The Films of Karyn Kusama: GirlFight

 

            The first film in my Analysis of The Films of Karyn Kusama, is the coming-of-age drama Girlfight. As with Christopher Nolan and Following, a lot of what we see here from Kusama is in its embryonic stages. While Kusama has always had a decerning eye and a distinct filmmaking style, her shot compositions, themes, pacing, and narrative structure has a rustic organization in this debut, which gets refined with each subsequent film. This is mostly due to the struggles with financing and control of the film, (Something that has always plagued Kusama) rather than a sharp improvement in quality. In looking at Kusama’s first feature through a Sociological lens, it is both a product and representation of the 90’s movie scene. The film also wrestles with third wave feminism while also embodying the idea of female anger as a path to empowerment. In this paper, I tackle the intersections of this film with the changing landscape of feminism at the time it was made; as both a reflection of the struggles fought, and the foundation for the mainstreaming of feminism, by turning it into a product.

 

PLOT

An angsty and angry teen, Diana (Michelle Rodriquez in her first role), seeks an outlet for her emotional turmoil and an escape from the aggression and emotional abuse of her father.  Finding solace in a local boxing gym, and its training by its sagely patron (Jaime Tirelli) Diana goes on a journey of self-discovery. As she grows in skills and confidence with each win, Diana challenges the masculine gatekeeping and casual sexism in the sport’s culture, going so far as to sacrifice her burgeoning relationship with a fellow boxer, when he becomes an obstacle.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Production

Kusama conceived of this film in 1992 when she was taking boxing classes at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. Kusama wanted to circumvent the typical boxing story by placing a woman at its center, something that was still novel and had resistance against in the late 1990’s when she was putting the film together. This lack of confidence in a female led boxing film caused the initial financier to pull out of the project two days before pre-production was about to begin (Smith 2000). The American Film Institute contributed $300,000, but most of the funding came from Kusama’s mentor, John Sales, who believed in the film’s premise and Kusama’s vision.

Production only lasted 24 days because that was how long the financing would last and still allow for consistency across all aspects of the filmmaking. Kusama scouted locations that would fit the scene as is; rather than having to dress the set themselves, thereby saving time and money. The result was that the main gym location had paint chipping off the walls and poor ventilation which caused some health issues for the cast and crew. Because they had to shoot on real locations, there was also a lot of difficulty maintaining sound as they could not afford to block off whole parts of the city, or even be able to have a track car.  Everything was whittled down to be shorter and simpler than originally conceived, to stretch the small budget as far as it could go.  

 

            Third-Wave Feminism

According to Jessica Valenti (2014) Feminism can be defined as:

1)      The belief in the social, political, and economic equality of all the sex and gender identities within the gendered spectrum, which incorporates an understanding of standpoint differences based upon age, race, class, disability, sexual orientation, cultural and religious ideology.

2)       An organization and socio-political movement around such a belief.

Since 1848, the US Feminist movement has been organized into “waves”; each with specific goals, achievements, setbacks, problems, and prominent figures. Currently, there have been four consecutive waves of feminism, with the possibility of a “Fifth Wave” emerging. During the development and production of Girlfight, feminism had just recently entered its “Third wave”. Coined by Rebecca Walker in 1992, due to the outrange felt by many after the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court after the Anita Hill decision, Third wave feminism (1989-2010) was known for fighting back the anti-feminist movement that rose out of the hyper conservative corporate cultural flavor of 1980’s individualism ( Hyde Amendment, Bombing/ defunding of abortion clinics, murdering of abortion doctors). The Movement saw many successes: the Sexual Harassment ban by hostile environment 1986, the most women elected to congress at one single time in 1992, The federal ban against raping your wife 1993, The Family medical leave Act 1993, Violence against women Act 1994, FGM being made illegal in US in 1997, No Late term abortions 2003, and the Liddy Ledbetter Act of 2009.

Even with these successes, third wave feminism was not without its struggles and detractors. Many in the third wave were weaned on feminism from their second wave parents, it being like “fluoride in the water” for some of them (Baumgardner and Richards 2000). Because of this, many in the Third Wave had their brand of activism compared to their parents; often by their parents themselves. The former chastising the latter for not being serious enough and taking the struggles and successes of the second wave for granted.

Because the feminism of the second wave was ubiquitous for a lot of third wave activists, that as the third wave began to take shape, there was an active resistance to the term feminism. The Second Wave had struggled to shake off the gender stereotypes put upon them as only wives and mothers by showing that they were more than the societal roles they were assigned. The public responded with the most vile and misogynistic feminist stereotypes that were also racist and homophobic. This made sure that anyone who identified as a feminist, the stereotype would henceforth be applied, and they would be shunned. This made “Feminism” into “the other F word”. Many in the public actively rejected it regardless of whether their personal politics aligned or not. Thus, people could spout feminist rhetoric and still champion women’s rights, but they would always stop short of calling themselves a “feminist”, often invoking the racist homophobic stereotype(s) as a reason. Many (usually white) women would go on to declare that they support women’s rights, and believe in women’s equality, but they would not call themselves a “Feminist”. Typical reasons would be: “because they love men”, or “aren’t angry and like to wear dresses”; believing these things to be mutually exclusive, due to the second wave stereotype. This criticism continued even among feminists. Many older Second Wave Feminist pushed back against the cis gender presenting “girlie feminism” of some members of the third wave who embraced the desire to express a more feminine presenting identity, including the occasional wearing of make-up and high heels. An image that Second Wave scholars worked so hard to dispel. It was this unfortunate rejection of feminism in the public consciousness that allowed it to become popularized and eventually commodified.

 Embodied by the glam girl power of the Spice Girls in the mid 90’s, the popularization of feminism became an unintentional harbinger of what Andi Zeisler (2016) calls “Marketplace Feminism”. A consequence of Marxian commodification and cultural assimilation, Marketplace Feminism is the “celebrity consumer embrace of feminism that positions it as a cool fun accessible identity that anyone can adopt… [becoming] decontextualized [and] depoliticized (Zeisler 2016: xiii). This is a product of the commodification of ideology that allows for the expression of beliefs and identity to be satisfied through consumerism. No longer do you need to provide your activist street cred Bona fides; instead, you can just by a t-shirt, tote bag or water bottle while sharing an Instagram story and retweeting your favorite Feminist you follow. However, it is important to note that digital activism and the online feminist communities are not the problem (we wouldn’t have the fourth wave without it). Even the popularity of feminism is not the problem. The problem, is when that ideology and movement becomes absent of historical and political contexts and a driving force for change ( Zeisler 2016). By combining consumerism and activism into a single action, feminism and other ideologies are ultimately weakened. It minimizes the likelihood of active participation in their respective movement(s). People instead believe that they have done enough through their consumerist action, which now absolves them of the guilt of just being a consumerist (Zizek 2009). Being a consumerist and an activist can now be performed through the same behavior. This causes many people to engage/express their ideologies in extraordinarily mundane ways, making activism just another activity. It is the capitalistic transformation of the sacred into the profane (Durkheim 2001, Weber 2019). We have seen this with a variety of protest participants during the marches of 2016 and 2020, whom either after or before the marches, had brunch, went shopping, or other leisure activities.    

This was the feminist climate in which Kusama’s film was both a product of third wave feminism and a foundation for its subsequent fourth wave. The term “Girlfight”, as Kusama uses it here, is an evocative reversal of the public use of the term and its derivatives (“chick fight” etc.), that is far more pejorative, much like the term feminist itself. The irony not being lost on Kusama, that in her film about a female boxer, the first fight that we see Diana in at the start of the film is the stereotypical hair pulling “girlfight”, which, in addition to the juxtaposition of Diana’s skill level at the end of the film, provides a reimagining of the term once Diana sets foot in the ring.  

 

“[Feminists are] just women who don’t want to be treated like shit. S. U.

 

SOCIAL ANALYSIS  

 Gender Socialization of Emotions: Rage

Through the gender socialization of the binary system (the false belief that there are only two genders based on sex assigned categories) emotions get gendered and erroneously dichotomized. Through a variety of outlets and mechanisms, boys get the message that the only emotion that they have access to, for public display, is anger. Not only is this denying the emotional complexity of boys outright, but it has the added consequence of teaching boys to filter all their intricate emotions through the lens of anger. Therefore, boys learn to express love through anger, fear through anger, confusion through anger etc. And, since that expression of anger is corporealized through violence, violence becomes masculine and exclusive to men. Any man who expresses another emotion not through their protective anger amulet, will be sanctioned, cracking their very fragile masculinity, and having to rebuild it through violence, sexism, or self-medication (fighting, sexual conquest, and alcohol consumption, respectively). This also makes any violent sport exclusively masculine; building an exclusionary culture around it that is difficult to penetrate.

Meanwhile, women are allowed to publicly feel and express a variety of different emotions with little sanction, as long as one of those emotions isn’t anger. Public expression of anger is so illusive to women that when they feel it, they need to bury it or deflect it. Otherwise, they will be sanctioned by being called overly emotional, erratic, psychotic or have men suspiciously blame their anger on menstruation…every day.  In this process, women are excluded from the masculine monopoly of violence especially any activity that produces it, especially Boxing.

Girlfight is a film that challenges these fraudulent notions of emotional exclusivity while displaying the difficulty of having to navigate the system and cultural behaviors that have made this emotional duplicity endemic in our society. At every turn, Diana hits the wall of sexism. Whether that be when she tries to get a trainer, a proper sparring partner or a real legitimate match, she is constantly told what girls are, and therefore what she should be.  This resistance is fueled not only by basic gender socialization of emotions, but by the symbolic fear of castration.

“The spectacle of women with power interacting with the spectacle of women deploying guns, filet knives, lead pipes, and tanks gave the news media chills- and plenty to churn through, and sell as they both manage and inflamed what, in retrospect, seems like a national bout of Castration Anxiety” (Douglas 2010:56)       

In Girlfight, Adrian is afraid to fight Diana because of what losing to her would mean, and he tries to back out. Similarly, Diana’s father is worried how her boxing will negatively affect him.

Power has been defined and represented through the male body for most of the media’s existence, defining power in physical strength and emotional stoicism. This has become so intrinsic to the male identity that it tips the hand of fragile masculinity. It reveals that Masculinity is not powerful, it is not divine; Instead, it is a mechanism of social control which teaches cisboys and cismen to deflect, repress and supplant their fear through violence. Because all Cismen are in a perpetual state of fear, without the tools to change it, when ciswomen enter a male space, there is a fear of alienation and usurpation among men. Thus, men use anger as a destructive force to raze and ruin. This infantile expression illustrates the perpetual state of arrested development most men find themselves in; using violence to achieve their selfish desires.

            Conversely, our society does not give women a place for their anger. There is no institution, faith, or system where they can go to unburden themselves. This is because anger and rage are so anathematic to the concept of femininity (Lenz 2018). Therefore, women must carve out space for themselves and their anger (as Diana did with Boxing). When women are able to harness their anger, they, unlike men, are neither apocryphal nor selfish.  Many women have cultivated and channeled their anger into activism (Traister 2018). Their outrage becomes nightmare fuel for the patriarchy, using it to smash the oppressive system into powder, while not being above violence to achieve that dismantling, and having an emotional catharsis while doing it.  Diana embodies this towards the end of Girlfight when she finally stands up to her drunken father, beats him and expresses her dominance over him. At the end of the film, Diana finds both a place for her anger (in boxing) and uses it to smash the patriarchically oppressive yok of her family.

 

CONCLUSION

            Karyn Kusama’s Girlfight is not only a treatise on third wave feminism and the importance of the harnessing of female rage, but it was also the grand entrance for Karyn Kusama into the film industry. Beloved by the festival circuit, this film was either nominated or won all the awards. Between Cannes and Sundance, Kusama became the indie darling. Despite the film underperforming at the box office (not making even its modest budget back), Kusama got through the door, but unfortunately with her next film, Aeon Flux, Kusama got too far ahead of the audience that was going to judge her.  

 

 

 

REFERENCES

Baumgardner, Jennifer and Amy Richards 2000. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future New York: Farrer, Straus and Giroux

Douglas, Susan J. 2010. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done. New York: Times Books.

Durkheim, Emile 2001. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life New York: Oxford University Press

Lenz, Lyz 2018. “All the Angry Women” Pp 155-166 In Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture  edited by Roxane Gay New York: Harper Perennial

Smith, Dinitia (October 1, 2000). "FILM; Now It's Women's Turn to Make It in the Ring". The New York Times.     

Traister, Rebecca 2018. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of a Woman’s Anger. New York: Simon and Schuster

Valenti, Jessica 2014. Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters 2^nd(ed) New York: Seal Press

Weber, Max 2019. Economy and Society: A New Translation Massachusetts: Harvard University Press  

Zeisler, Andi 2016. We were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrl to CoverGirl, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement

Zizek, Slavoj 2009. First as Tragedy then as Farce New York: Verso Books

The Films of Karyn Kusama: An Introduction

INTRODUCTION 

Karyn Kusama is the best modern living director that general audiences overlook. Consistently, her films or the work that she is a part of, outright overshadow her own genius. She is a master of shot composition, storytelling, and a variety of other important filmmaking techniques. Kusama’s films are beautiful, rich and vibrant, but also melancholically honest, and gut wrenchingly sad. Everyone should know the brilliance of Karyn Kusama and elevate her as one of the greatest Auteurs. To that end, Karyn Kusama is the next subject of my continual deep dives into directors that I am passionate about. Like those in the previous series, I will be analyzing all of the Films Kusama has directed, with a bonus essay looking at her TV work and her series Yellowjackets.  

 

BACKGROUND

            Born in 1968, Karyn Kusama went on to earn her BFA from the prestigious NYU school of Tisch school of the Arts. After graduating, Kusama worked in the industry while crafting ideas for future projects. However, like a lot of women in the predatory misogynistic industry of Hollywood, she languished in assistant roles, producing music videos, and even outside work as a nanny way longer than the typical sexist dog whistle of “paying your dues” is believable. It was 8 years before she was able to make her first feature, and even with each success, she was given fewer chances to direct features and through the mid-2010’s through the early 2020’s was a director for hire on Premium TV, before producing Yellowjackets for Showtime.

            Kusama is the first director that I will be covering that does not write, produce, and direct all of their own work.  Yet, this is not due to Kusama’s lack of skill and talent, but rather another example of the way this industry punishes women.  Many women, Kusama included, often take “for hire” directing jobs just to be able to live, and fund other passionate projects they may be interested in. Kusama seemed to do this in between each of her feature films.  More broadly, this speaks to the systemic sexism of Hollywood that not only sees women (and women behind the camera) as a niche market, giving women in these roles minimal chances to succeed, and even fewer when the film underperforms. 

            A perfect illustration of this sexist double standard is comparing Kusama’s trajectory with one of her contemporaries, Paul W. S. Anderson.[1]  Anderson first came on the scene in 1994 with the independent film Shopping, which is only remembered for being Jude Law’s first feature. He then graduates to directing bigger budget films that performed well (Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon, and Soldier) allowing him to write and direct The Resident Evil Franchise and AVP: Alien vs, Predator both of which were critically panned but modestly made money. Anderson failed upwards as he continued to subject film going audiences to mountains of cinematic trash (the worst being Three Musketeers and Pompeii) each with diminishing box office returns and no positive critical buzz. Yet, after the deathly eruption that was Pompeii, Anderson was still allowed to write, produce, and direct both the final installment of the Resident Evil series and another video game adaptation: Monster Hunter, in 2020. His feature film director credits are double that of Karen Kusama’s despite being of relative same age and starting in the industry at the same time.  

Meanwhile, after she exploded on the scene with Girlfight, Kusama got swept in the under tow of cinematic sexism when her second film, the underrated Aeon Flux, was taken away from her by studio executives who recut the film. They changed characters and storylines (believing Kusama’s vision was too much of an art film) and after it flopped, blamed Kusama for the film's poor box office performance sending her to “director jail”; an industry punishment which is absolutely gendered and keeps women exclusively out of the Director’s chair.  Kusama stayed there for 3 years before Diablo Cody’s next project post Juno fame, Jennifer’s Body, released her. Unfortunately, because of poor marketing and audiences not being ready for such a complex story of female relationships (it has a cult following today), that release from “director jail” was short lived, and Kusama had to do another 6-year stint.  Her Next feature, 2015’s The Invitation was only released in a limited number of theaters and for rent or purchase online. This was at a time before the cultural shift of streaming, and was considered a death sentence for the film.   It was only by the sheer critical acclaim of the film that allowed Kusama to make her final feature, as of this writing, Destroyer in 2018.

The poor box office was always cited as the most criminal offense for Kusama’s directorial incarceration, thereby creating barriers to making features: slashing budgets, lack of final cut, more studio interference etc. Yet, when directors like Paul W S. Anderson, and a whole cavalcade of other douchebag white men with a fraction of the talent and twice the ego fail a lot harder, they are given three times the number of chances.  Is it any wonder that the majority of Kusama’s films have feminist themes and largely center on women and their relationships with others?         

 

THEMES

            Most of Karyn Kusama’s films have a female protagonist and organize around women’s relationships especially with other women.  Because of this, my forthcoming analysis of each film (plus the bonus essay on Season 1 of Yellowjackets) will be heavily influenced by feminist scholarship by Roxane Gay, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler, RW Connell, Andi Zeisler and bell hooks; a long with other scholars along the way. What I find intriguing, that I will explore more in future essays, is the stripping away of the conventions of gender socialization that Kusama loves to do, complicating her characters by breaking the stereotypes while still having her characters cling to them.

            Additionally, the way that Kusama paints with adept precision the complexity and subtle variations of grief, loss, and existential dread through the prism of a female prospective is sublime. Many of Kusama’s protagonists are not likable, nor should you root for them, but they are all compelling. Here Kusama is breaking a convention of Hollywood at the same time: that women, to be interesting, must embrace the female stereotypes, or present their emotions in a masculine way. Kusama’s films give you a beautiful cornucopia of female perspectives and expressions that change as the experiences of the film shape them and their decisions. None of the women in her stories escape unscathed and it is the wrestling with these ideas in the complex way that make her films exquisite.

 

CONCLUSION

     To my shame, Karyn Kusama was one of my first “puzzle piece” directors whose work I fell in love with. By “puzzle piece” director I mean that I fell in love with Kusama’s films independently prior to knowing that they were all directed by the same person. But once I put the puzzle pieces of her films together, I found a brilliant auteur whose work I always anticipate[2].  It is my hope, that through this series, and my analysis, you will not only be introduced to and come to appreciate Kusama’s work, but also see the Sociological and Feminist relevance in her storytelling.   

    

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[1] Not to be confused by Paul Thomas Anderson Who has also jumped off a cliff with his recent film Licorice Pizza

[2] I am extremely bummed that she had creative differences and left her recent Dracula project called Mina Harker

Police, 'The Punisher', and Performative Masculinity

 

In Sociology, it is uncontested that gender is a social construction. The value that we place in the various and complex categories of gender are socially, historically, and culturally specific. What is often a point of discussion is the relationship between the social construction of gender and how that gender is performed: what counts, what doesn’t, what behaviors are a reinforcement, and which are utter failures.  Using the theoretical model of Sarah Crowley’s “Gender Feedback Loop” and the notion of performativity, this paper shall extend that conversation by adding the influence of pop culture onto the learning of gender and its execution. Through an analysis of American masculinity, its reverence for violent vigilantes like The Punisher, and its often-tragic outcomes, this study challenges performative masculinity as nothing more than a pro-capitalist violent fantasy, installed as another bureaucratic mechanism of social control.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

As I stated in a previous essay: Crawley, Foley and Shehan (2008)’s Gender Feedback Loop:

“is a mechanism of surveillance, social control, disciplining behaviors, and ideas of the self.  The general messages that girls and women receive is then internalized in themselves through the cultivation of a gender self-identity. Then, the expression of that identity is carried out on their bodies which then become messages for others.

 Messages to Selves to Bodies  

This general process is common regardless of the level of restriction a system imposes. However, in a restrictive gendered system like we have in the US, the messages, selves, and bodies require daily affirmations and confirmations at each stage. Each of the “messages” require conformation that they are being properly given, the “selves” require confirmation that they have been properly received, and the “bodies” are policed to maintain “correct” expression based upon the system its reinforcing.

 This is a panoptical surveillance that sees this body expression as passive; docile gender bodies (Foucault 1990). The Foucauldian “bio power” envelops this loop defining the ways that the body is considered “normal” by the way it expresses gender. The surveillance of womanhood begins at birth and includes every woman’s behavior (Crawley et al 2008: 93). Girls and women are called upon to cut, pluck, pull, wax, fast, and kill themselves into a “perfect” body. To accept the creation of masculine social bonds through their objectification and violation, girls and women promote masculine power for economic, social, and political stability. Women are required through this surveillance to actively practice femininity through what they do, how people respond to them, and how they respond back. They cannot just be “not men”, they are required by the system to “become their own jailers.” (Crawley et al 2008).  Girls get acquainted with this Prison and self-sanctioning at a very young age.”

 This feedback loop process is not just designed to police women’s bodies, but all bodies along the gender expression spectrum. Even though ciswomen are often policed in a more directly aggressive form, cismen too are policed, albeit in a more indirect way.

Throughout the process of social learning, and the lens of our white supremacist capitalist able-bodied heteronormative patriarchy, cismen and women get the messages that the value of men is intrinsic to our society. It is not what [they] do, it is that they do it.  “In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless.” (Steinem 2019: 1). Since cismen hold power in our society, the value of cismen is rooted in the biological validation of their personhood, as is, without social, cultural, or historical context. Cismen are just men (which is part of the normalization through invisibility). Yet, because there is a tacit acceptance to the high value of men in our society, both the regulation and expression of masculinity is narrow and harsh.  Whereas cisgender women are allowed greater flexibility in doing behaviors and action that are considered masculine (as long as they still retain their broader sex appeal to cismen), cisgendered men have a narrower range of behaviors, actions, and language to reaffirm and strengthen their masculinity.  This narrow range of behavior is coalesced into a “tough guise” that boys and men have to create (usually through aggression, violence, sexual exploitation and alcohol consumption) in order to hide their human complexity and vulnerability (Katz, 2013).

As with cisgender women in “The Gender Feedback loop”, cismen are heavily policed for their actions, inactions, and behaviors within this veneer of masculinity. A part of this “guise”, is narrowing the ability of cisgender men to be able to express their own complex emotions. Because anger and aggression have been masculinized in our US culture, this becomes the primary emotion by which men express and interact with the world. Almost every masculine cultural and social norm, especially when expressing intimacy around other cismen, has to be filtered through their singular masculine emotion of anger. Therefore, a variety of intimate and joyful expressions men display, also have a violent or aggressive component to it. Cismen are taught to express all of their complex emotions through a singular avenue: Anger. They are taught to express love, through anger, joy, through anger, fear, through anger, jealousy, through anger etc. This reinforces the systemic misogyny of The Rape Culture by normalizing sexual coercion and verbal, emotional, psychological, and physical violence as the “natural state of men”, rather than a toxic and dangerous system that is deadly to everyone involved.

Additionally, it is this masculine emotional truncation which severely inhibits cismen from being their full and complete emotional selves, keeping them from understanding and embracing the full intricacies of human emotions. Because men are socialized away from human emotions not culturally identified as masculine, or only learning to express those emotions through a masculine prism, any behavior is only seen through that lens. This cismale emotional conditioning becomes an issue in the developing of relationships (platonic or romantic) with cisgendered women. A common complication that arises from this is a lot of cisgendered men’s inability to recognize general human compassion. Since men are socialized to see the world through this masculine “tough guise”, any amount of compassion shown to them, especially from cisgendered women, is misinterpreted as romantic, or more likely, sexual interest in them (Walker 2020). Cismen repeatedly and erroneously identify cis female emotional support: praise, attention, and validation as intimacy; while ciswomen simply understand this as kindness deserved of all humans (Walker 2020: 80-81).  It is this, and a series of other misinterpretations/ miscommunications that not only reinforces the rape culture but evidences the inhumanity of performative masculinity.

 Gender Performativity

One of the core Sociological understandings of gender is that Gender is not something that anyone has. Rather, it is something that is actively created, a routine accomplishment through an elaborate gender performance that includes clothing, hair style, language, mannerisms, and the following of cultural and social norms (Butler 1999). Regardless of one’s definition and understanding of gender (binary or spectrum models) we are all socialized to perform a gender identity. The difference is that based upon how narrow or broad the definition of gender being used, determines the amount, type, and intensity of the sanctions against individuals that deviate their performance away from the sex assigned categories they were given at birth.  An understanding of the gender spectrum allows for the existence of a variety of diverse gender performances a lot easier than a binary model, which is often more rigid in its acceptable performances, only legitimating those gender performances that reflect societal sex assigned categories.  

The Surveillance and Accountability sanctions of “The Gender Feedback loop” are the societal pressures that maintain a certain limited (usually binary) understanding of gender which not only reproduces the exclusionary, basic, and incorrect understanding of gender with each subsequent generation, but it also makes us our own jailers. From the everyday confirmations or sanctioning of gender in interactions, to the institutional systemic control through regulation and surveillance, it is all about gender conformity; the conformation to the definition of gender that a society has accepted. Therefore, if we all accepted a gender spectrum model of understanding gender, your gender would be whatever you put on in the morning without sanction or appeal from anyone else. Unfortunately, most of our institutions have normalized and accepted the binary model, which puts many sanctions in place to reaffirm it.

The reaffirmation of gender happens through the societal acceptance of how we present our bodies out in the world (Crawley et al 2008). Since we, as people, exist within a society governed by cultural and social norms, we are representative of our culture by our simple existence in it. We are walking cultural advertisements, billboards for everything, including gender. Thus, our bodies become a reflection of acceptable cultural ideas, and if those bodies are regulated, cut, incarcerated, or eliminated, then the undesirable message for certain gender expressions becomes clear. This is more potent the further away the body display and expression is from what is considered acceptable. In this context, gender is not just something that we “do” through an elaborate performance, gender is something others do to us. Whether that is keeping us in a closet or forcing us to live in a skin we despise, this gender assault is all about Power.

Masculinity, Power Dynamics, and “Aggrieved Entitlement”     

Crawley et al (2008), Butler (1999) and countless other scholars have shown us that we live in a gendered society. While the necessity of the gendering has solidly been put into question, it is still something we wrestle with constantly. This is predominantly because of the way that we have gendered the idea of Power, and the systemic valorization of maleness and masculinity within all social institutions, especially those that dispense power (Government, Military Economy). We think of and define power in very masculine ways, using adjectives that have only been given a masculine context. This not only normalizes the idea of power as masculine but forces other non-masculine, nonbinary individuals to use the masculine language of power to describe something that has no gender.  

We double down on the gendering of power through the bureaucratic mechanism of social organization. According to Weber (2019), a bureaucratic social order is designed from a Bureaucratic rational authority that seemingly gives people access to power (through a contrived methodology of convoluted alienation) and treats everyone the same (regardless of access to resources and opportunities). Because we culturally value maleness and the performance of masculinity in our culture, the avenues to power and the egalitarian effervescence bureaucracy touts, is predicated on how close an individual can perform and express the desired masculinity. This is the formation of the patriarchy as a social order; one that harms men in uniquely specific ways.

Most people, regardless of gender, begin to learn these gender messages and the “legitimate pathways” to social gender acceptance through the social learning process of socialization. Gender socialization is specifically where individuals learn which gender model their society supports through the cultural and social norms that they receive. Yet, what is often lost when discussing gender socialization is the basic tenet of socialization itself; it is a mechanism of social control. Through this particular lens, we see the hypocrisy of a lot of the gender messages that cismen receive throughout the life-course. Sure, they are valued for their innate assigned “maleness”, but the limited expression of that identity intentionally makes masculinity fragile; able to be revoked or reissued at a moment’s notice for any behavior, in any context, at any time. Men are then forced to have to constantly aspire to validate their maleness through their behaviors, decisions, and language; effectively “chasing” after their masculinity (Walker 2020). The result is that men constantly check themselves, or are checked by others (cismen, and ciswomen) cultivating an internalized insecurity that is weaponized by the bureaucracy, in all its institutions, to maintain the social order.

One specific way this insecurity is weaponized is through the Provider/reward model. Within a bureaucratically organized gender binary system, the acceptable male/masculine gender performances are so acutely defined, that it cultivates the unique consequence of enculturating men to a false consciousness of success.  Men, cismen specifically, assume that if they follow all, or most of the masculine scripts, that they will be rewarded with prosperity and happiness.

According to Kimmel (2013):

Most American men live within a system in which they were promised a lot of rewards if they played by the rules. If they were good, decent, hardworking men, if they saddled up, or even more accurately, got into the harness themselves, they would feel the respect of their wives and children; if they fought in America’s wars, served their country fighting fires and stopping crime they would have the respect of their communities. And, most important, if they were loyal to their colleagues, and workmates, did an honest days work for an honest days pay then they’d also have the respect of other men   (26-27).

One of Kimmel’s (2013) interviewees sums it up like this:

“Look, I thought if I did it right, did everything they asked of me, I’d be ok, you know? Play ball and you’d get rich, you’d get laid[1]…And now you’re telling me, “Sorry, but you aren’t going to get all of those rewards”…I  wouldn’t have done it if I knew I wouldn’t get those goodies. How can [Society] take it away from us? We earned it! We paid our dues! We did everything [Society] told us, and now you’re saying that we aren’t getting the big payoff?...It all seems unfair (p 27)  

What this man is expressing is a sense of “aggrieved entitlement”, a sense of entitlement that can no longer be assumed and that is unlikely to be fulfilled” (Kimmel 2013: xiv). Recently, this has been weaponized in the government to manifest and push forward a far-right political agenda fueled by white cismale fragility.  Yet, this dangling promise of this “bid time return” where cismen are given what they believe they are owed, is a duplicitous scheme to keep cismen in a state of false consciousness, wrapped up in their fragilely masculine, emotionally stunted prison of aggrievedly entitled insecurities. These men are thereby convinced that masculinity can be achieved, (and they can be rewarded) by the performativity of empty rituals and toxic interpersonal behavior that has no societal benefit other than the maintenance of the gendered status quo and imbalance of social power.   

 

The Cult of Masculinity

 

            The sense of aggrieved entitlement that cismen often feel, centers around not just the feeling of not being given what they were promised, but that they were somehow duped; and because the world has told them that they are valued and important since the time they were born (general message of gender socialization), this feels like injustice.  This is not injustice. But it is against their oath in the cult of masculinity: The Guy Code, the collection of attitudes values and traits that together composes what it means to be a man (Kimmel 2008:45).

·         A repudiation of the Feminine (or anything that seems “weak”)

·         Success is measured in wealth, power, and status

·         Strength is measured by stoic inertia. (being the proverbial rock)

·         Exude an aura of daring aggression

Much of this “guy code” validates itself by reaffirming narrow and tired gender stereotypes that are reinforcing a binary understanding of gender and the white supremacist heteronormative ableist capitalist patriarchy.  

            Additionally, men who follow the code, and actively work to shed themselves of typical human emotions by stripping away their emotional complexity, and shredding their senses of compassion and empathy, feel that they have sacrificed. Admittedly, they do not often attribute the feelings of disappointment, sacrifice, and entitlement to their elected loss of emotional complexity and a lack of caring. They decide instead, through a plethora of scapegoats, to blame cis women, Trans and Nonbinary people, Black people, Latinx folks, and anyone else whose success and happiness is thought to be at the expense of White cismen.  Yet, other marginalized groups achieving/exercising their rights, and gaining status and power for themselves does not hurt White cismen. Our masculinity is the problem.

            Regardless of if boys and men follow the code or not, they still must deal with it every single day. Through constant sanctions and surveillance, boys’ masculinity is heavily policed in social interactions, from friends and relatives to strangers of any gender. If they are not going to come into the fold, and under the thumb of “The Guy Code” then they must actively resist it. Unfortunately, this active resistance has created toxic masculinity variants of this code, rather than an acceptance of gender neutral and more fluid behaviors. One such alternate are Incels (Involuntarily celibate) or “Beta male” ideology that often places more value on intelligence and courtesy. Because they believe they are morally and intellectually superior to their “alpha” counterparts, they justify their masculine entitlement to women by convincing themselves they are better people, rather than just a different flavor of misogyny.

          As I wrote in an essay in 2018:

 

[Incel/Beta male] ideology sees women’s bodies as products that they pay for with dinners, vacations, clothing etc. So, from this perspective, if these men provide material goods for women, then they should have access to their bodies.  They believe that if they are nice to women and are “supreme gentlemen”, then they have claim to them. Often “Incel” men frequent predominantly online spaces like 4chan and reddit from which this isolated subculture has developed this new warped sense of toxic masculinity that is both fragile (able to be deconstructed with the slightest slip up) and preyed upon by our veracious capitalism.[5] The result of which is a group of emboldened misogynists whose lack of “sexual conquest” of women they believe is due to feminism.  In their mind, feminism is a movement that hates men; and that any feminist progress is one that hurts men’s sexual access to women.  Thus, when their masculinity is shattered by women being able to have free and equal choice, these men have lashed out violently due to the imagined slights by women that they have perceived.

 

Accept it, reject it, or mutate it, masculinity is a force in all people’s lives: individually, communally, and institutionally.  The voracity with which people fight for, or against it, becomes reminiscent of religious belief. 

            Sociologically, a cult is understood as an informal and transient type of religious organization or movement usually distinguished from other forms of religious organization by its (usual) deviation from the dominant orthodoxies within the communities in which it operates…combining elements of various religions, focusing their allegiance on specific inspirational and charismatic leaders/characters arising in mass during period of social unrest or change (Jary and Jary 1991: 98). 

Masculinity has been built as a cult. It’s codes, rituals, evangelizing of figures/leaders are the blatant power language of bureaucratic social institutions; allowing masculinity to take hold and root in every aspect of our social apparatus, so that all institutions, especially the powerful ones, can entice, recruit, and convince individuals into accepting masculinity as their religion, whether that be by actual membership (cismen) or by association (ciswomen through patriarchal bargaining). Each of these institutions promotes and supports the growth of masculinity in various ways: whether that be the lobbying for the support of irrational gun ownership legislation (because Guns are coded masculine), the elimination of reproductive rights for anyone with a uterus, (men need to secure their legacy through children) restrictions on funding for non-STEM education, to the support of capitalism during a health crisis. All these actions are in place to validate masculinity.

However, the validation of masculinity through these institutions is only maintained at the macro level. The cultish system of masculinity makes sure that individual’s grasp of, and valorizing for achieving masculinity is left tenuous. For the purposes of social control, Masculinity remains elusive and fragile for most men. Hard to catch, difficult to keep. Because the conditions of masculinity are vague and dynamic, men spend most of their time performing masculinity rather than being able to achieve it. Masculinity becomes a motivational tool for cismen to exist within the world, rather than something that is a part of them. Thus, Men drape themselves in the costume of masculinity in order to hide their insecurities, emotional trauma that following such a cult has caused; to the benefit of no one except the institutions that peddle it        

 

CASE STUDY: THE PUNISHER AND THE UVALDE POLICE DEPT.   

 

Basics

On May 24 2022, a gunmen entered Robb Elementary school unimpeded, with an AR style rifle. He shut himself in two adjoining classrooms and was not engaged with for over an hour. In that time, the shooter was able to kill 19 children and 2 teachers. Off duty border patrol agents bypassed the local police, entered the room, and killed the suspect.  In the intervening hour plus, when the gunman was not engaged, the Uvalde police department cordoned off the area, kept civilian parents back from entering the building to rescue their children, and then waited for more personnel, and military style weapons, before the breach was made.  

 

A Failure to act, and a successful performance?   

            The Uvalde police department has been rightfully criticized for their actions on nearly every level. They actively went against the training they’d been given on how to deal with an active shooter thereby costing more lives. One particularly damning piece of evidence is a hallway video where police waited for over 60 minutes, getting hand sanitizer, fist bumping each other, and checking their phones, while gunfire could be heard along with the screams of children.  The police failed, the training failed, the “good guy with a gun” ethos failed, and masculinity failed. Yet, all these things will survive, and the cult of Masculinity will rise, strengthen, and spread. Because, regardless of the outcome, (no matter whose life is lost in the process) the expression of masculinity in a patriarchal system is about control. It is a label assigned to individuals based upon superficial performances, platitudes, and language that they use. Masculinity is a costume; a security blanket used to seek acceptance; daily affirmations that convince men they are worthy and that they matter, only to keep them functioning in the larger bureaucratic machine.

The Soft Power impact of Pop Culture on Masculinity and Police

            Since the late 1970’s, there has been a wave of examples of films depicting Lone Wolf Police or military individuals that break from the system to fight “the bad guys”, whether they be battling space aliens, or terrorists, sans shoes. These films became the cornerstone of US masculinity. These men had no armor, nor back up…just their muscles, and a gun. This began to connect the ideas of vigilante justice with expressions of Masculinity that would later be weaponized by Police and the military through various forms of warrior style training (Stahl 2009).

 This collusion between pop culture and the military, is a part of the Military Entertainment Complex [2].  Playfully referred to as “Militainment”, this is a part of the larger Military Industrial complex in which Hollywood films, television, and video games, are supported by the military (giving them access to military style weapons, gear, and tactics; thereby lowering their production budgets) in exchange for a favorable image of police and the military in the final product, to boost recruitment. This becomes even more salient since the advent of pilotless drone warfare have allowed video games to simulate the verisimilitude of actual war.

  Additionally, since the majority of this ‘militainment’ content is gendered and marketed almost exclusively to boys and men, they also shape the gender socialization of boys to be soldiers, providers, and protectors.  ‘Militainment’ is also masculine entertainment, where all of the masculine gender norms are reinforced with a glossy sheen of popularized militarized violence on top, without any liability…because it is a fantasy.

The Punisher: Fantasy in a Flak jacket  

One of these icons of masculine ‘Militainment’ is Marvel comics’ Frank Castle: The Punisher. A military veteran (Vietnam or Afghanistan depending on the comics run) who witnesses the death of his family in Central Park due to mob violence. Unable to deal with his grief, Castle vows a one-man war on criminality, murdering his victims. In most of the depictions of the Punisher (outside of the Warren Ellis run), Frank Castle is just a man with a certain set of (masculinely violent) skills, and strong brand marketing (His costume is a t-shirt with a huge white skull on it). Castle has no superpowers, just himself, his resiliency, and a gun. The Punisher gets embraced by the police and the military because, much like the militainment films of the 80’s featuring Schwarzenegger and Stallone, Castle doles out vigilante justice; often without consequence, remorse,  or accountability. This is what a lot of men are socialized to desire, power: the ability to do what you want even when others resist. Even though the creator of the Punisher has stated that the character is misinterpreted; and should be seen as a failure of law and order; through Castle’s masculinization and marketing, many cismen embrace him as the opposite; as the True Justice of Masculinity.  

According to Abraham Riesman (2020) Frank Castle seems to be the patron saint of police, Military, and Private security:

    “Marine Corps veteran Christopher Neff…owns thousands of dollars in Punisher comics and merchandise, has a Punisher tattoo, and even designed one of his wedding cakes to look like the character’s distinctive skull logo. Neff goes out of his way to say he keeps his admiration for the character “safely in the realm of fantasy,” but as far as fantasies go, it’s a powerful one. “Frank Castle is the ultimate definition of Occam’s razor for the military,” he says. “Don’t worry about uniforms, inspections, or restrictive rules of engagement. Find the bad guys. Kill the bad guys. Protect the innocent. Any true warrior? That’s the dream.”

Jesse Murrieta… served an array of roles in law enforcement, including working at a Department of Homeland Security prison, transporting federal inmates with the U.S. Marshals, and doing freelance security work, and he’s a Punisher addict. He’s particularly enamored of the skull: He owns rings in its shape, wears a dog tag bearing its image, and spray-painted it onto the body armor he wears for work. Like Neff, Murrieta sees an element of wish fulfillment in the character. “Frank Castle does to bad guys and girls what we sometimes wish we could legally do,” he says. “Castle doesn’t see shades of grey, which, unfortunately, the American justice system is littered with and which tends to slow down and sometimes even hinder victims of crime from getting the justice they deserve.”          

Yet, the attitude and marketing strategy of this ‘Militainment’ only goes so far as its ability to bestow masculinity on others. It allows men to fill in their cracks of insecurity through the selling of this imagery and iconography, safely, and without consequences. It is a part of the performativity of Masculinity. Men learn through this marketing, to mask fear and self-doubt through unearned confidence and bravado, or that they need to drown it with alcohol or other forms of self-medication, or you’ll be able to ignore it with a big enough gun in your hands. The image of the Punisher is just the latest costume masculinity offers to men, then uses it as an irrational standard by which to judge them.

 

Masculinity as Criticism  

            As stated above, masculinity has a greater level of scrutiny. The limited and specific behaviors and norms that make up acceptable masculinity in the bureaucratic structure are consistently policed by individuals, groups, and institutions. Nevertheless, masculinity is still valued, integral to the social control of millions of men in the US, and a strong marketing tool. And rather than take measurable and significant steps to try and change the definition and understanding of masculinity, or at least decreasing its overall importance to the operation of our social systems, our culture decides to “double down” on masculinity and use it as criticism.

            Amongst the legitimate criticism of the Uvalde police department for their inaction, and the rational and sensible calls for stricter gun legislation to an outright ban of assault weapons, there has been a consistent narrative critical of the department’s actions through the lens of masculinity. While a broader criticism of masculinity is valid, this narrative instead criticized the department for their lack of masculinity.

Couched in masculine rhetoric, the Uvalde police have been called dishonorable, and branded as cowards.  In the typical internet pile on that happens on social media, every pro-gun weekend warrior, with any hint of tactical training in their background, poured over the footage pointing out the various errors that the officers involved made, making sure to their audience that the problem wasn’t with the training or the weapons. The problem, in their mind, was that the Police officers weren’t ‘man enough’.  When it was revealed that one of the police officers waiting in the Robb elementary hallway, had a Punisher logo lock screen on their phone, some of the criticism dipped into the rightful questioning of why police officers should emulate violent murderous vigilantes. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversations was also in the vein of “What would Frank Do?” as a way to preserve the sanctity of their precious pro capitalist phallic obsessed massacre prone masculinity.    

 

CONCLUSION

 

Masculinity as criticism, is a part of the way “The Gender Feedback Loop” functions. This criticism regulates performativity and the multiple and various ways that boys and men can lose and regain their fragile “man card”. Pop Culture is a tool for that regulation, and through the commercialization of his iconic image, Frank Castle, the Punisher, has become the latest and most recent paragon of toxically violent masculinity, worshiped by cismen who fantasize about dystopian lawlessness as an excuse to be able to kill people without repercussions. This fantasy, while disturbing, and illustrative of deeply rooted racist, ableist and misogynistic beliefs, is also a distraction for cismen from the feelings of isolation, alienation, and emptiness masculine gender socialization causes in its strive to maintain social control.

 

REFERENCES

Brady, Anita and Tony Schirato 2011. Understanding Judith Butler Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishing

 

Butler, Judith 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 10^th Anniversary eds. New York: Routledge.

 

 Crawley, Sara L. Lara J. Foley and Constance l. Shehan 2008. Gendering Bodies  New York Rowman and Littlefield    

 

Jary David and Julia Jary 1991. The Harper Collins Dictionary of Sociology New York: Harper Collins      

 

Katz, Jackson 2013. “Tough Guise 2: Violence Manhood and American Culture” Produced by Sut Jhally Video https://shop.mediaed.org/tough-guise-2-p45.aspx

 

Kimmel Michael 2008. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, Understanding the Critical Years Between 16-26 New York: Harper Publishing

 

________2013 Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of An Era New York: Nation Books

 

Riesman, Abraham 2020. “Why Cops are so in Love with The Punisher” Vulture Retrieved on: 7/30/2022 Retrieved at: https://www.vulture.com/article/marvel-punisher-police-cops-military-fandom.html

 

Stahl, Roger 2009.  Militainment, Inc.: War, Media, and Popular Culture New York: Routledge

 

Steinem, Gloria 2019. “If Men Could Menstrate” in Women’s Reproductive Health 6(3) pp151-152.  Retrieved on 7/28/2022 Retrieved at   https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23293691.2019.1619050

 

Walker, Alicia 2020. Chasing Masculinity: Men Validation and Infidelity New York: Palgrave Macmillan

 

Weber, Max 2019. Economy and Society: A new Translation Massachusetts: Harvard University Press

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[1] It needs to be pointed out that a lot of these expectations on the part of men do not take into account the agency of cisgendered women, that a lot of cismen believe that they would be presented with women as a reward for being “a good boy”.