The Mask is Real
Director Stanley Kubrick once said, “When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.” This point is extremely evident in today’s society. The world today has constructed an idea of masculinity that doesn’t allow for boys to be secure with who they are. Society is constantly pushing boys towards perfection leading to anxiety, and as a result these men are not choosing who they want to be or how they want to live; instead they are being who everyone else wants them to be and living how everyone else wants them to live. The film trailer for, “The Mask You Live In,” focuses on this issue, and pushes for some form of change in today’s popular culture. Their goal is to bring to light an issue that many individuals today are overlooking, that being how many boys are wearing a ‘mask’ and the fact that the phrase “man up” is something we need to begin to redefine. Expert opinions, interviews with young boys, factual evidence, emotional appeal, and imagery all help the film create a strong, positive argument.
The majority of the people in the world value the opinion of a well-educated person. Whether they are a doctor, lawyer, psychologist, scientist, etc. It does not matter to us. The fact that a person has a title before their name, or a degree after it is a deciding in factor in whether or not we want to listen to a person or not. Documentary makers have realized this, and the film, ‘”The Mask You Live In,” utilizes it greatly. Every commentator in the trailer has some form of education in psychology, psychiatry, counseling or sociology. These professions are especially enticing considering they are extremely knowledgeable on the men’s psychological conditions, and for that reason alone, most people will believe what...
... middle of paper ...
... emotions that will be felt, and this vast array can only be used to the trailer’s advantage.
The film trailer for “The Mask You Live In,” illustrates the values of today’s society and how they affect the lives of young men as they grow up. Emotional appeal, imagery, professional insight, and evidence from the boys are utilized greatly to provide support to the trailer’s argument. The world today and the people in it are telling these boys how to live when all they really want is to figure it out for themselves and grow into the person they want to become, not the person they need to become. Very few people make it to the stage of taking off their mask; I would say less than half of society. From experience, I will say that it is not weird at all; actually it’s lonely, just as it is for any minority. “The Mask You Live In” is the beginning of ending this minority.
A trickster is someone who disobeys normal rules or just plays around with people and their heads, for their own amusement. Tricksters can be found in movies, TV Shows, stories, and anyone around you could even be a trickster. A trickster always comes in handy to make tension go away or to generally entertain.
Whether this be through morals, choices, beliefs, or personality. Holloway argues that it is through toxic/abrupt masculinity that boys are constantly caught in the crossfires between fight or flight. Masculinity becomes toxic when it becomes obsessive and disruptive. When society gets to the point where they cannot even focus or be themselves because of the fact that the only thing they care about is being the perfect man. The idea of striving to become this perfect man is an example of flight in society. Men are being forced to attempt to fit into these ideals and “prove, and re prove that they are men” in order to avoid the feeling of not fitting in with the rest of the group (Holloway). Holloway continues to discuss how throughout their lives men are constantly seen as emotionally tougher which causes them to grow up believing that if they show emotions they are weaker and are not allowed to be a part of the pack. Therefore instead of fighting this ideal and deciding to stand up for who they are, it is easier to conform and attempt to fit in because if they show discontent then they are shown as weak and unable to handle the “social constructions of masculinity” forcing them to become a social pariah and damage their spiritual
George Orwell quotes, “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” The documentary, “The Mask You Live In”, directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, shows different ages of males who struggle to be themselves while battling America’s limited meaning of manliness. George Orwell quotes, “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” Influenced by the media, among their age group, and the grown-ups in their lives, adolescents dissociate their emotions, disrespect women, and are aggressive. Society gender stereotypes affect young males to change to fit into the societal norm as they characterize “real” men.
“Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls”: few of our cultural mythologies seem as natural as this one. But in this exploration of the gender signals that traditionally tell what a “boy” or “girl” is supposed to look and act like, Aaron Devor shows how these signals are not “natural” at all but instead are cultural constructs. While the classic cues of masculinity—aggressive posture, self-confidence, a tough appearance—and the traditional signs of femininity—gentleness, passivity, strong nurturing instincts—are often considered “normal,” Devor explains that they are by no means biological or psychological necessities. Indeed, he suggests, they can be richly mixed and varied, or to paraphrase the old Kinks song “Lola,” “Boys can be girls and girls can be boys.” Devor is dean of social sciences at the University of Victoria and author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (1989), from which this selection is excerpted, and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (1997).
William Pollack, in his article “Inside the World of Boys: Behind the Mask of Masculinity”, discusses on how boy tries to hide behind the mask and the stereotypical of masculinity. He demonstrates how boy hide their deepest though and feelings and real self. Pollack open the essay with “a fourteen-year-old boy, he is doing badly in school and he might fail algebra, but when teacher or his parent ask about it, he said everything is just fine. He hide his true identity behind the mask, and let no one see his true self.” After read the story, I think the story is really useful source to write an essay about how boy become men and they are emotionless.
The Mask You Live In, was a very good and informative film. It brought back all the negative memories that I had in middle and high school, when going through puberty and playing sports. The film shows the audience how bad masculinity is turning and how it can damage many people’s lives. It shows the world that masculinity is completely messed up and we are not teaching are sensitive sons the right way to grow up. The movie starts off with a bang! Former NFL tough guy, Joe Ehrmann, says “ Be a man” is the most destructive words a young boy can hear. This movie emphasizes on how boys are continually told on how to be a man. “Grow some balls. Men don’t cry! Keep that shit inside and keep fighting.” This is where Joe Ehrmann gets frustrated, none of these are ways to make you a man. Boys are told Men are emotionalist and hide all their feelings. Well, what all young boys want, is love and confidence shined upon them while growing up. Which is funny, because boys keep all their emotions and feelings hidden under a mask that no one else can see. This damages young men, by making them emotionally disable. These boys keep all their problems built up inside them and don’t want to talk to anyone about them because they were told men handle them on their own.
Jackson Katz is the founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention which is an education program that has been focused on military and sporting organizations in attempts to put a halt on gender violence. Other than being an educator, Katz is also an author and filmmaker. In 2013, he produced the film Tough Guise 2. In this film, Katz reviews the normalization of male jurisdiction in America. The film looks at the messages of gun violence, sexism, and bullying that are sent to men throughout their entire life. Tough Guise 2 argues the statement that male brutality is a rooted back to our cultural standards of manhood. A pivotal point of the film is that a male’s masculinity is not just handed to them, it must be earned. During the course of the film, this point is supported by examples such as gun violence, homophobic messages and mass shootings.
Within the German Democratic Republic, there was a secret police force known as the Stasi, which was responsible for state surveillance, attempting to permeate every facet of life. Agents within and informants tied to the Stasi were both feared and hated, as there was no true semblance of privacy for most citizens. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the movie The Lives of Others follows one particular Stasi agent as he carries out his mission to spy on a well-known writer and his lover. As the film progresses, the audience is able to see the moral transformation of Stasi Captain Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler primarily through the director 's use of the script, colors and lighting, and music.
Tough Guise is a documentary about how the media constructs how the male masculinity is formed and how it is to be a man in our society today. The man speaking throughout this film is discussing how there is a crisis in today's masculinity. Arguing there exist a crisis in today's masculinity and how everything that bad usually happens is because a man did it. The media advertises and portrays how men should act, but often how men are portrayed in the media are of violence acts and the degrading of women. Some of the examples in the film included WWE wrestling, going to a school and asking students what they would be called if not acting tough such as soft, fag etc. Music from such artists boys from the hood shows African males acting like thugs and getting money is how boys should act. Another part of the film it showed how all students that shot up a school were men. But in the media it would never say men is responsible for all the negative things that happen in the world such as war. If women were in charge I really doubt there would be so much violence in the world. To my conclusion it's not only the media and video games that shape boys but everyday society. Violence seems to be a normal everyday thing that happens all around us and it's a normal masculinity for men. This video enlightened me to rethink my own participation in masculinity.
“Be a man”, is on of the most destructive phrases to tell boys and men. The Mask You Live In explains the struggles boys and men have growing up in a patriarchal society. I chose to watch this to understand how men feel oppressed. All year, I became aware of females and their struggles in the patriarchy. It is interesting to see that men are affected too. The documentary should have had more personal stories because it allows the audience to connect with and have empathy for men. On the other hand, the movie thoroughly demonstrated the inner conflict boys and men face in society. Men feel they must be strong and dominate. They feel they need to hide emotion and empathy in order to fit in. They must be manly in order to
In life, we all attempt to project some kind of personality to others. We have a mask we wear in different situations, but when times get tough, we eventually discard our masks and become our true selves. We don't live behind our masks until the tragic end, like the characters of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, and Fences by August Wilson. The three characters, Perry Smith, Blanche DuBois, and Troy Maxson wore masks to their bitter endings, always trying to fool everyone else. When times got tough, they had to face themselves, and they could not stand the sight.
This can be a good obsession Jack starts; as it protects their innocence from the beasts they become within the mask. However, it turns into a terrible catastrophe that ends in the boys hunting down each other. This is shown in the text when Jack applies the mask for the first time, “He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger... He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling” (66). The boys are also given too much power with the mask, power that can be used in a good way, but they chose to manipulate each other. The boys can change their personality in the mask by just washing it off and altering the colours and patterns: “He peered at the reflection and disliked it. He bent down, took up a double handful of lukewarm water and rubbed the mess from his face... Jack planned his new face” (66). The power each of the boys acquires from their masks is too much for 12-year-olds, each mask makes the boy a new person they can be bloodthirsty, murderous, killers or savage-lake cavemen that don’t communicate with one another. This happens in everyday lives and throughout this book the reader can experience what it’s like to live in third world countries. Many different ethnic groups and communities over the world use certain paint colours on their skin as a sign of difference from other ethnic groups; Jack’s aggregation does this to differentiate
Has anyone ever just needed something to hide from the world and not act their true self for a while? This is called an identity mask and it is the central idea for the two articles, “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant and “Online Identity” by Common Lit Staff develop the common central idea that people are often ashamed by who they are so they try to hide behind a fake identity. Although both these are about identity masks, they both are using masks to hide one’s true self but in different situations and they also cover how the different long-term affects differ and this essay compares and contrasts both points. These two articles are about how someone wants to cover up who they truly are in order to appear better to other people but have very different examples of the long-term effect of how using a mask affects people.
The Mask You Live In is a documentary about the way that society raises boys incorrectly and the consequences that come with it. It starts with the way society views masculinity. As a society, we are very hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine. We tell boys that to be a”real man” they must be aggressive, violent, and tough. This leaves boys from a very young age without a way to express themselves emotionally. All children, no matter their gender, start as a blank slate. but from the start society treats them differently. They are dressed different, they get different toys, their rooms are painted different colors are physical examples, but the way we treat little boys are girls are very different as well. We call little girls princesses and little
The film that is being used for the movie analysis is “Enough”, this movie was chosen due to the fact that it is based on domestic violence towards women. The movie begins with in Los Angeles diner were a waitress named slim works with her best friend Ginny (Kazan, 2002). While working her shift slim has a customer that starts harassing her over the name she has, but the companion of the annoying customer defends slim, which in turn starts a romance, later to become a marriage between the two (Kazan, 2002). The couple is later blessed with a daughter they name Gracie, and at the beginning the marriage seems to be a fairy tale out of a story book (Kazan, 2002). The fairy tale becomes a nightmare as time moves forwards for the couple,