My Criminal Father Surrogate: Masculinity in A Perfect World

 

   I've been wanting to tackle the subject of "masculinity" in film for quite some time now, but I hadn't quite known how best to do that. There's a certain buzzword, "toxic masculinity," that especially elicits a lot of strong feelings from a lot of different angles. While a post-#MeToo world has exposed some very disturbing truths about the way masculinity has historically performed, I'm not here to roast 50% of the world population. Actually, I really want to talk about a man's capacity for good.

Ted Lasso (2020)

    There’s certainly a lot of discussion to be had for newer media celebrating men for possessing attributes not historically coded as "manly." But what's even more fascinating to me are the attempts to bridge the gap between traditional masculinity and new age expectations--to reframe an older vision of manhood within our modern context. 

    Which brings me to Clint Eastwood’s 1993 film, A Perfect World.

         The film follows Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner), a convict who breaks out of prison. To cover his tracks, Butch takes five-year-old Phillip Perry (TJ Lowther) as a hostage. Law enforcement is quick to jump on his trail, with stonewall Chief Red Garret (Clint Eastwood) leading the search. Though Philip is his hostage, Butch quickly grows protective of the kid. Meanwhile Philip, who grew up in a house without a father, starts to admire this man who says he has a God-given right to go trick or treating. A friendship grows, and though none of the characters ever say it out loud, Butch becomes something much like a father to Philip.

    The film isn't one of Eastwood's more famous films, but those who have seen it often regard it as one of his best. Janet Maslin of The New York Times reviewed the film, saying, " ... the world in which 'A Perfect World' unfolds is a place of sad, ineradicable scars that shape their characters' destinies ... A plot like this has many opportunities to turn maudlin, but 'A Perfect World' remains remarkably free of sentimentality. Instead, it is sustained by small, revealing surprises that carry Butch and Phillip ever closer to the film's stunning climax. This story builds up to an event that crystallizes all of its regrets about the mistakes that are passed from father to son, and about the kind of machismo that operates on cue."

    More recently, Liam Gaughan wrote for Collider:

“Eastwood is known for his hypermasculine characters, but A Perfect World is perhaps his best film about masculinity, as its trio of traumatized men are all punished for showing sensitivity. Eastwood’s films are frequently under fire for their political baggage, but A Perfect World doesn’t lionize its characters or offer an easy solution. It presents a slice of reality, and the flawed characters forced to inhabit it.”

    Butch becoming this parental figure to an impressionable boy like Phillip is at odds with not only his criminal history, but also the traditional dimension of masculinity as a whole. Men are not conditioned to be good nurturers, and Butch represents a very concentrated type of masculinity. And yet Butch performs the function of father figure very well. You start to wonder if maybe "becoming" a father might be just the thing that this apex predator needed to unlock a truer version of himself.

The Mandalorian (2019)

    This observation coincides with a widespread cultural reevaluation of manhood, resulting in this modern renaissance of onscreen depictions of men--even "dangerous men,"--whose heroic deeds often entail them acting in the capacity of a father to a child surrogate. A Perfect World predates this modern obsession by some thirty years, but it feels oddly prophetic in how it foresaw the 21st century fascination with men self-actualizing by effectively becoming dads. And this brings us to the question of both the truthfulness and usefulness of this model.

In a 2016 issue of APA Divisions, Professor John A Minahan wrote on the subject of toxic masculinity and fatherhood:

    “Power can destroy relationships; transformed by care, it can also create, nurture, guide and protect relationships. And there is no better way for a man to learn how to effect that transformation than by becoming and remaining a father.”

As Gaughan noted in his piece, the film gives no easy answers. It just reminds us that this lock and key--manhood and fatherhood--fit together perfectly in some way. And, in "A Perfect World" we would know how.

How Does the World See Men?

         New studies reaffirm every few years something we’ve known for a long time. Men are more likely than women to commit violent crime, and they have also historically underperformed in the domestic sphere. And when men abandon their families, it presents a whole array of issues, often opening the gates for further transgression, a sort of inherited criminal gene.

      And this is where media depictions come into the picture. If the media constantly shows men as creatures of violence and bad fathers, then the masses are more likely to take it for granted that men are creatures of violence and bad fathers--which in turn encourages men to become creatures of violence and bad fathers.

         Discussing how film has represented half of the entire world’s population is no easy task, especially since men account for roughly 70% of film roles in general. But one specific iteration of masculinity feels especially pertinent to this study: the manliest of them all, the bad boy.

         The bad boy appears in varying manifestations, and there are all sorts of subtypings, but let’s take stock of his most recognizable attributes: Ruggish. Defiant. Rejects society’s moral code in favor of his own. Casually suppressing violent tendencies. Either he has a history of criminal activity or he’s on the fast track to life behind bars. Most essentially, the bad boy is charismatic. The bad boy represents a picture of masculinity that is desirable and aspirational. You either want to have him or you want to be him.

    It was fairly early on that film encountered this character type and the issues he presented. 1930s gangster films like Scarface and The Public Enemy made idols out of those men living on the margins of society. But their presentation was carefully handled. The American government was a little uneasy about how certain individuals were romanticized to an impressionable market. Films like these would do a lot to motivate Hollywood to institute The Hays Code (that thing we talked about with From Here to Eternity.)

    The only way films like these were allowed to exist was by assuring the censors that just because we were interested in these stories, that didn't mean we actually liked these guys or anything! The Public Enemy opens with the title card clarifying, "It is the ambition of the authors of 'The Public Enemy' to honestly depict an environment which exists today in a certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal." Even so, these guys sure looked cool up there on the big screen waving guns around and having a good time for however long they could get away with it.

    Both The Public Enemy and Scarface end with the titular characters dead ("and serves the hoodlum or criminal right!") But these sorts of characters remained fascinating nonetheless to the American public, and so they never really went away. These movies became major sources of inspiration to the likes of Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma, and Sidney Lumet, who helped build the foundations of new Hollywood in the 1970s and 80s. The American imagination has always looked for ways to keep these guys around, and we can maybe guess at how this might pose some problems.

    Despite the obvious dangers he presents, the most reliable place to find this guy is under the adoring gaze of the leading heroine. The bad boy represents a sort of danger for the girl who falls for him because he is often violent. But rather than deterring his love interests, this only turns him into more of a prize for the girl who can tame him. This outline has featured in everything from crime stories to teen comedies.

    Such stories center around the fantasy of redeeming the bad boy through unconditional love. (I’ve seen some refer to this as the “Beauty and the Beast trope.” Knowing how that association has misrepresented the fairy-tale, I’m not going to perpetuate the cycle, but you know what it’s referring to.) It's a familiar story, but one that's accumulated a lot of baggage. Redemption for real-life bad boys is seldom to never as simple as being loved by the right woman, and individuals who fall for this myth leave themselves vulnerable.

In a Lonely Place (1950)

    These days we’ve come to the (correct) conclusion that it isn’t fair to ask girls to subject themselves to the bad boy’s dangerous tendencies or take it on themselves to repair what he must fix on his own time. If a man is harboring violent tendencies, he’s not suddenly going to drop them all just because he’s been tamed by a good-hearted woman.

Romances about dangerous men will probably never disappear entirely, but they exist today in a very thin window. Modern depictions usually either tone down his toxic behavior, or they’re more honest about his unsuitability as a romantic partner. We’ve come to the decision that romance can’t really redeem the bad boy.

   But romance with a St. Mary isn't the only relationship in which a man can enter into. If romance cannot heal the bad boy's vengeful heart, could fatherhood?

Again, people became really interested in this question fairly recently, but the image of a stone-hearted man with a darkened past finding redemption through fatherhood has actually been around for a while. Les Miserables has former criminal Jean Valjean being cleansed for his sins by becoming a father to the orphaned Cosette. He doesn't do this hoping Cosette will somehow fix him. He just does what he feels he must, rising to the occasion, and he becomes "a man who only learned to love when you were in his keeping."

    Even traditionally masculine spaces like the wild, wild west asked these questions. John Ford's 1949 western, 3 Godfathers, follows three outlaws who make a deathbed promise to a woman to take care of her newborn child. The film floats on an irony underpinning the image of John Wayne having to carry a baby across the desert, but the film is sincere in its presentation. Becoming caregivers to this child turns these criminals into heroes, two of whom will ultimately give their life to see this kid to safety. 

    This archetype is powerful because it presents an alternate vision of what masculinity could be, offering hope both for men looking to break out of this space and for everyone else who has to put up with them.

Full House (1987)

        This model saw a resurgence in the late 80s and early 90s. This was a time when third-wave feminism was causing society to rethink gender roles, including masculinity. The trope of domesticating men by saddling them with a child saw a comeback in popular media. But this manifested most frequently in comedic form, including the 1987 film, Three Men and a Baby, a sort of loose remake of 3 Godfathers. This era saw a lot of films and tv shows lampooning the absurdity of the male ego by showing how quickly it unraveled under the strain of domestic living.

    Such stories generally had an optimistic ending with the macho man (or men) transforming into a good father, but again this situation was mostly played for laughs. So fragile is the male ego that any introspection has to be padded with slapstick and irony. A Perfect World is the rare film to survey this terrain without the safety net of a laugh track.

    A part of the reason why you have never heard of this movie is because no one really knew how to bill it when it first came out. It does not fit neatly into any clearly defined genre. It was a crime movie centered on a charismatic lawbreaker, yes, but our interest in Kevin Costner here is different than it is for someone like James Cagney in The Public Enemy. And yet, we also aren't interested in punishing him the way we might in a more straightforward crime flick. Neither are there enough thrills for it to really be an action piece. 

    Honestly, the most honest classification of this movie is that it’s a regular old drama movie that sometimes does "action movie" things and sometimes does "crime movie" things. As with all special things, it’s far too sophisticated for its own good.

    Screenwriter, John Lee Hancock, said of the film's poor performance, "Perhaps people had expectations of either a buddy movie or a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat thriller. Perhaps people wanted lots of great scenes of Clint and Kevin drinking beers, looking at each other, giving each other a hard time. This movie isn't that. Kevin and Clint and Warner Brothers liked it for what it was. Some people just would not accept Kevin as an anti-hero.”

    Even deeper than that, it’s a tender piece about human emotions … anchored on humans with little sense or capacity for expressing emotion. This is a movie that serves a need that no one wants to admit is even there.

         Mr. Eastwood

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)

If there is one name in Hollywood who is most intricately linked with manhood with a capital "Grr," it's probably Mr. Clint Eastwood. His directing career extends as far back as 1971 with Play Misty for Me, but he is perhaps more famous for his acting presence in the "Dollars" trilogy of spaghetti westerns in the 1960s. Whether he is working behind the screen or in front of it, Eastwood’s forte has long been the battlefield of masculinity.

Eastwood's directing resume includes films like The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, and Unforgiven, all of them westerns. While not a literal western, A Perfect World borrows heavily from this field. You’ve got the outlaw, the sheriff, the wide-open plains of the countryside, the gang’s all here. This is also a genre that studies masculinity in its rawest form (and I'm saying "studies" instead of something like celebrates very deliberately).

    Eastwood’s films live in this weird twilight zone that is at once hypermasculine and also sensitive. This is perhaps best embodied by Dirty Harry. This film, and its subsequent sequels, follow police inspector Harry Callahan, a tough-as-nails officer charged with tracking down a psychotic serial killer. Callahan is ruthless but also highly motivated by doing the right thing. He’ll do anything to stop the bad guy, even work outside official police protocol. He's "bad" without being bad. Eastwood didn't direct this movie himself, but it is arguably his most famous contribution to film, and it informs the way masculinity tends to play out in the films he did helm.

The men that Eastwood either directed or portrayed generally get to have all the rawness of traditional masculinity without always carrying the correlating destructiveness. And if they do suffer from some latent toxic masculinity, at least they have the decency to feel conflicted about it. Men in these films also don't often get "happy endings." The film usually culminates with them getting the deed done, usually having to get their hands dirty in the process, and then exiting the scene to marinate in their solitude. They often make the world better, but don't usually get to enjoy the fruits of the paradise they created for others--another common feature within westerns. Neither romanticized nor condemned, manhood in Eastwood’s films is a sort of responsibility that a person must learn to endure gracefully. In this movie, that burden falls on two characters.

   There’s Butch, obviously, who walks a fine line between the patriarch gatekeeper for Phillip while navigating his own potential for violence. But the film also suggests that Butch owes at least some of this latent toxic masculinity to Chief Garnet, the other character bearing the cross of manhood. In some ways, the film seems even more focused on Garnet's trial of masculinity--no doubt largely because the role of Garnet is played by Eastwood himself. On the surface, Garnet seems to represent a very straightforward brand of masculinity. He's stern and emotionless, and he cares about getting the job done.

But behind Garnet's mask is regret and insecurity. And what's more, his investment in this case is anything but impersonal: Garnet is the parole officer who compelled the judge to sentence Butch to juvenile hall for the relatively harmless crime of joyriding. Garnet hoped that by locking him up, Butch might correct himself, but Garnet’s decision only exacerbated Butch’s criminal behavior. In this way, Garnet functions as a father figure to Butch. And like a father indoctrinated with hypermasculinity, Garnet chose tough love. So naturally, his "son" grew up broken.

Yes, Laura Dern is here too, but I unfortunately don't talk about her much

    This introduces an interesting variable into the equation. We've seen that Butch has it in him to be not only a perfect gentleman but also a positive influence in Phillip's life--it's just that little criminal part of Butch that ruins everything. That hidden stain in Butch’s soul? That crumb of masculinity that is toxic? That piece of him that makes an otherwise wholesome father figure a potentially dangerous entity? Garnet gets to live with the very real possibility that this came from him.

If manhood is a responsibility, then Eastwood seems to be claiming that fatherhood is not only part of the deal, but neglecting those duties is a sort of sin that one must atone for. But in a cycle of toxic masculinity, is such a feat even possible?

         Is Butch a Good Father?

     Butch shares a lot with the standard bad boy figure. He’s defiant, assertive, and isn’t contained by the laws of the land, but we see early on that there is a little more to him than all that.

    Butch and Phillip's first interaction has Butch effectively rescuing Philip from his slimy escape partner, Terry, after he smacks the boy on the ground. In a sort of calming ritual, Butch invites Phillip to grab the gun while he pretends to be at his mercy. Turning the situation into a sort of game helps calm Phillip and signals the beginning of Butch’s parenting. This is also the first time the audience gets the idea that this guy we just saw bust out of prison might have more going on than just blanket man-anger. You watch Butch help soothe this kid and think, "Well, here's a guy who took 'Child Development' sophomore year." We maybe haven't let down our guard quite yet, but it's an unexpected turn, nonetheless.

Butch's character loaded with a lot of heavy baggage, but the movie makes it easier to warm up to him by shifting a lot of the responsibility from Butch onto Terry, the guy who appears aroused by the mere thought of violence. Butch and Terry are onscreen all of ninety seconds before Butch tells him (and us), "Let's get something straight--I don't like you!" distancing himself from "the bad one" right from the start. It was, after all, Terry who broke into Phillip's house and created a stir that attracted the neighbors.

We might not trust Butch if he took Phillip selfishly, but after Terry’s disturbance necessitates the kidnapping, Butch is free to reap the benefits of becoming Phillip’s salvific father figure. (This contrast will make Butch all the more noble when he eventually kills Terry—in defense of the kid no less—after he has served his narrative purpose.)

    The film also has a distinct narrative momentum worth remarking upon. Butch doesn't really have a specific endgame in mind for most of the film beyond just not getting caught, and there's no clear benchmark Butch needs to clear in order to achieve this. Nor is Phillip actively working to escape from Butch. Midway, they imagine escaping to Alaska, but running off to play with the polar bears isn't really the engine of the narrative. So ... our protagonists are without any real goal or motivation.

    This ought to be a problem because a film with no forward drive can easily wind up feeling pretty aimless and boring. But the film does feature a goalpost, it's just not embedded in the Butch-Phillip storyline. The law enforcement team is the ones with the assignment: track down this criminal and toss him back behind bars. Because Butch and Philip are more or less just dancing around Texas without any specific agenda, their interactions are carried not by any real plot imperatives, but by the characters themselves and the bond they are building.

    As Maslin points out, their relationship isn't hyper-sentimentalized. It's a slow-burn connection based on small interactions: Butch leans up against the car with his arms locked, and Phillip mirrors him. Butch pulls his hand away as Phillip tries to secure it, and Phillip just grabs at it again until he submits. And again, because the audience's perspective is tethered more to the authorities, the guys who are out to put this dude in prison, we are allowed to be pleasantly surprised as this bond grows and the situation betrays the expectations set upon it. We really start to root for this relationship.

We see Butch help Phillip break out of his shell and experience a life that his overprotective mother denied him. Butch lets Phillip steer the car and even hold a gun. (Phillip thinks the gun is loaded, but we later learn that Butch wouldn’t be so irresponsible.) And look! he’s even good at fostering a healthy sense of imagination in Phillip by telling him their car is a time machine.

    A tender ground for both parenthood and manhood is that of disciplining children, but Butch seems to have a good handle on that as well. There’s one episode where Philip accidentally puts their car in neutral and it starts to roll down the hill. When Philip is driving the car straight toward him, Butch doesn’t panic or berate. He just stands straight on tells Philip to put on the brakes. How many parents wish they could stare down the stampede of parenthood with such composure?

There’s even a chapter where Butch is trying to have sex with a barmaid, and Philip ultimately ruins this for Butch. This would be a natural episode for your standard “bad boy” to lash out at Philip in anger, but again, Butch is graciously understanding with the kid.

Perhaps most significantly, Butch shows a sort of deference to Phillip that he certainly isn’t used to under the smothering hold of his mother. You see it after something like when Butch robs the convenience store, when Butch pulls the car up to Phillip but does not coerce him in. All across the movie, Butch talks to Philip like he’s an adult, all the while never being crass nor crude. And this is the ultimate gift Butch gives Phillip. It’s not just that Butch shows Phillip how to be a man: he treats Phillip like he already is one.

    The implication is that Butch sees himself in the kid. As Butch explains to Phillip, “Me and you got a lot in common, Phillip. The both of us is handsome devils, we both like RC cola, and neither one of us got an old man worth a damn.” It’s that last piece especially that binds Butch to the kid. Butch’s relationship with his own father was strained, and the film links his own unruliness to the hole left by his father’s treatment. (We’re told that Butch’s father was in and out of his life growing up, but there's a suggestion of abuse as well.) By raising this kid right, Butch seems to think he can fill in his own void.

It's also really easy to see why Phillip would attach himself to Butch. We see right from the start that Phillip has been raised in a house without a father, or really any kind of male presence. So when this rogue rapscallion bursts into his life, Phillip is intrigued. He wants to know what manhood is all about, and Butch is only too happy to show him.

   One would think that being raised by a criminal might be somehow corrupt the kid, but that never seems to come up for him. All throughout their criminal splurges, Phillip never abandons his manners once. He’ll take a roller coaster ride on the top of the car, please, but Phillip doesn’t really rebel or start participating in despicable behavior when he’s with Butch. (Well, he does steal a Casper costume, and after Halloween has already passed, so I guess that's on his permanent record now ...)

What's even more striking is that Butch's rise to fatherhood doesn't sap him of his manhood. He doesn't have to become less "manly" in order to emotionally support this kid. In a lot of ways, Butch is presented as this unicorn who somehow carries everything we admire about masculinity (strength, confidence, liberation) without embodying any of its toxicity. He absolutely has the capacity to be the best parent this kid could ask for.

But the film doesn’t let the audience, or Phillip, get too comfortable. Costner himself described the character, saying, "As written, this character is likable in many ways. Very likable, very charming. But if you take his cookie, he might kill you for it." At one point, Butch steals a car from a family on a picnic. After driving away with their stolen car, Butch casually remarks how the husband did the right thing by handing it over: “Imagine if he’d put up a fight. I’d have to shoot him, then that family would be without a father.”

The film seems confident that Butch would never hurt Phillip. Butch says as much to Phillip toward the end of the film. “I’ve only killed two men in my life. One of them hurt my mother, one hurt you.” This isn't akin to something like The Shining where it's pretty obvious from the get-go that Jack is a ticking time-bomb and it's only a matter of time before he explodes. There's never any sign that Phillip might become a casualty of Butch's lawlessness. He operates by a very strict moral code. Only injustice unlocks the beast in Butch.

    But, there is a beast.

This really comes to head toward the end of the second act when Butch and Phillip are staying with a farmer and his family, all initially unaware of Butch's identity. But when Butch sees the farmer smack his grandson, it unlocks his rageful impulses, the things we knew were locked inside Butch but hoped we'd never have to see.

This is actually another way where the players in this system wind up revealing their soft parts without meaning to, without even knowing. We see that even at his most violent, Butch is just a kid. He's a danger, yes, but his monsters come not from animal machismo, but from perpetual vulnerability. His development is forever frozen in that time where anger infected the space where love should have been. The only way he knows how to silence his own demons is to try silencing abusers at gunpoint.

Seeing Butch unhinged like this forces Phillip to ask the hard questions. Who is this guy? Truly? Is this what it really means to be a man? This is the only way that Butch really can hurt Phillip. Not by turning his fire onto him, but by making Phillip watch the monster take over. Phillip ultimately can't forgive Butch for opening up this box, and so in one of the most biting moments of the film, Phillip takes the gun from Butch and shoots him before running out the door.

    With one shot, the film appears to dissolve Phillip's illusion of manhood. Masculinity isn’t some romanticized country unknown to sheltered children like Phillip. Manhood is broken, capable of expressing itself only through acts of destruction. And worse, Butch has passed the curse onto Phillip, who has now inflicted violence on another person, thus beginning the cycle anew.

A Perfect World

    In screenwriting jargon there's what one calls a "culminating moment" where all the film's promises finally pay off. This generally coincides with the film’s climax when all the plot threads the film has been spinning all come together. In relation to character arcs, the film’s culminating moment generally happens in tandem with the character making a choice that they would not have made before the ordeals of the plot. This signifies both growth in the character and the central thesis of the text.

    Since we're already talking about fathers, let's use Finding Nemo as an example. The main tracks in this film have been 1. Marlin's desire to get his son home, and 2. Marlin learning that he needs to not deny Nemo any chance for growth. The culminating moment comes when these two tensions collide, when Marlin lets Nemo do the dangerous thing and help save the fish in the net. Marlin would never have let Nemo attempt something so risky before his adventure at sea, and so his reversal becomes this statement on parenthood and the importance of letting go.

    The narrative forces in A Perfect World have been 1. the manhunt for Butch, and 2. the growing friendship between Butch and Phillip. These are two opposite forces that can't be kept apart anymore when the police finally catch up to Butch and force him to give up the boy. Phillip starts walking back toward the police but stops when he realizes that the men in uniform are going to hurt his friend if he leaves him. And so, Phillip runs away from the authorities and back to Butch: he's not going back unless he can bring his friend with him. 

This is the film's culminating moment, but is it a token of anyone's growth? I don’t think so. Phillip hasn’t exactly been trying to escape from Butch. This isn’t truly a reversal of his character, so I can't comfortably call it Philip's arc. As far as Butch goes, he doesn't really do anything here either that marks any shift in his methods. He gives up Phillip, yes, but only because he's reached the end of his rope. So I guess the question is, does every movie need a character arc?

    Not necessarily. Stories are often about change, but they can also be about discovery, as is the case for a lot of Shakespearean tragedy, for example. The revelation of A Perfect World isn't in the transformation of any character, but in finding beauty hidden somewhere society would have never bothered to look. While Phillip casting his protective veil over Butch isn’t necessarily some new facet of his personality, it is something society would never expect. Phillip becomes a man not by entering a cycle of violence, but by instead choosing mercy even when the world would have expected him to do otherwise. Turns out Phillip's crowning moment came not with a bullet, but with a hug. 

And it’s because the film has steered away from anything like saccharinity that we approach the film’s climax not expecting any kind of emotional resolution. And so when Phillip runs back to Butch, we manage to be taken off-guard--even though this is exactly what we were hoping would happen. And part of what makes this work is how the film dials in an exactly the right dosage of emotion for this situation. Like, if Butch or Phillip had actually said, "I love you" here, the whole thing would have deteriorated. That's not something these two know how to say. Anyways, it's far more emotionally affecting to watch these two experiencing these emotions without the vocabulary to articulate them.

    I talked earlier about whether fatherhood can redeem the bad boy, and the film’s answer is complicated. Becoming a father doesn't cleanse Butch of his impurities. He’s still packing emotional baggage and scars that can’t just be healed overnight, and that's not even factoring in his debts to society as a person who has broken the law. Just so, the film does sanctify the relationship that has bloomed between Butch and Phillip. While the film doesn’t redeem Butch, it does still offer him grace. That is what gives the situation so much chemical energy.

When Phillip takes Butch’s hand and starts to lead him to Garnet, you start to hope that Butch and Phillip can surprise us again. Maybe Garnet will get to correct his mistake and help Butch repair his twisted psyche. The movie lets you imagine for a moment that maybe with enough rehabilitation, Butch can not only reenter society, but also reenter Phillip’s life and fulfill his function as that masculine railing Phillip needs.

 But it’s not to be. Remember how society sees men. When Phillip has brought Butch to Chief Garnet, Butch tries to hand Philip a letter. But as Butch reaches in his pocket, a policeman immediately assumes that Butch is going for his gun, and he shoots Butch in front of Phillip.    

The central motivation for telling a story without a character arc is to reveal what it is about this world that stops its characters from evolving. And so, by dropping the hammer on Butch at the last minute, the film makes a comment on whether society could ever accept men as being capable of caring, or really anything but violence.

One of the things that elevates this movie to just legendary status in my book is that it knows the audience it exists for and just how buried all that emotion is, both personally and systemically, and it respects that. But it’s also not content to just leave it buried. This movie exposes the irreparable scars that form in the void of male affection, as seen through Butch and his spiral into savagery. But this also uncovers how even a creature of decadence such as Butch still carries that pilot light of benevolence—and can use that to light the candle for someone like Phillip who really needs it. In this way, the film proves how a man’s capacity for affection and nurturing is eternal—even if only a lucky few ever get to access it.

         What Makes a Man?

        I want to clarify, when I talk about fatherhood redeeming masculinity, I am speaking collectively. I'm not suggesting that we place the onus of change in the hands of children to fix a man's toxic masculinity. It's not any fairer to ask children to fix men than it is to put that on women. I'm just noting that fatherhood represents an underutilized reservoir of masculine expression, one that encourages men to use the full breadth of their protective instinct in a healthy way. As masculinity continually becomes a subject of public interest, such a paradigm shift feels in reach.

    We see this in characters like Peter Quill/Star Lord of Guardians of the Galaxy. In many ways, he is a portrait of the archetypal bad boy, and is also framed by the story as desirable. But there’s a complexity to his portrayal that audiences weren’t asking for back in the Kurt Russell years. His rogueishness is a facet of his character, not a romanticized quality unto itself. The films situate his brutishness within a larger context, one that includes trauma and mental turmoil, and they allow him to work through that. It turns out that, yes, the criminal bad boy has always been worthy of consideration, he just needed a specific kind of attention.

        Stranger Things actually plays with this motif quite a bit. Steve in season one is your standard bad boy and carries the corresponding vile traits. In one of the series’ smartest storytelling moves, Steve’s progression comes not through the love of the heroine, but through becoming a protective figure toward the younger members of the cast.

   You see this even more clearly in the character of Hopper, who at the start of the series embodies a very stoic picture of masculinity. The show doesn’t shy around some of his latent toxicity, but it’s also honest about what that means for him. You get the idea that he and Joyce could be good for each other, but he’s got some internal issues to resolve first. Perhaps most significantly, Hopper starts to become his best self when he adopts Eleven and finally has someone to take care for.

      Our obsession with redeeming the bad boy and his derivatives speaks to a hope we have for manhood in general. History has conditioned men to be fierce, to eschew vulnerability, to bury their hearts. But we still hold onto the hope that with just enough tenderness, the beast will melt away, and then we can all see the protector that was hiding behind the aggressor.

Romance ... that doesn't really work here. Romance is designed as a two-way street between people on equal footing in a give-and-take relationship. In purely functional terms, this kind of relationship entails two people each giving up a little bit of freedom in the name of the wellbeing of their partner and getting sexual gratification in return.

Kramer vs Kramer (1979)

        Parenthood by design isn’t balanced. It's not give-and-take. It's give-and-give-and-give-and-give. The child is entirely dependent on the parent. The parent doesn’t get anything in return for their service, but that's why this model has more to offer--the love it reaps demands both complete presence and purity of intent. It's only when you arrive at that territory of complete surrender that real transformation takes root--in both the individual and the society.

    And honestly, going against historical precedent, societal expectation, and even personal demons to do this--I think that takes a very special kind of strength.

            --The Professor