Masculinity Is A County Jail Cell, At Best

If these ideas are intriguing to you, maybe you wish to subscribe to my newsletter.

Other writing:

• Shōgun Episode 5 Recap at Vulture

• Shōgun Episode 6 Recap at Vulture

• Eight Bowling Alley Animations That I Regret Making for PinBuddies Entertainment Between 2000 and 2010 at Points in Case

• You just bought a bundle of ramps at the farmers’ market: now what? at Tone Madison

It’s easy to rack up a few new bylines when it’s been a month since your last newsletter. Unfortunately, these were my last Shōgun pieces for Vulture, as they decided to swap in an industry vet to wrap up the series due to the show’s popularity and complexity. I do have another Shōgun piece coming out soon in another publication.

In the meantime, my second short humor piece was published at Points in Case and it’s really funny. I promise. I also really love this column for Tone Madison about trendy seasonal produce, which includes a basic recipe for a ramp pizza.

When it comes to Michael Mann movies, well, I gotta quote Vincent Hanna here and say, “Gimme all you got! Gimme all you got!”

A dear friend of mine and the founder of our movie club project reached out the other day with a challenge: his kid had recently glommed onto the idea of ranking your top ten movies, and he challenged all of us to put together a list. In doing so, I was a bit shocked and surprised at how many Michael Mann movies I wanted to put on there, but even more surprised when I realized that Heat is my favorite movie. I’ve talked about my love for Michael Mann in the past, but I haven’t fully unpacked the whole ordeal. Is it just that I love snappy dialogue that unpacks itself on a rewatch mixed with zippy action? Yeah, probably. But there’s also an undeniable element to Michael Mann movies that often gets misconstrued: his portrayal of masculinity.

“ Masculinity is a prison” gets thrown around as a common refrain, pointing to the idea that men in society get trapped into toxic macho cycles trying to prove to one another who is manlier and why. This includes being awful to women, being awful to men, being awful to nonbinary people—or I guess, in general, just being awful as a signifier for being superior. I’ve never quite understood this concept: I have, and will always be, a sensitive boy at heart, raised by a caring and kind father and a thoughtful and loving mother who made sure I knew how to cook, clean, and engage with others respectfully. I’m not saying I’m a perfect human as much as I never quite fit into traditional gender roles as defined by the media.

Throughout my younger days, however, this haunted me. As much as I loved being surrounded by women and being pulled into girl-talk circles, I was and am still very much a cishet white man. Never before was this more on display than when, in Prague for a summer college semester, I slept on my friend’s couch in their hostel room because I hated my roommate so much. The fact that my friend was a woman sharing that room with another woman, both of whom wanted and needed privacy from me at times, well, that didn’t register. They politely kicked me out one day, and it was a big wake-up call: no matter what I felt like I was moving through this world, I couldn’t pretend that my gender identity didn’t present itself in certain ways that affected other people.

So what does this have to do with bank robbers and the cops who love them? Well, I’d be lying if I said “a lot.” But the answer, of course, is, “some.” I’d been convinced for a long time that rejecting traditionally “masculine” pursuits made me, in many ways, some sort of superior species. I didn’t watch sports or lift weights or drink beer or watch action movies—instead, I smugly spent my time listening to music that was overly emotional about heartsick-sensitive boys that, looking back, is some of the most misogynistic art ever created. I don’t think I have to link to anything here to showcase just how truly fucked all of those bands were when it came to how they treated women both in their lyrics and in real life.

Movies like Heat helped me better understand and define my relationship to masculinity. On the surface, Heat looks like a film about two strong, intense, serious guys doing serious guy stuff: robbing banks and trying to stop people from robbing banks. But depiction is not necessarily endorsement: both Neil McCauley and Vincent Hanna are profoundly broken humans who are unable to relate to those that they love around them. It’s easy to want to fall in love with their hypercompetent abilities, but in no way is Michael Mann suggesting that either is a role model. It’s obvious to anyone watching this movie if you’re paying attention. But at the same time, the LA streetside shootout is easy to misconstrue, as well.

Primed by movies like The Matrix which features a massive scene of “shoot everyone a million times until they're dead” as its rah-rah climax, the bank robbery in Heat is terrifying and awful. People are ripped to shreds by powerful and ear-splittingly loud assault rifles, and Mann manages to make the wide-open streets of Los Angeles feel claustrophobic and suffocating. Innocent people lose their lives because these two men can’t get their head around operating in the world any differently than they already do.

But watching Heat, for me, is a way of contemplating and exploring my relationship to masculinity. The movie wants viewers to analyze what it’s like to have your leading man aggressively threaten his friend’s wife over an affair she’s having even though his friend admitted to multiple affairs already. It wants us to think about what’s going through a man’s head when he tells a man on his couch that he can ball his wife if she wants him to, but he can’t watch his TV. It’s worth noting that this is Hanna’s third wife, and the marriage doens’t survive.

Almost every Michael Mann movie centers itself around a serious man contemplating (in one way or another) how their masculinity measures up to their own ideas and ideals. None of them are competent at it, but Mann seems to suggest that one can rise to the occasion against your flaws and embrace identity as a way through your problems. If I was writing this for a publication, my editor would demand I list out some concrete examples. But I’m tired, and currently on some antibiotics that are kicking my ass, so you’re just going to have to watch this movie again and find those moments for yourself.

For Michael Mann, masculinity isn’t a prison: it’s more like a night in the drunk tank at the county jail. You make a bad choice, you live with the consequences. But nothing is permanent, attitudes can change, and growth is possible. And maybe you, too, can reexamine your own perspective through a cop and a criminal shooting the shit over diner coffee.

Read

• Flaming Hydra

I can’t recommend Flaming Hydra enough. A daily newsletter from over 60 writers, Flaming Hydra delivers two interesting pieces in each missive right to my inbox. I’m in the habit of flagging them for follow-up later, where I sit down and read through a chunk on the weekends, but it’s a great modern version of what a magazine should be. I struggle with the attention span of picking up an entire print magazine and getting through it, so having a variety of viewpoints and topics pop into my life in digestible chunks is great. And it’s dirt cheap, too.

Watch

• Sexy Beast on Hulu

Speaking of reexamining masculinity, I finally sat down with Sexy Beast this week in my “I can’t leave the couch” antibiotics haze, and I was floored. I didn’t really know what to expect going in, but labeling this movie as a “crime thriller” betrays the fact that it’s a fascinating art-house character study invested heavily in the politics of dialogue and relationships. 10/10.

Listen

• High on Fire “Cometh The Storm

New High on Fire! New High on Fire! New High on Fire! For years this trio has been one of the most absolute hands down tightest playing groups around, but after two decades of putting on albums, the last two had become a bit too predictable. With Des Kensel’s exit, however, and the addition of Coady Willis, High on Fire is back with an absolute vengeance. Willis made a name for himself with his frantic, off-kilter drums in bands like Murder City Devils, Big Business, and Melvins, and his contributions to this High on Fire record drag them back to messier, sludgier, less predictable territory. I loved those earlier records with Kensel still behind the kit, but this new addition has generated a fantastic new album.

Consume

• Ramps, If Acquired Responsibly

Ramp season has once again been foisted upon us, and ramps fuckin’ kick ass. You can read about it in my Tone piece, linked above. But ramps are also tricky to grow, and often are overforaged. So here’s my advice: don’t go foraging for ramps this year. Let them grow and germinate and repopulate, and instead grab them from your local responsible forager or farmer.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.