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Manliness Fails to Impress at the Oscars
How about cinema in the age of Trump? We do have some movies that try to explain what it means to men to lose their sense of dignity and what fierce pride this brings out of them. This manly attempt to reclaim a sense of dignity is important in politics as much as in society. After all, the recent gains of the GOP in every office in the land and Mr. Trump’s own victory have a lot to do with the desperate hope that there’s some future ahead for people who have been suffering in an economy that’s been bad for almost two decades. 2016 was not a year of American confidence or contentment—instead, a sense of betrayal that implies a sense of dignity led people to do something they had never done before. The party system, much shaken, now gives the look of restoration, but American society is not done shaking things up.
There’s more awareness of this in the press than in the movies. In 2016, the American press did start to pay attention to many neglected stories. It started covering the horrible suffering of the white working—or formerly working—class. The opioid and heroin crises got more coverage than previously. The shocking fact that white men in lower social classes are dying younger than they used to do, which is unknown to America, also became a part of public discussion. The terrible rate of suicides for men is still neglected, but that, too, might become part of public discussion.
So maybe it’s time to pay attention to the few stories that take seriously the crisis of manliness. Unknown to the blockbuster-loving public, America has produced movies about anguished manliness faced with dying communities, a lack of opportunity for self-betterment, and no way to get a sense of personal dignity. The best director for such stories is a young man from Arkansas, Mr. Jeff Nichols. I’ll talk about him in an upcoming essay in my ‘Oscar movies you should watch’ series, because his new movie, Loving, is also nominated. Right now, I’ll talk about 2016’s anguished manliness movie, Hell or high water.
One problem for this kind of cinema is apathy. Hell or high water made $27 million in the US on a $12 million budget. It opened small and gradually worked its way to a short-lived total of 1,500 theaters showing it across the fruited plains. It’s marginally profitable, but these numbers are a mere nothing in the age of blockbusters. They might as well not exist! America’s good luck in such cases is, strangely enough, the festival circuit: Hell or high water opened in the most prestigious film festival in the world, Cannes, along with other all-American stories that do not get much play in America. It then tried to get a second life out of prestige during award season, including four important Oscar nominations: Best picture, a supporting actor nomination for Jeff Bridges, a writing nomination for Taylor Sheridan’s original screenplay, who also wowed with the script for Sicario, and one for the editor, Jake Roberts, who also edited the last-year’s loveliest Oscar-nominated movie, Brooklyn. It won nothing.
So you can look at popularity or you can look at prestige, but I’m here to tell you the markets are wrong and the critics are right. It’s not often that conservative America owes a debt of gratitude to French movie festivals and out-of-touch movie critics, but 2016 was full of that. Follow my series of essays on movies and you will see that America really does have on offer very good movies about Americans—it’s just that the way the distribution system works in Hollywood, most people never learn about these movies. At the same time, the conservative press makes almost no effort to spread the news and to convince Americans to support those artists who try hard to bring American stories to local multiplex.
Now, let me try to convince you that this is worth watching. I don’t think the following will spoil the surprises of the movie, but you’ll learn a bit more than you would glean from the trailer. Hell or high water is the story of two brothers, Toby and Tanner, who grew up on a small ranch in West Texas, in poverty. They hatch up a bank-robbing plan when the bank wants to foreclose on their small property. Things do not get better from there. You see what the prospect of losing their dignity does to men and how men take out their suffering on the world around them. You see how little faith people who have long suffered without relief have in the system. Their American pride is to a large extent a wound, not a source of strength. They cannot abandon it, because they’re Americans, but it threatens to turn the men mad and the women bitter.
They show two sides of American manliness and its failure. Toby is divorced from his wife and is not too close with his son, either. He took care of his dying mother, which in a certain sense is easier: whenever he sees his wife, they have fights. Family, whether looking backward to the dead or forward to the young, means failure to him. He’s trying hard to avoid going down that despairing path. Because he is handsome and soulful, women take to him. This brings up another problem: his sense of pride will not allow him to take just any job offered him, but it is also what does not allow him to take advantage of women, even women who want to be taken advantage of, so to speak. One good thing about manliness is a sense of restraint. Self-restraint might seem useless or harmful while times are good, but what else is to prepare people for dealing with bad times?
Tanner is savage. Never had a wife nor kid, because he comes from a family where he learned that the weak suffer instead of being protected. He acts as though the laws have no claim on him, because they were never there to protect him. His, not Toby’s, is the position that corresponds better to American youth. America to him is a humiliation—there’s wealth and morality out there, always denied him. He knows, like his brother knows, that he made wrong choices. He doesn’t feel he can change. Nobody ever made it worth his while and it’s probably too late. That mindset is not rare anymore. In fact, both brothers are worth thinking about as carefully and respectfully as possible, because they show sides of America unduly and irresponsibly neglected.
There is no happiness on display here. All the ugliness in the movie shows how hard it is to rehabilitate what I call the redneck virtues that are split, within the movies, in-between the two brothers: Defiance and self-reliance. One seems undemocratic, the other uncivilized. They are nowadays called backward, they really are unfair to women, and they are also too confrontational for any large society. What’s the point of being so angry or defensive? Don’t we live in a win-win world?
That’s all to one side, but notice too what’s on the other side. The only people who can still be publicly humiliated in America are rednecks. The argument against them seems to come down to progress: the future, which is bound up with intelligence-based productivity, has already left them behind. To some extent, this is an economic truth–but it is of course a cruel thing to say. Why should people who are part of the future be cruel to those left behind, with whom they have no association anyway? Most people who mock rednecks do not know rednecks. It is not some experience of redneck America that moves them to mockery. It’s as though sharing the name American with people of whom they disapprove is offensive to them. But if you think that some experience nevertheless has to be found which accounts for the habits and opinions of people, I believe it is tied up with manliness. Rednecks are far manlier than people who work for facebook. They live with less fear and have some way of providing for themselves. They are not at the mercy of invisible decisions that do not take into account their humanity.
‘Hell or high water’ is a good title for this reason, that it states the redneck virtues admirably: standing one’s ground, refusing to be moved by events or opinions. That is the most obvious part of manliness and it recalls the anger and defensiveness obvious in so much of country music and Southern music. The title is meant to suggest that the criminal activities of the brothers are all tied up with self-defense. That’s true, by the way, even if they break the law…
Is there any place left in America for manliness in pursuit of excellence? A way for men to achieve some kind of freedom? The story suggests, sports, specifically football, America’s newer, more savage pastime. Tanner is savage enough to have moved into loneliness as a way of life, but Toby has a son in whose future he is interested, and he plays football: that’s his chance to make something of himself without being a danger to anyone. Manly protection means providing, as Americans say. But it also means protecting the world from the boy who might resemble the men of his family too much. (Notice that the military is not an option in this story.)
Another exemplar of manliness and how politically incorrect it is in latter-day America is the retiring Ranger played by Jeff Bridges, who is tasked with catching the bank-robbers. He is full of jokes that today would be called racist. He likes to dare people to think of him as racist. He likes to teach them that there is a great difference between the abstract outrage-at-words typical of America and the experience that grounds respect for people who actually serve the community. The hardship of life in America is something altogether harder than a nasty joke. He does not give up his mission to do justice in the bank robbery case after he retires. Partly, he has nothing else to do with his life. But partly this proves that his dedication to justice was part of his manliness, not something you can put in a man by giving him a job and take out of him by taking away his job. This goes together with another fact about law: it can punish, but not reward. He is one of two men shown willing to give up their place to women, because he believes manliness has not much future in America.
Published in Culture
Might that have something to do with Hollywood’s long history of sucker punching fans of those movies since the Baby Boomers took over Tinseltown?
For just one example, Star Wars.
Original message: traditional courage, good vs evil, and the hero saves the princess is back! No more Vietnam-era self doubt and equivocating.
Message after George Lucas counts his money: “Uh, the United States is the Empire, the Viet Cong were the noble rebellion. Star Wars was Vietnam in space, good and evil are all relative (‘truth depends greatly on our point of view’ – Ben Kenobi), and oh, by the way, part III is about how Bush is Palpatine”.
When proven people we know make movies that openly run counter to Hollywood…. Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, for example… the Right shows up and buys tickets without guilt or fear of that sucker punch.
I don’t think anyone’s been afraid of Star Wars or the crazy stuff Mr. Lucas sometimes spouts. To say nothing of the fact that in America you cannot lose money on Star Wars–not in the Seventies, the Eighties, the Aughts, the Teens or whatever comes afterward. It’s just what it is.
I’d add something: In a way conservatives are too defensive. They’re rather more eager to defend themselves, to explain why they’re not doing better in the culture–much more than they’re trying to explain what might work, trying to support anyone they like, or setting up institutions or competitions to may be get anyone they like…
You don’t think things like that erode trust from moviegoers, at least on the political right?
I’m sure some people might sour on SW for that reason. Don’t know that a lot of people do–they’re not losing any audience that can be identified. I’ve never heard anyone make the case, but of course I’m willing to listen.
I do agree that in a broad sense conservatives have soured up on Hollywood–of course, not their kids. But we cannot leave it at that. That would just be giving up on a big part of the culture. Not everything, but a part that matters…
Far and away this was my favorite movie of the year.
I will say that I have purchased several movies to watch via Amazon, or seen them via Netflix. I’ll probably see Hacksaw Ridge the same way I saw Act of Valor.
It’s actually going to the theater that’s getting me, or watching something that is not an action movie.
Conservative means having too many work and/or family responsibilities to waste two hours in a movie theatre.
;-)
Hmm, I might have to give it a watch and see how much of this comes through when I watch it.
Since I’ve seen this emphasis on manliness as a recurring theme in your posts, I am suspicious of whether I might see something completely different.
Just reading the review, I suspect so.
I hate movies that try to subvert morality to cast vice as virtue where the bad guy is the protagonist we are supposed to root for – which describes most heist movies.
re: redneck mockery
> Most people who mock rednecks do not know rednecks.
Maybe I missed your point. Jeff Foxworthy has been mocking rednecks since the late 1980s. He has parts pride and parts shame in his jokes.
Foxworthy aside, things that are unacceptable and/or ridiculous DESERVE mockery (even if they happen to be redneck things).
There may also be an element of mocking the “other” in there. It’s a “far be it from me”/”there but for the grace of God go I” kneejerk reaction.
e.g. See that guy over there who won a Darwin award? I would never do something like that, therefore I am safe.
Opening comment: Holy cow you people watch a lot of television!
Other comments: “Hell Or High Water” is the best movie I have seen this year. In fact, I am having trouble remembering the last movie I saw that was better. “13 Hours’, I would guess. For no reason at all, I’ll mention that I had a movie in my collection that I never got around to watching and I saw it last weekend. If you haven’t seen “Bridge Of Spies” yet, I recommend it to you. I regret waiting as long as I did to see it.
I submit that these changes are not necessarily for the better.
The movie theater used to be a cheap way to get away, even on a whim.
Drive by the local theater and see what’s playing within the next half hour and get a ticket.
They are trying to justify higher ticket prices by making it more upscale, into more of an event and an experience. They are changing the model in new and innovative ways which are terrible, like reserved seating rather than first-come-first-serve seating.
Mercifully, much has been written about this and articulated better than I can do:
Yup. Netflix had a million dollar prize to improve its recommendations, then [my speculation] they realized they didn’t have any of the movies people wanted to see, so they decided to just recommend the crap they could license cheap.
Name a movie or tv show you want to see, then check if it is on Netflix streaming. It’s probably not.
see also:
Just know that my response to your comments was so epic that it is awaiting moderation.
Probably too many hyperlinks.
… Which reminds me to check on another thread where I had an “awaiting moderation” comment on February 22 (between comment #45 and #46) that looks like it never got approved. *sadface*
How about cinema in the age of Trump?
One of the men can be called conservative in the basic sense that he’s trying to protect what’s his. As he shows, it’s not unproblematic, either as a defense, or as conserving, because he’s not satisfied for his kid to be poor like he was & his folks had been before.
But these people are neither heroes nor conservatives–the movie is something conservatives should see, maybe learn from, & honor or at least support–the movie does try to do the work of conservatism in the sense that it’s telling an American story about people & places left behind, forgotten, rendered unto oblivion by the public mind, so to speak.
It is also conservative in its view of the ugliness of the consequences our anguished actions bring. The murderer goes to sleep with the viper. That’s damned near Biblical!
behold: comment #41 has broken free from the “awaiting moderation” queue and been loosed upon the unwitting world.
alert @skipsul
Interesting list! Some thing I’ve never seen or even heard of! Thanks, cap!
Netflix used to have a very granular way to adjust your recommendations to eliminate what you didn’t want to see. It was a long questionnaire you filled out online where you could tell them “I never watch reality TV, I never watch Gay / Lesbian Interest, I never watch etc…”. They got rid of it and have gone solely to the star-rating system. A netflix rep told me that this was the only way you could rid yourself of categories you never wanted to watch – by one-starring everything in that list. Of course it backfires because then, even when you one-star all the crap, they they say “Oh, you watched this? Try more of this!” I’ve left a series of complaints on this point, all to no avail. (I cannot stand Doris Day, so why do they keep pushing Dodo at me when I go looking for older comedies?)
Netflix was early in on this, but I think Amazon will do it better simply on the grounds that pay-per-view (rental or purchased) is how the studios will better recoup their fees. Increasingly, when I am in the mood to watch something, I will pay that $2 or $3 to rent it on Amazon, rather than hope Netflix will somehow have it. Amazon’s catalog is far far deeper at this point than Netflix’s.
Betting it was all the hyperlinks. But I do concur with your points, except to note that many of those films have been in the Netflix rotation at times, so their absence now does not necessarily mean they’ll never be available.
Netflix should react by curating!
What I think is happening is this (just speculation on my part).
Skip, it’s not necessarily Netflix’s job to enforce your choices. It’s really a great idea to have a flat-rate pool whose offering is limited, but interesting enough to keep it profitable. If it can keep adding enough of its own shows to add prestige & feed curiosity, chasing after novelty & fantasies-of-seeing-the-future, that’ll be good.
Sure, Americans should get the choice of having their choosiness enforced. But, as you point out, that points to another kind of service.
So long as what Netflix can offer & what people want to see are not perfect strangers, there’s room to maneuver to make it not only profitable, but intelligent. But it would take curation. Limited choices could also build commonalities between members.
True. However, I expect more from a billion dollar tech company with 1/3 the traffic of the internet. They should let me add things to my wishlist and alert me when they are available.
They have allowed you to save out-of-stock DVDs to your queue for years even though they didn’t have the DVD available to ship to you.
Instead, for streaming they just don’t come up in searches (as you can see in the massive list of links above).
I know THEY know what I am searching for because they display it at the top of the screen.
p.s. I agree with you about the appeal of a way to avoid actors/genres you are uninterested in.
That’s the problem, though. If they keep curating what I’m not going to watch, while endlessly pushing it and hiding what might actually interest me, I’m going to increasingly turn to Amazon. Like with cable before it, if Amazon continues to improve over Netflix, I may drop Netflix (like cable TV) entirely.
Sure. Curating is for clients interested in their offering. If they also have stuff they’re not offering you, that’s bad curating. But even good curating has limits-
My last movie essay is now up, on Loving, the most beautiful American story nominated at the Oscars.
SPOILER ALERT:
I watched “Hell or High Water” last night and like it a lot. The brothers are really good together and the dialogue is excellent. Toby had an idea that didn’t have to have anyone killed to get his $40k but his brother was on a suicide mission and didn’t reveal that until near the end. There is still a lot of blame for the 4 murders on Toby and he knows it. The end of the movie is capped by the Ranger (Bridges) coming to see Toby and it’s clear that Toby has attempted to do the manly thing for his family and absorbed all the blame for their improved situation.
Two things: 1) the sons and his ex-wife still have to (at least eventually) realize that heinous acts were done to secure their wealth and 2) they can rationalize it in some way because the oil on their family land is a legitimate way to make money and Toby just had to sacrifice his own honor to get it for them — what was rightfully theirs all along.
Did the banks kill those 4 people? No — don’t even go there — that’s a left-wing and un-American meme.
Great article, Titus — thanks for the suggestion.
My pleasure, Larry!