The Films of Celine Sciamma: Petite Maman

            The fifth film in my analysis of The films of Celine Sciamma is the childhood fable, Petite Maman. Sciamma shows complete command of the medium as she unfolds a fantasy about coping with grief, the human fallibility of our parents, and the importance of cultivating relationships based on equal power and authority. This short paper will look at the creative wake after Sciamma’s previous film:  Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the impact of COVID-19 on the development of this story of familial friendship between mother and daughter; before subsequently breaking down and applying the specific Sociological idea of Socialization, and the rites of passage experienced through one’s family and peer groups; social mechanisms which shape our understanding of the world and help us foster a sense of self-identity that carries us through into adulthood.

 

PLOT

            After the death of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Josephine Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother’s childhood home to remove her grandmother’s belongings and settle affairs. The morning after their arrival, Nelly’s mother abruptly vanishes leaving her father in charge. That same day, as she is walking in the woods, Nelly comes upon a young girl named Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) who is building a fort between a small grove of trees. Nelly quickly deduces Marion to be her mother’s 8-year-old self.  Over the next three days, both girls have interactions and adventures in the past and present. Through these adventures they grow closer, learning about and from one another, until the magic that brought them together dissipates, returning to their own time; happy, accepting, and more contemplative.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

            The two most significant historical events that impacted the expression, interpretation and craft of Petite Maman were the COVID-19 pandemic, its lockdown, and the dissipation of the acclaim and success of Sciamma’s previous venture. The combination of the critical financial and populist wave for Portrait climaxing at the end of the award season circuit, and immediately after, the world transitioning into lockdown due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, for Sciamma, was the creative equivalent of a high-speed car crash. The film at once speeding down this highway of accolades, which abruptly ceased when the world shut down. However, with that time, Sciamma crafted what some have called a necessary pandemic picture.

            Production

            When Portrait of a Lady on Fire was released in 2019, it sent Sciamma on an unexpected whirlwind media tour that continued to build with each viewing. Her sapphic period romance struck a chord with critics and fans alike. The raw emotion and devastation of Portrait[1] spoke to the audience as it pulverized their collective metaphoric hearts. Soon, an entire fan culture was built up around the film bringing together those with an affinity for the period drama. People began to share memes, engage in cosplay, and get a variety of tattoos to commemorate the film. In true death of the author fashion, Sciamma’s quasi-biographical revisionist story of an artist falling in love with the subject of her painting became owned by the public. It was a community that had formed around the enjoyment of the film. Fans would immortalize their favorite scenes in paint, as they reproduced specific shots from the film. Additionally, critics heaved high critical praise on the film. These lauding accolades launched the film into one of the best of 2019 with Sight and Sound ranking it one of the 30^th greatest film of all time. Never had Sciamma experienced this level of success and acclaim, discussing it makes her feel outside herself. In an interview with Director Joachim Trier for the Petite Maman Criterion edition Blu-Ray, Sciamma described this experience as “the best most intense years of her life” even if she was overwhelmed by the response (Criterion Collection 2023). While the festival circuit and press junkets certainly feel like their own siloed cyclone of self-indulgent propaganda for a director; they do taper off and eventually expel their energy upon the shore. Yet, after March 2020, around when all of the production advertising for the film was ending, the world shut down. There was no other wave to ride. However, it turned out to be the perfect recipe for Sciamma’s next venture.

A COVID Era Film[2]  

            The period of the COVID-19 lockdown was devastating. Uncertainty and mass death loomed as collective interaction became literally toxic. With almost 1.2 million people dead in the US by March 2022, those of us who survived (either the virus, lockdown or both) became accustom to social distancing (6 ft) washing our hands consistently, repeatedly, for at least 28 seconds (everyone had a different song in their head), having “driveway” meet ups and greeting each other with our elbows. For those lucky enough to get through relatively unscathed, it was a very weird time. The culture shift was immediate and encompassing. The sociological study and analysis of this period will be forever a rich window into human behavior under stressful conditions that ran the gamut of: holding an introverted secret that some people liked the pandemic excuse to not have to go places or see people, to the right-wing “libertarian” political caricatures who protested state and federal buildings with guns over having to wear a mask. For films and the industry, it was equally challenging and overwhelming for all involved.

            The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown also meant that movie theaters were shuttered, barring a short window of ill-advised reopening, from March 2020 until April 2021. This left a lot of people in the industry scrambling. Most films had some type of delay (as in the beginning few people knew how long restrictions and lockdown were going to last). Drive-ins became popular again, and helped indie theaters stay afloat, Streaming Services were launched with the promise of new release movies directly to customers homes, and Christopher Nolan thought he could single handedly save the theatrical experience with Tenet. Like the social programs put in place during the great depression, no one single fix for the industry worked to stave off massive financial losses, and inadvertently created a culture of anti-theater going that theater-owners are still trying to correct today. Yet, under these conditions, art was still being made, and Petite Maman, from its inception to its premiere is a paragon of pandemic filmmaking.      

            Land locked in France in March of 2020, Sciamma went to sleep and dreamt of two young girls building a fort in the forest; one of those girls was the mother, and the other was her daughter. When she awoke, she knew that she had the idea for her next feature. As Sciamma developed the script, the pandemic raged: no vaccines, and not a lot of hope on the horizon. Some of the real-world loss began to bleed into the script. The story’s inciting incident of the loss of an elderly loved one who you “didn’t have a good goodbye” with, became practically prescient given how many loved ones expressed last words through alienating cell phone communication because of the risk of infection. Those same loved ones would eventually be piled into refrigerated trucks because the death toll was so high they could not process all of the bodies quick enough. A poor ‘goodbye’ indeed. Still, in this context, Sciamma wanted to show us a way forward, and this is often easily done through the eyes of a child.

            Principal Photography on Petite Maman began in November 2020 and shot for 25 days, ending in December 2020 just around the time that the first COVID-19 vaccines were released, and well before the federal mandate. At the time, heavy restrictions were placed on film productions in order to maintain the spread, before the number of inoculated reached parity. According to the European Film Commissions at the time, a film production operating during COVID (but after the lockdown order was lifted) required:   

·         Test for Actors and Related Professionals- Everyone needed to test negative before filming.

·         The Use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)- face mask, respirators and latex gloves for everyone on the crew

·         Personal Disinfectant- For extensive and long takes. Crew members must carry disinfectant wipes or a 30 ml. bottle of personal disinfectant to wipe areas clean during filming set ups.

·         Onsite Organization- There needs to be larger spaces made available to maintain safe distances when crews work and eat; to maintain a 6-foot distance.  

·          Temperature management- Everyone on the crew must have their temperature checked before the start of the shooting day.

·         Catering- All the food needed to be packaged for take-away so that they could eat it while engaging in social distancing.

·         Securing the Location- When scouting locations assume the place is infected; and cleaning crews should go ahead of time and clean everything.

·         Necessary Documentation- In contracts there needs to be an expression of the risk of exposure, so that if anyone contracts COVID-19 they cannot sue the studio.

·         Management during Filming There needs to be a coordinating and supervising of anti- contagion measures by a safety specialist  

·         Focus on Waste Management-All possibly infected equipment needs to be properly disposed.

These were the strict conditions under which Petite Maman was filmed. According to the Criterion (2023) interview, Sciamma mentioned that there was so much distance and protocol keeping the crew and the actors apart that it felt very alienating at times, especially considering the French child actor labor laws, that only let child actors work for three hours a day. These restrictions, both in European countries and around the world, created a collective experience that linked all films in production at that time; whether they decided to continue principal photography, shutter production, or wait it out and come back when normalcy was thrust upon us.

 COVID era filmmaking had some surprising similarities because of these parallel restrictions. Regardless of plot, genre, and style that might make them seem more diverse, many films were structured in a similar way

 Films shot entirely during COVID, often:

·         Were shot in a single location or multiple isolated locations.

·         Involved few actors

·         Blocked scenes with three or fewer people interacting at a time

·         Had a limited crew  

·         Included camera techniques to try to make up for the production difficulties

These similarities point to the fact that shooting under the Pandemic restrictions lend to a certain type of genre filmmaking, specifically Dramas, that can be introspective and thoughtful rather than bombastic because that added risk. The films that did not fit this criterion that were being shot during COVID were most likely the films that were already in production prior to lockdown, which resumed once restrictions were lifted.[3] Some of the films mentioned the pandemic, while most others ignored it.

For Petite Maman, since Sciamma conceived it just prior to lockdown, when they were allowed to begin principal photography, she knew how and where she wanted to shoot the film. It has two primary locations: The woods and the grandmother’s house (set dressed to look like the past and the present). The set had few rooms and there were no more than three actors in a scene together at any one time; and only 5 total actors in the main cast. The story moves back and forth from the house, with each room having scenes in both the present and the past. It is economical, terse and brilliant for the conditions the world was under; and gives credence to the arts’ ability to thrive even in the worst circumstances.

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

 According to Sciamma, one of the major influences on the development and style of Petite Maman was Hayao Miyazaki, more specifically My Neighbor Totoro[4]. The Ghibli-esque childhood whimsy while experiencing hardship is fully embodied by Sciamma’s 2021 film. Its circumstances and casual acceptance of the extraordinary with little interrogation mirror Miyazaki’s work in beautiful way.  Both films provide some amount of magical realism, and both films deal expertly with the themes of fear, grief and loss.

 Grief and Loss

Sociologically, grief and loss are rarely touched upon, as these subjects are often monopolized by Psychology, and its derivative variants. Yet, grief and loss are something we all collectively deal with, it is a feature of all cultures and life in general. There are aspects of collective grief that create and bind communities, cults and collectives together. Empathy allows for a clearer understanding of others regardless of cultural, generational, economic or other identity barriers. We all grieve. We all experience loss. And yet, we often, by choice or by circumstance, endure grief alone.

The Sociological theoretical perspective that is often used to talk about the more social psychological aspects of life is symbolic Interactionism (SI) and more specifically the social construction of reality. Briefly, symbolic interactionism is a sociological conceptual framework which emphasizes the creation, meaning and application of various symbols (usually language and gestures) through social interaction and observation. Constructionism, a derivative of SI, understands that meaning is conditional to the historical, cultural and social context that is present. So, through these lenses, by living in society we understand grief and loss by how we interact and react to people experiencing it; while recognizing that other cultures, societies and nations throughout time have a different but equally respectful (usually) process for dealing with death.

According to Maciejewski, Falzarano, She, Lichtenthal, and Prigerson (2021) there are three basic principles of bereavement: Void in the Social State, Void Filling, and collective acceptance. The “Void in the Social State” refers to the monumental shift that happens micro socially to individual lives when experiencing loss. There is a massive context shift for the individual(s) who are left behind. In the case of spousal loss, the bereaved has to content with being single again, adopting the roles and responsibilities that were once shared with the deceased partner. Additionally, they also have to reconfigure their position in the various external relationships that they are a part of. This restructuring may increase in difficulty depending on how those relationships were established, which may also cause disruption (Maciejewski et.al. 2021).

Continuing the bereavement process requires a “filling of the void” left by the departed. Typically, this is understood as a mental distraction, and people throw themselves into work, hobbies or home projects as a form of avoidance from dealing with grief and processing the loss. However, this urge to avoid and process, while common, leads to isolation which creates a self-destructive spiral of internalized blame. While more difficult, it is much healthier to do the opposite and not only lean on already established relationships but do best to create new ones which will develop new roles for the bereaved and challenge them to reconfigure their relationships (Maciejewski et.al. 2021).

Collective acceptance is achieved through the understanding that while specific grief and loss is unique to the individuals involved, the general experience of grief is socially shared. Life exists and therefore also death. It exists every day, even if we are not its current target, either directly or indirectly we all will know death. This collective acceptance of death can be comforting. This is unfortunately hindered by our cultural individualism, which reinforces the uniqueness of persons rather than all of the overlapping experiences we all share.

Petite Maman sees Nelly and her family go through these bereavement stages. The first shot of the film is of an empty hospital bed. The camera then follows Nelly as she walks through all of the rooms of the Nursing home saying “Goodbye” to all the residents there. It will later be revealed the greater significance of this moment, but in the film’s opening, it is showing us a visual representation of “the void in social state” by showing us the wake of what the dead leave behind; and as it is removed, the emptiness that is left. This continues through the establishment of the grandmother’s house in the present; it too is emptying throughout the film’s run time. Nelly and her parents also seek to fill the void by understanding their roles after their loss. While Nelly’s parents are direct and extremely candid with her about their lives and what they can remember from their childhood, it is the establishing of Nelly’s relationship with Marion that allows Nelly to process not only her own grief but understand her mother’s process through loss as well. Thus, by the end of the film, both Nelly and the adult Marion understand each other as they have come out of this process, filling the empty space left by their loved one.

Socialization- The Family and Peer Groups

       Socialization, the process of social learning that begins prior to birth and continues throughout a person’s life, is guided by individuals, groups and institutions that break up this necessary information into digestible and “age appropriate” pieces. This process is divided for better comprehension and scaffolding through childhood into adulthood by using cultural rites of passage that provide a smoother transition into more responsibility and give greater amounts of freedom.  Two of these mechanisms that assist in this process of socialization are the family and peer groups.

As a mechanism of socialization, the family provides a filtered glimpse of the social world. It does not give the children a complete and full picture of reality out of a sense of protectionism. It is through the family that a child’s world first gains structure- one that is fluidly designed by the parents’ values, choices and experiences; to give their children a since of creativity through fostering their imagination and exposing them to the broader social world to prepare them for adulthood. One particularly difficult part of this process is the slow relinquishing of control that results in both parents and children recognizing each other, both outside of the roles they were originally given, and seeing each other as a person. By befriending Marion (the younger version of her mother), Nelly begins to see her mother as a person outside of her familial role. Marion reveals to her future daughter that she wanted to be an actress but eventually gave up on that dream. Nelly also comes to realize that the bouts of depression that overtake her mother were never her fault. Marion assuages her daughter’s guilt by saying “It is not about you... I can’t stop thinking about you...I can’t wait to meet you. But sadness is something that is always there.” Setting aside the magical realism that allowed this friendship to blossom, many children come to these realizations, that their parents are also flawed fallible people from either a crystalized moment of disappointment through therapy, or both. Sciamma just contextualizes through the power of cinema the realization that all parents are people and not the center of anyone’s universe.

Peer groups are another mechanism of socialization that is integral to the social learning process of socialization. The fundamental importance of friends, colleagues and others in the same age group in understanding the social world can be explained through the difference between sympathy and empathy. While often used as synonyms, these terms have a fundamental difference that highlights the value of peer groups to the overall process of deciphering the ordered chaos of any social reality. Often, when sympathy is invoked, there is a lack of similar context involved. A person who sympathizes has likely been through a similar/same experience, but not within the current context, with the same pressures and demands levied on a person. Additionally, when someone is being sympathetic, there is likely an air of judgement or sense of superiority built from feelings of pity and privilege. Their emotional or social investment is miniscule, or contaminated by classist, racist, sexist or ethnocentric pedestaled posturing.  Empathy is generated when individuals either experience the same context as another person or can accurately place themselves in the emotional and social state of others. Out of all the mechanisms of socialization, peer groups lend themselves to empathy more easily than other groups.  There is power in the solidarity of experiencing the world in the same place and time as other people. Collective experiences allow us to form bonds and have a collective conscience for how the world is interpreted and known.    

Nelly and Marion have their first meet cute in the forest and strike up a quick friendship over the building of a fort in the woods. The forming of this peer group, and the comradery that is built from it, allows for an understanding of each other and a grounding in an acceptance of personhood beyond the roles they were assigned in their original familial relationship. Over the three days they are together, they are able to connect in ways that were not possible with Nelly and adult Marion. Both children see the world similarly. Through play, cooking, and conversations they talk through fears, long held desires, and experiences in the future. Because of their similar age, this can be done without criticism, providing a strong support system. Marion is worried about a surgical procedure that she must endure to eliminate the chances of a hereditary disease. Nelly helps her talk through these fears and is supportive of her until she leaves for the hospital.  Nelly, getting over the loss of her grandmother and the feelings of alienation from her mother, is assuaged by young Marion that neither are her fault.  Knowing Marion as her 8-year-old self contextualizes for Nelly her mother’s experiences. This empathy results in a nontoxic sympathy at the end of the film when mother and daughter are reunited in their own time. Each character is richer with understanding and a sense of gratitude from the other; both for the roles that they inhabit, and their individual personalities that illuminate them.   

 

CONCLUSION

            Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman is a masterpiece. A condensed whimsical magically realist minimalism in the style of early Hayao Miyazaki, this film embraces feelings of hope and familial bonds at a time when the eminent and immediate threat of a global pandemic siloed individuals into bubbles to stop the spread of a virus. Sciamma is the first director in my director analysis series where I did not like their earlier work, but they managed to win me over with the latter half of their filmography. Regardless, their contribution to cinema, especially the focus of the non-objectifying camera through “the female gaze” needs to be heralded as the cultural shift needed to encourage more cis/transgendered females and nonbinary people of every fluid sexual disabled and neurodivergent identity to become writers and directors to tell their own stories.

 

REFERENCES

Paul K. Maciejewski, Francesca B. Falzarano, Wan Jou She, Wendy G. Lichtenthal, Holly G. Prigerson 2021. “A Micro-Sociological Theory of Adjustment to Loss” in Science Direct  retrieved on: 4/26/2025 retrieved at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X21000889  

The Criterion Collection 2023. “ A Conversation with director Celine Sciamma and filmmaker Joachim Trier” in Petite Maman Blu-Ray (Spine 1181) Dir Celine Sciamma.     

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[1] Seconded only by the work of Wong Kar Wai and Linklighter’s Before Trilogy

[2] It needs to be mentioned that COVID is still around and continues to be a persistent threat.

[3] The one notable exception to this is Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man” a revenge action film that was able to be filmed because production were incarcerated in  a strict 500 person COVID- bubble.

[4] Which I reviewed in April of 2020

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”.