Men and Apparitions

by Lynne Tillman

  Subject 10: Some of your questions, Zeke, make sense for someone from New York City or a big city background—with the many forms and expressions of what it means to be female. It’s good to remember that where I lived, feminism didn’t exactly penetrate. Typically, the females did the housework, did the cooking and cleaning, and the males went off to work. I certainly have this way inscribed in me, and certainly there is this nostalgic and sexist desire to have meals, and so on. I don’t express that ever, because it’s not right, but it is swirling in there, and my upbringing played a big role in this.

  In 1991, the cultural studies visionary Stuart Hall announced, “The time for essentialism is over.”

  A lot of people still haven’t gotten the message.

  DNA appears to be unprejudiced evidence or fact, objective scientific data; but humans will use science the way they use everything—imperfectly and with prior assumptions. Objectivity also eludes scientists, because they are looking for something, to prove an idea or hunch. Colloquially, they have a lot to prove.

  Needing to be right at all costs is a great human and societal cost.

  masculinity and its vicissitudes

  In Gender Advertisements, Erving Goffman analyzed ads in mags and TV: a man’s head is always higher than a woman’s, so he looks down, and she looks up to meet his manly gaze. Obvious now, but in the 1960s people weren’t reading images like that, except Mad Ave., that was its power. Ad agencies in the 1950s and ’60s were where Ivy League men who didn’t go into the CIA, and English majors who would never write the Great American Novel, landed, to pen brilliant copy inspired by Edward Bernays. (Freud’s nephew. Psychology gone amok.)

  In the late twentieth century, into the twenty-first, images of Men as Men became subjects for interrogation, in the academy, in movies, art.

  In Clint Eastwood movies, his character often protects women from other men. Clint Eastwood could do that, side with women, because his masculinity would never be questioned. That is, men can be “men” only after they have acted like men, and been totally accepted as manly.

  In art, in the late 1970s Richard Prince’s appropriation of the Marlboro Man on a horse, smoking, was considered an early critique of masculinity, the Western male image.

  Subject 23: We’re less masculine than my father’s generation. We don’t value it so much. We’re greedy about women. We want them all. But, once we find what we want, we can chill.

  Subject 2: The actor Michael Cera? He was the boyfriend in Juno, and Jonah Hill’s opposite in Superbad. He is a sweet, slightly befuddled, skinny, thoroughly de-masculinized character, completely unthreatening in any physical or sexual way, and he would seem to be the role model for this new generation of males, and is much beloved of this new generation of females, thought of as the ideal boyfriend, etc. This doesn’t sit well with me. When I watch Michael Cera I’m struck by the absence of a sexual energy, the denial of the risk or danger that is always inherent to sexual energy … as if this generation’s answer to the problem of physical and sexual dominance/brutality on the part of some (too many) men of all generations is to get rid of not only the dominance/brutality but of all physicality and sexuality.

  Several subjects thought their fathers understood women better.

  Though a generality, this belief needs further exploration (in my next study). It’s conceivable that “father’s understanding women better” derives from the New Man’s witnessing his parents playing more fixed or settled gendered roles. Life’s uncertain with transitions, with more “we’ll make it up as we go along.”

  mediated men

  Subject 1: Masculinity is dead, at least my father’s generation’s idea of it. I think they came of age during a time when men, even if they dressed in tight-fitting pants and dandyish collars, were still very un-ironically macho in that seventies kind of way. I think men nowadays take a more ironic approach to masculinity—especially hyper-macho posturing. Though I’m not sure how to contextualize the whole tongue-in-chic lumberjack thing that’s been going on around Brooklyn.

  Subject 7: Masculinity is a far more complex phenomenon than most care to admit. Men can, and women who perceive men as omnipotent protectors and standard-bearers can, lean too hard on rationality as a predominantly male psychological feature. That pervasive attitude has done men a disservice socially. That perception has proven unreliable if not dangerous in the range of human endeavor—from the institution of marriage to global politics. I think self-reflexive attitudes about masculinity are undergoing an evolution, a shift from a lonely rational space to an emotionally complex, socially richer understanding of how the so-called masculine and the feminine operate in whatever ratio simultaneously from one human being to another.

  Subject 19: When I was quite young I had an argument with my little sister. I was angry for some reason, probably she was mocking me. We wrestled, and she punched me, not hard, and suddenly I got angry, and there was a moment when I realized I could kill her. I could actually take her life. I was so much bigger and stronger. And I realized I had to stay in control, so I would not hurt her. And since then I’ve always felt it critical that I maintain control. I’ve never wanted to use my strength as some kind of weapon. I think that’s become something of a life anxiety.

  Subject 13: Masculinity is an odd thing, it seems to be something where our society has split radically along class lines: the middle class and liberal upper class now expect men to have a much more “respectful” masculinity, but apparently this is less the case in the working class and the conservative wealthy classes where they still seem to be expected to display flamboyantly their outward masculinity. Myself I don’t know much about this at all from a personal level; in my background masculinity was perhaps seen as a very dark thing, something that led to secrets, molestation, for example, back many generations, but that’s not typical (though too common). The main thing that I can say is that it seems that ideas of masculinity have expanded in such a way that men who can be sympathetic in affect are more accepted. But it still shocks me that the simple idea of men being close, intimate (confidant-type) friends is seen as questionable.

  The weak geek has always been around and sometimes gets the girl (the meek Ashley in Gone With the Wind). With the omnipotence and omniscience of virtual life, nerds and geeks get laid more easily. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn’t play rock and roll in their garages, and became superheroes. The computer affected masculinity, and with it a new masculinity, if it exists, came along on the heels of the 1960s women’s movement.

  Subject 4: I feel sorry for women who pinch themselves into really uncomfortable clothes and shoes so they can be attractive to men, because the men they will attract are not “liberated” men. But perhaps all women don’t want to be liberated, either. Or, they don’t know that they do. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale discusses this phenomenon and takes it to its extreme. In any case, I also feel sorry for men who think that being a man is all about being an asshole, acting macho, having power over others, competing in sports or competing in general. At a very young age—and perhaps this leads into questions about whether being gay is something one is born with, developed in early childhood object relations, or whatever, it doesn’t really matter to me “why”—I decided I didn’t want to grow up and be the type of man who played sports or did math. I didn’t want to compete, I didn’t want to sell anything to anyone unless they wanted it. I still don’t. (I think advertising should be banned.) I think this was a conscious rebellion against my father, even though my father always insisted I could be whatever I wanted to be. He tried to make me interested in sports, but it never took hold.

  Subject 11: By the way, I’m not trying to be funny. I’m taking your project seriously. But as T. E. Lawrence said to Allenby when the latter called him a clown, “We all can’t be lion tamers.” The race of Homo Artisticus has high expectations of the world and low expectations of himself. His wife-friend and bulldog-baby must accommodate (his favorite word) his bouts with “bipolar d
isorder,” his favorite disease. “I’m feeling bipolar,” he says when she asks him to look for a Real Job … One night stands are cool. It’s called “hooking up,” so never say, “Let’s hook up tonight” to your nonsexual partners. The problem is that he doesn’t want to use a condom. “What, you don’t trust me? By the way, what’s your name again?” The wife-friend, though, must wear long vintage Laura Ashley dresses even when riding the communal bicycle to Whole Foods. If she looks too sexy they have another fight. “I thought you stopped dressing like a slut when you graduated!” On the other hand, he wants her to stop smoking so much and getting shit-faced drunk with her old college buddies. “You’re never going to be a famous poet if you drink all the time.”

  man (hood) up / down

  In 2014: less upward mobility in U.S. than in any other Western nation.

  The image world is relational, inter-relational, vertiginous. The New Man developed AS images, since masculinity and femininity exist primarily as images and behaviors (which can and do change) in relation to each other.

  Subject 2: I’m comfortable with my politics, with my certainty of equality between the genders, with my commitment to supporting that equality and speaking out against inequality and discrimination. I think much of our culture has come with me. But when I look at men of the next generation, I wonder if it has gone “too far”—from an ideal of equality to something more like the erasure of all difference and the suppression of all sexuality. Which is probably what my father thinks when he looks at my generation.

  american male actors, or, men who

  play men

  Richard Gere plays a gigolo; he also plays a wealthy businessman who hires a call girl for a week (and falls for her). Dustin Hoffman plays a man whose wife leaves him, he gets custody of the child; the low-life street character, Ratso, in Midnight Cowboy, and a man who dresses as a woman to get a TV part. Robin Williams plays a man who dresses as a woman to be the nanny to his own children and win back the wife who left him, and, in One Hour Photo, a demonic stalker. Eddie Murphy plays everyone, but not a romantic hero (racism). Ryan Gosling plays a romantic New Man who never gives up getting his first great love back (and does, because he’s Ryan Gosling); he does great oral sex, too. Gosling also plays killers. James Gandolfini plays a sadistic, troubled mob boss in psychotherapy; in his last role opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Enough Said, he played a man who can love. Joaquin Phoenix plays everyone, from a mad Roman emperor, to a gangster, to a New Man in love with a cyber-woman’s voice in Her. (Is a movie like Her preparing humans for robots; is body changing also preparing us for robots?) Matt Damon plays a soldier hero in Saving Private Ryan and a psychopathic killer in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

  Read the name, see the image: Robert Redford; Leo-nardo DiCaprio; Johnny Depp; Jamie Foxx; Tom Hanks; Jeff Bridges; Robert Downey Jr.; Denzel Washington; Kevin Kline; Steve Carell; Will Smith; Matthew McConaughey; Michael J. Fox (before Parkinson’s, Back to the Future); Jeffrey Wright; Patrick Wilson; Nicolas Cage.

  RIP: Gregory Peck, sexy, bad guy in Duel in the Sun; good guy lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird. Jimmy Stewart, in Rear Window, takes off his T-shirt, no muscles. In the 1930s and 1940s, being buff didn’t make the man. But after World

  War II, soon there were Charles Bronson; Steve McQueen; tough/sensitive guys, Marlon Brando; James Dean. Future identities will be based upon what and whom? Or, is “identity” about to become redundant, ruptured forever? Irreverence for origins likely segued into irreverence for gendered behaviors.

  Discomfort and anguish about the body of origin can be deep, starting very early in a child’s life. The pain, though, may not be assuaged by body modification, since it doesn’t restructure a psyche. Psyches are comprised of wishes and fantasies, with their own independence, while formed in tandem with the environment, culture, and society.

  No one knows where it will go, how far, what the results will be years from now—the effects of hormone treatments, irreversible operations—no one knows, and if disappointment at transitioning will be great or small, or not at all. No one knows, long-term, how psyches will react, whether the fantasy (expectations) of body change will be satisfying, or if the psyche won’t be placated. Other issues come forward then. Or gender realities sit somewhere in between. This cultural and social phenomenon is not an individual experience, may be an evolutionary moment, or revolutionary one, hard to say.

  If both gender and identity become fluid and situational, life will be a much faster game.

  Subject 3: One thing I’ve thought about lately is the workplace. I’ve been working for magazines, and under the assumption that people working around me were sort of post-gender, or close. But that’s extremely naïve (duh). I’ve seen women fired clearly because they’ve exerted too much power over men (who retaliate), and I’ve seen women passed over because, for instance, an editor thinks magazines are supposed to have “arguments,” and then casts that term to somehow exclude women writers. Especially men a decade younger than me, I’m forty, act like the requirement to find something close to gender balance is a thing of the eighties and nineties, though not everyone’s like that.

  Subject 8: Though the men I know may not always think of women as equals, or treat them as equals, they’re certainly aware that they’re supposed to; when they don’t, it’s often symptomatic of the fact that, being very privileged or coddled or self-involved or whatever (insert other negative attributes), they tend to find ways of treating many different people as not equal to them, and doing so could mean demeaning women or emasculating men or anything in between. Actually, my most regular and aggravating experience of this has been men talking over and shutting down women in groups. Which goes to show that how one relates to women, or anyone, is situational; or, at least, the situational oftentimes trumps or undermines how one feels abstractly. And this is true with me, too, of course if only very occasionally!

  I queried my subjects about friendships, with women, attitudes their fathers had toward women, and femininity. (Father thought it was almost impossible. “Really, son, you always want to have sex with them.”)

  Subject 1: Many had mistresses, and it wasn’t possible for them to have women friends. That’s one huge division between us … In one of my father’s books, I found an old photo of a pretty European girl, and asked who she was. My father ripped the photo up in front of me. I bet even if she were a friend, the reaction might have been the same, because being friends with women, that didn’t exist after marriage and kids.

  His father’s rash act, ripping up a photograph, made me think about the former evidentiary “nature” of photography. Also, that the photograph, as a preserve of memory, even a bad memory, is often shoved inside a drawer and hidden, rarely ripped up, that is, even when it’s legible. Sometimes a person who doesn’t like the way she or he looks will deface her own face or a body part that “looks bad”; usually people don’t destroy pictures. Now with digitization, it is entirely changed. Erasure is meaningless since abundance assures us of an eternity of images, allowing for infinite deletion. But the photo was, for the subject’s father, evidence of an indiscretion, which, his son imagines, might have been only a friendship.

  Subject 2: My father and his friends still occasionally use the word “broad” or make offhanded comments about how women are terrible drivers. Their wives, generally speaking, aren’t bothered by this, or at the most will roll their eyes. It’s hard for me to watch.

  Subject 24: Masculinity, in the nurturing home-building way, changed for my generation, which was essentially the indie-punk one, we rejected that, so that is a huge difference, with real repercussions. We have moved beyond that now, though, and today’s men seem to be happy with family lifestyle. Good for them. The pendulum swings back and forth as life makes its merry dance.

  Subject 20: I think that men in my generation don’t care as much about upholding a specific image of masculinity. Most of the time we don’t project our masculinity to prove ourselves as men, or for that matter t
o prove ourselves to be straight men. Men from my generation have come to acknowledge and respect that women can compete with men, of course in intellect and academics, but also in physical labor and sport. I remember my mother telling me about her college experience, and the only sports available to women were cheerleading and basketball. I remember thinking about how unfair that was. Men in my generation have higher expectations of themselves for being engaged in family matters and lower expectations about being just the provider. Even though our egos are still there and we still feel responsible for taking care of our families financially, I feel like it’s easier to set our ego aside and be equal partners with women in work and at home. I think that because of this, men and women engage more with each other in relationships. They figure things out together, whether it’s about finances or how to discipline or motivate children, rather than making those decisions on their own, without the input of each other.