SOSA 2191 Film Analysis 2 PDF

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Summary

Liesl Gambold
Essay based on the documentary Tough Guise about violence and masculinity. Must connect the film to class lectures and readings from The Gender, Culture, and Power Reader....

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Tough Guise Film Analysis

Though many may not want to admit it, if one looks for the roots of male violence they have to look no further than their community, school, and their own home. In Tough Guise 2 (Earp, 2013), Jackson Katz draws up many interesting ideas surrounding the pressures exerted on men to conform to hegemonic expectations of masculinity to the forefront of addressing male violence. On a base level, the ways in which people communicate with each-other, especially in the context of discourse surrounding male violence, are dominated by blamefinding narratives that try to look anywhere but at gendered socialization. In this essay, I will analyze gendered language and discourse in terms of masculine violence, and discuss what implications they have on finding solutions. Gendered language is something that is taught from an extremely young age, even playing a role in our lives immediately after birth (Gambold, 2018c). From that point on one will live in the world as a girl, boy, or relatively unacknowledged other, and this designation has a great impact on the ways in which we see and interact with the world and each-other. As Mora (2012) discusses in his article, the boys in his study have, by grade 6, already fully internalized this gendered language and behavior and are reinforcing it themselves as they navigate puberty in a generally homo-social group. This gendered language arrives on the scene as both a way to encourage expected gender behaviours, through sayings such as "Let boys be boys,"(Earp, 2013) and a means of reprimanding deviation from expectations, through phrases like "Don't be a girl" (Mora, 2012, p. 174). In these ways, language is used to set femininity and female-ness as the lesser in opposition to masculinity and to imbue male-ness with certain entitlements and freedoms.

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After boys have grown up socialized in accordance with these ideas, they are now finding themselves in positions where the entitlements of masculinity are being challenged and hierarchies of power are being changed at the same time that masculinity has been even more narrowly defined. Even prior to the heightened threat of changing social order, violent masculinity manifested itself in sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of women and all other people deemed too feminine (Earp, 2013 ; Mora, 2012). This 'boys will be boys' approach to young male violence alongside violent media depictions of male strength set a precedent that normalizes violence, especially violence against women, and, as Katz states, creates a sense of inevitability surrounding male violence (Earp, 2013). The performative violence that Mora (2012) describes, coupled with "white male paranoia" (Earp, 2013) surrounding upheaval of the status quo appears to ultimately have lead to the types of mass performative violence that we can see many young boys turn to today. Gender Role Strain theory seems most pertinently applicable to these discussions of male violence (Gambold, 2018a), as the implications of enforcement of male norms are brought into the light. Hegemonic masculinity (Gambold, 2018b) enforces a system within which one must enact violence upon others to comply to norms, hurting oneself in the process, or often face violent ramifications for not adhering to norms. As well, the de-gendering of male violence discussions that Katz (Earp, 2013) discusses seems suited to a situation in which upholding the status quo is not only easier, but also beneficial to those in power. It is much easier to point fingers elsewhere than to admit complicity in a system which is setting up young men to fail regardless of what they do, while others benefit from it.

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References Earp, J. (Director & Producer). (2013). Tough Guise 2: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity [Motion picture]. United States: Media Education Foundation. Gambold, L. (2018a) SOSA 2191 Lecture, Feb. 6. Gambold, L. (2018b) SOSA 2191 Lecture, Feb. 15.1 Gambold, L. (2018c) SOSA 2191 Lecture, Feb. 27. Mora, R. (2012) "Do it for all your pubic hairs!": Latino boys, masculinity, and puberty. In D. L. Hodgson (2016), The gender, culture, and power reader (pp. 171-179). New York, NY : Oxford University Press.

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