil? Which side of history do you want to join? The heat, the pressure, the threat to your livelihood, would have been a test unlike any other. And given the images of male authority shamed for eternity — Larry Nasser, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein — it would have been significant to see someone who rose above the roll call of misery and began the reclamation of the entire gender. I believe we are still waiting.
