Hollywood gives men role models for a wrecked America

Summary:  Young men look to modern films for guidance and role models. They get very bad advice. Also, see list of useful books at the end.

Dalrock made some typically incisive comments to yesterday’s post, Men standing together can end the gender wars. He asked what role models do young men see in films? Here are his comments, lightly paraphrased, with my replies.

Dalrock’s comment: let’s first look at conservatives’ films!

See the evangelical Christians’ embrace of the “Christian” outlaw biker as the epitome of manhood. See Moms’ Night Out (2014). See the picture at the top of Robert Ebert’s review of Mom’s Night Out.

Here is the hero, surrounded by the adoring (married) women.

The review at Focus on the Family picks a picture showing their view of married fathers. Good men generate tingles, after all. {See Dalrock’s posts about Mom’s Night Out and Christian Conservative’s belief that wives’ tingles are signs from God. Which of these men gives these women tingles?}

Here are their husbands.

Another example of the noble bad boy biker is The Resurrection of Gavin Stone. In this a noble bad boy biker – his hobby is aiding single mothers – reforms the uncouth sexy bad boy movie star – making him suitable for the strong independent 34-year-old pure Christian woman. See my post Bad boys, single moms, and the love of a strong independent woman. You really can’t make this stuff up.

My reply.

“Christian” family movies should be sufficient to start a counter-revolution. No wonder churches in America are filled with women, elders, and children. They are on a march to extinction. The Bible say that there is always a remnant. But it counts only if they are willing to stand together and act. That’s the missing element today.

More typical of modern films is Young men look to modern films for guidance and role models. Role Models (2008) (see Wikipedia’s summary of the plot).

Enough of this pap! We need films and TV giving inspirational models role models for men in today’s world. But there is a problem with this. Classic films and TV {roughly before 1970) show strong men. But they show traditional women, a kind that social and economic trends have made rare today. Parents show these films to young adults (“this is the kind of women to look for”). Young men watching these films hear us say “go find a unicorn!”

Dalrock.

Classic movies understood that not all women are unicorns.

My reply.

Yes, classic films show a wide range of women. In them men successfully pair with good girls, or bad girls that reform. In the ancient world, good women are plentiful. In Casablanca police captain Renault says to Rick (Bogie)…

“How extravagant you are, throwing away women like that. Someday they may be scarce.”

Now the unexpected has become routine. The raw material of women and men does not change. But society molds personalities and incentives shape behavior. Now those traditional women have become scarce. In our big cities those kinds of women are unicorns. Now we have bold sassy women, and relationships are often fights for dominance. Hollywood’s films and TV shows depict women as the winners.

1. A new hot trend from Hollywood: women hitting men.
2. Disturbing next steps in the gender revolution:  Hollywood glorifies women breaking strong men.
3. See the media mold the next generation of men – Commercials showing broken, despicable men.

Dalrock: spanking!

In John Wayne’s movies he dealt with bratty women. These scenes are shocking to our modern sensibilities.

John Wayne spanks Elizabeth Allen in Donovan’s Reef (1963).

First spanking Scene in McLintock! (1963).

A second spanking Scene in McLintock! (1963).

My reply.

That is an important point showing why these “old” films (55 years ago) provide no useful role models for young men. The behavior of classic strong men would be mad, even illegal, with modern women. The feminist revolution of the past fifty years has changed everything.

Let’s start with those spanking scenes. They show how radically we have changed in an eye-blink of time (as history goes).  At her discretion today she could call the police and ruin those men’s lives. It brings us to an important and larger point: classic films showed wild alpha guys being domesticated by women and wild alpha women being domesticated by strong men. The former is becoming rarer as men (slowly) see marriage as a bad bet. But the latter is also obsolete. Both society and the women considered right and proper that men should act as leaders in relationships. Even if women did not like or agree with the specific circumstances, they accepted the overall social structure.

But today men’s attempts to be the head of his household (note the possessive) are inherently illegitimate, and far more so in a premarital relationship. As Dalrock has well-documented, even Christian conservatives cannot accept that concept. This means a man marrying a strong woman is in a match in which she has the high ground. He no longer has the advantages granted by a patriarchal system. She has the strengths women have always had, plus the ability to end the marriage at will (taking away money and the children). As Frank Herbert wrote in Dune…

“The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.”

George Bernard Shaw, as usual, saw this long ago. John Tanner is the alpha guy in Man and Superman (1905). A nice guy, well suited to be a white knight, he well understands the peril of marrying a strong woman in the modern era.

“No man is a match for a woman, except with a poker and a pair of hobnailed boots. Not always even then. Anyhow, I can’t take the poker to her. I should be a mere slave.”

Young men today have no useful role models for dealing with young women – except as betas. If they copy the arrogant behavior of alphas, they are treated badly for their presumption. Some say that husbands should use Game every day for a lifetime. That is a fantasy. It is a fun imaginary system, like communism on the Left and libertarianism on the Right. These can be useful sources of ideas, as is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – but shouldn’t be a basis for action.

For More Information

Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: “Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.”

See Dalrock’s post elaborating on his comments.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about society and gender issues, about feminism, about marriage, and especially these …

1. A brief guide to the new war of the sexes. Both sides are 100% right – Music videos are a mirror to our new society.
2. Modern movies show the hidden truth about romance & marriage: they’re dying.
3. Disturbing next steps in the gender revolution – films showing romance as women breaking men.
4. Classic films show what marriage was. Facts show its death.
5. The new “Lost in Space” shows us our future! – A strong man broken by a stronger wife.
6. Women’s self-esteem: boosted to their self-destruction – Motivational music videos by Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, Katy Perry, Hailee Steinfeld, and Fifth Harmony.
7. Christian films show the feminist revolution’s victory.
8. Top pop stars prepare women for loneliness.
9. Important: The death of romance in America – As seen in cartoons and on TV.

Books that can help us

(1)  Dalrock points to a powerful book that will upend your ideas about the decline of Christianity in the west: The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000 by (atheist) Callum Brown (2009). He discussed it here: The roots of modern Christian wife worship. See his other posts about wife worship

(2)  Dalrock highly recommends the first few chapters in The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition by C.S. Lewis (1936). He has several posts on this virus infecting western civ. I recommend starting with Courtly Love: The origins of cuckchivalry.  See his other posts about courtly love.

(3)  Has anyone read Richard Doyle’s books? He was editor of the men’s rights monthly The Liberator (1972 – 2004) and president of Men’s Defense Association. He wrote Doyle’s War: Save the Males (2016) – also see the Kindle edition. He also wrote the more obscure The Rape of the Male (1976).

(4)  To see how pitiful our condition has become, legitimate books questioning feminism, however slightly, can only be written by women. Such as Save the Males: Why Men Matter Why Women Should Care by Kathleen Parker (2008). She is a slightly conservative columnist at the WaPo (see Wikipedia). From the publisher…

“With piercing wit and perceptive analysis, Pulitzer Prize–winning {for “commentary”} writer Kathleen Parker explores how men, maleness, and fatherhood have been under siege in American culture for decades. She argues that the feminist movement veered off course from its original aim of helping women achieve equality and ended up making enemies of men. The pendulum has swung from the reasonable middle to a place where men have been ridiculed in the public square and the importance of fatherhood has been diminished – all to the detriment of women and children, who ultimately suffer most.

“Exploring our burgeoning culture of permissiveness and the impact of anti-male attitudes on families and relationships, Kathleen Parker tackles some of the more taboo subjects in today’s sexual politics and culture wars that will have America talking about saving the males.”

What’s important is that radical feminism is now harming “women and children” who – of course – “ultimately suffer most.” That’s why “women should care.” If it was just men, well then … Also, note the gender-reversal. In the modern era, women need to save the hapless men. We are helpless, just like animals and children.