Culture and trauma can synthesize into an obsession with hyper-masculinity.
Whether it’s Tony Soprano, any of James Cagney’s early portrayals, or any other anti-hero, this formula holds true for all of them. And young boys all over the United States worship them, seeing what and who they can become, despite their own chronic victimhood.
In 1992’s Juice, Tupac Shakur’s character, Bishop, tells his friend how much he loves James Cagney in White Heat because, “That motherfucker took his destiny into his own hands.” Bishop, both volatile and apathetic, presents with all of the traits of hyper-masculinity: aggression, lack of concern and remorse, unwillingness to cooperate when it doesn’t directly serve him, excessive need to hold a position of authority, and an inability to tolerate criticism and rejection. Bishop wanted little more than conquest and status, the marks of the so-called alpha male.
But being the best and having the best aren’t synonymous with what’s best for you.
The anti-hero while cheered and revered ultimately recaptures that which he seemingly didn’t want in the first place; he victimizes himself all over again. James Caan, in Michael Mann’s Thief, creates a life for himself that hardly resembles his upbringing and then violently discards it. In killing the head of a local mob, he destroys any chance he had at normalcy or love, much of his life, it’s presumed, would now be spent on the run, as his notoriety likely increased his enemy list. In the final scene with his wife, played by Tuesday Weld, he tells her that their marriage is over, without any comprehensible explanation, and in it, the audience feels as though he’s lost forever. You can blame the mob boss in the same way that we blame trauma: “Well, I had no choice.” And men, in particular and ironically, tend to lean into their hyper-masculine drives in this way, remarking on how they tried weakness, only to be pushed around and abused. The world, they realized, was divided into the weak and strong, and there was no way in hell they’d find themselves among the former again.
All of this indicates not only an inability to be cognitively flexible, consider multiple ways to address one’s sense of frailty, but also a Gatsbyesque obsession with overcoming. The belief is something like: If I’m always strong, I’ll never feel weak again. It betrays an unwillingness to accept trauma. And more importantly, one’s inherently fragile being. In a magical way, by becoming the perfect man, the victim and perpetrator seeks to erase his past, or at the very least, erase its impact. He longs for a brand new beginning. Writer Eric G. Wilson, in remarking on another crime noir film that follows a similar trajectory, Point Blank, notes that “the film seems to be saying that hyper-masculinity is ultimately indeed toxic. It’s violent, it’s destructive. But, when we’re able to kind of move beyond our traditional gender category into something else, that may offer a possibility for healing.”
In essence, killing a bunch of people doesn’t negate your sorrow. Aggression, revenge, and control are weak balms for a weak heart. An inability to accept this fact lies at the heart of several personality disorders, Narcissistic Personality Disorder in particular. Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams writes, “If one’s personality is organized around seeking and enjoying the sense that one has effectively exercised one’s power, with all other practical and ethical concerns relegated to secondary importance, one’s personality is in the psychopathic range.” Fundamentally, ruled by impulse and fear. Choice is a mere illusion.
The existential fork in the road here is one between love and power. An excess of one leaves a deficit in the other. And the hyper-masculine male is preoccupied with the latter, yet creates his own misfortune, again ironically. He’s in control yet miserable, a closeted servant behind the veneer of strength and decisiveness. He is, in every understanding of the word, possessed by his trauma. He’s lost and spends the rest of his life believing he’s won. As Thief concludes, Caan strides into the void, symbolically an end to the possibility of whatever existence he planned and even his own life. He won, but received no reward. He lost, but received no compensation. The man now goes on to live his life as a shadow, exactly as his boyhood self.
Check out our episode with Eric below:
Leon's Existential Cafe 