Men, on the distant horizon
I went surfing through some links I had saved — a Norwegian film about angsty young male novelists; a tweet from a mother and gender bias expert, indignant; a macho article in the BBC.
I’ve been saving links to interesting articles for more than a year. From my point of view, there’s a connecting thread which always brings me back to the same question: what does it mean to be a man? How are men men? How does society function around the theme of gender?
Well, lucky you: here’s some of those things that I have saved over the past few months, with some of my own ideas about them thrown in for good measure too.
There is a film that, amongst many other things, depicts an angsty duo of male writer friends living in Oslo; a story on the BBC which is so macho you couldn’t make it up; and a tweet that lasers into how heterosexual couples are condemned by society to their perceived gender roles.
…
Reprise
This Norwegian film came across my radar because I’d seen an earlier film by the same director, Joachim Trier. He was in the news later that year for the press junket he was doing about his most recent film, The Worst Person in the World, which won a Spanish Goya (for Best European Film) and which was also Oscar-nominated (for original screenplay and international feature film).
Back to Reprise, a film from 2006, which I thought was a find — it’s not surprising that it became a cult classic in the US. Trier is Norwegian, but his father is Danish, and he was born in Copenhagen in 1974 (and he is also distantly related to Lars von Trier).
In the film, close friends Erik (Espen Klouman Hoiner) and Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie), both 23, have huge expectations about their respective debut novels; they want to speak to the world through their writing, and they fantasise about success and fame.
Erik’s manuscript is rejected by publishers, whilst Phillip becomes a star and ends up in psychiatric observation. Erik and three other friends get him out.
Reprise shows how the budding young novelists are affected by their masculinity, but also how it affects their other friends. Each one shows how suffocating and demanding masculinity can be in their own way, and sometimes without their realising it.
The film takes a look at issues such as male rivalry, competence, depression, homophobia — the classic homophobic jokes which are so normalised — women as objects, pornography, the inability to be vulnerable, and, also, all of the things men choose not to tackle head on — in contrast to the bullying jibes about others.
Have you seen Reprise? Get in touch if you have! I’d love to know your thoughts about it.
…….
Gender bias
Raina Brands, Associate Professor at UCL School of Management in London, studies social networks and gender stereotypes. She co-founded Career Equally, which aims to “educate and empower women to de-bias their careers” — de-bias meaning understanding what bias is, and what it means in a workplace.
Brands went viral on Twitter for a quietly furious thread about society’s gendered responses to parenting last year. I decided not write more about it, since she did such a good job in her own original eloquence:
…
Who’s the protagonist?
Speaking of gender bias, this article on the BBC definitely has some issues. The focus of “Nottinghamshire father delivers own child for second time” — not to mention its headline, centering the protagonist and (his) merit — is on a man who is a hero because he helped deliver both his first and second child, since both times they could not make it on time to the hospital.
The mother — the one who carried the babies — does not get a mention until the very end, right when you’re starting to scratch your head about whether any other person was indeed part of this story of giving birth roadside in the cold and dark on a British motorway, or how else did this baby come this far to being in the world?
The article never gets on track, since the ending of the story is also that the father firmly says he will not be extending his family further. He is the decider — and weren’t we just wondering where the woman and her body come into this? Here’s the corker:
But Dominic has ruled out having a third child to avoid finding himself in the same position again, adding: "No more, that's it."
…
That’s it, folks.
Thanks again for always following along, and — as always — for reading, commenting, sending emails and sharing this newsletter with others.
See you soon, stay well.
Love,
Nacho
…
📣 Nabeelah Shabbir, a member of this community and a friend, edited and improved this newsletter with lots of love. Thanks, Nabeelah! 🙏 (If there are mistakes, they are my fault, not hers!)