Masculinism - Wanted Movie

Disclaimer: I wrote this on a hangover. It does not mean to strongly criticize anyone or society as a whole if contemporary masculinity is practiced in moderation. My thoughts are not concrete, I am just thinking out loud.

I sat in the theater thinking about this movie, Wanted, thinking that we had talked about it already and that we might as well write something about the next graphic novel to movie experience. I kinda felt like a loser thinking, "Ooh, I'm gonna write about this on my blog," but I think there's more to Wanted than a movie that follows all the acceptable formulas for action set by previous successes (Matrix, Equilibrium, Spiderman, etc.) while still adding some really exciting action sequences (how many car chases have the main character staring at panty most of the scene? How many gunfights have the main character jamming a gun in a man's eye, shooting said eye, and then holding the man on the gun as a human shield while still shooting other people?).
Wanted goes along with Fight Club's idea of a generation of men raised by their mothers, forgetting what it means to be a man for the sake of an emasculating society, "how much you know about yourself, you never been in a fight" type of thing. The main character has a shitty job, a fat boss who terrorizes him, and a whiny girlfriend routinely fucked by his fratboy best friend. The life we all dread. One day his father, a notable assassin, is killed, and he is targeted by a rogue assassin. So, Angelina Jolie (who only gets a handful of lines throughout the movie) saves him from his normal life to be an all-powerful assassin and say fuck you to whoever he wants.
This is the ideal, right? We all, presumably, wish that one day we can just say "fuck you" to every little piece of shit in our life we normally just deal with, but what a way to do it, huh? The first thing that sets him free is $3 million; the second thing is learning how to kill, and the third thing is Angelina Jolie.
In reality though, money probably does not set you free. It helps, but a windfall of $3 million doesn't change who you are, it just means you can pick a better lifestyle, go back to school, take a vacation. If money made men masculine then Bill Gates would be the most masculine man we know, and I think we can agree he's not, but he is powerful, so maybe money is a good way to symbolize and exert power. Power, I think we can agree is pretty damn masculine.
Arguably, women do not free you of shit you didn't want to deal with because women are people and people cause issues. Even you cause issues for yourself. Do women make men masculine? Well, wasn't that the problem back in the day? Men being men meant women couldn't be free. Masculinity requires power, and subjugation is a means, albeit a really poor one, to said feeling of power.
So, one of the ultimate feelings of power must come from power over the lifespan of another human being. Well, that's not socially acceptable and it's not a good message (Be a Man, Pick Up a Gun) that Wanted sends. Video games are more socially acceptable. We kill people all the time in video games. I've learned recently that entertainment, and video games especially, are gendered. According to my Poli Sci Prof and several other girls I've talked to, the fact that video games tend to face a good guy versus a bad guy who can only be quelled by violence is a male concept, and, the fact that most video games have an objective to achieve is also a male concept. While I would rather play MGS4 and save the world, my lady friend would rather design a bedroom in The Sims (admittedly, she wants to be an interior decorator) or try out new personalities with her character. I beat Xenosaga 2 and another lady friend watches How I Met Your Mother.

The writing was weak in Wanted, and that made the twists in the movie really unsatisfying and uninteresting for me because for the most part, the twists just added time. Like a video game (SPOILER! Assassin's Creed), taking out one enemy makes the character realize that the real enemy is someone else. The best twist to this story, and this flows naturally if you see the movie, I think, would be that the main character (a moral person) realizes that despite all his bitching, he was okay with the life he had. It wasn't perfect, but it was moral. It wasn't entirely destructive like his life as an assassin.
There has to be some way to be a man without hurting other people. We may agree, the American definition for men is flawed and needs to change but there's been no large masculine movement to change it in society, probably because, for most people, it's just fine as it is.
The feminist movement told women to get out and be successful, don't be no domestic, educate yourself! Break the glass ceiling! Masculinity tells us blue-collar work is manly or money gets you women and power and is therefore masculine, but doesn't tell us to go to school to get rich. It tells us to play sports, get lucky, or whatever but combined with the narrative that anyone can do anything, forgets to tell us that few people get windfall lucky. Books are ghey. Cars and babes are phat. Parties are sweet. Instead of maturing Masculinism, the main response to feminism seems to be fratboyism, rampant homophobia, and sexism (in sometimes extremely perverse ways, e.g. Bangbus) when the ladies aren't around or right in front of her face if she's desperate enough for attention, none of which are productive or respectful. Just wait until women have all the best high-paying jobs and are the most successful, and men have a disproportionately high rate of poverty, then hopefully society realizes it was wrong.

harold norse was a poet back in the day who wrote a poem called i am not a Man and it iS rather movin(g), i Believe.

Lynny Boy Jo will return with the regularly scheduled blogging in soon