I caught just a bit of director Sam Peckinpah?s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” on cable many years ago. Something about its bleakness, sharpened by Bob Dylan?s score, always stuck with me, and I had been waiting on its DVD release ever since.
Not long ago I noticed the new edition on my preferred movie-rental Web site, Netflix.com. It?s usually very quick, but I couldn?t wait. A local non-Blockbuster rental shop had it and I was set.
It turned out to be a really fine film, better than I hoped. It has Peckinpah?s peculiar brand of stately violence. Its characters pretend that it is a dying Spartan code that drives them, though they know it is just greed.
James Coburn?s Pat Garrett hates himself for hunting his friend for money. Garrett finally finds the house where Billy is hiding. But before the kill, Garrett sits on the moonlit porch listening to Billy make love to a woman for the last time. He waits not to ease his guilt, but because Billy would have done the same. Peckinpah?s men respect each other as men.
I went back to Netflix later to read what others said about the film. “JS” at Fullerton, Calif., wrote: “This movie has the most masculine energy of any film I?ve ever seen. (I?m not gay by the way.)”
Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield tries for an answer with “Manliness.” It?s a scholarly exploration of the term, with evidence and examples from Darwinian biology to Aristotle to Hemingway. It is also the kind of book that will have an influence disproportionate to the number of people who actually read it, mainly because its point is reasonable enough to be considered controversial in academia.
Confidence in the face of risk is as close as Mansfield gets to a definition of manliness. He is more interesting when describing our unprecedented attempt at a “gender-neutral society.” Equal opportunity for men and women should be the law, says Mansfield, but we shouldn?t be surprised that “men will grasp the opportunity more readily and more wholeheartedly than women.” For Mansfield, assertiveness, leadership and courage are intrinsic and immutable in men.
It?s a good thing Mansfield has tenure because former Harvard president Larry Summers was bounced for suggesting something quite similar.
But isn?t Mansfield right about the essential differences between men and women? Who would be reassured at the sight of a woman firefighter coming to the rescue? And who wouldn?t squirm if the nurse shaving you for surgery was a man?
Mansfield goes on to say that manliness is undervalued, but it has to be expressed somehow. Think about the gleeful nihilism of “Fight Club.” Or its reverse, churches exhorting their men to be “tender warriors” or Promise Keepers. Neither satisfies.
“Unemployed manliness” is allowed out of its cage, but only when absolutely needed. Such a crisis is bluntly depicted by the new film “United 93.” We know what happened on that plane, but seeing how it happened amplifies the sickening anger we feel about it.
The passengers are all scared and crying. But it?s a handful of men who realize they have to do more than call for help. “We need all the big guys,” one of them says. They plan their attack the same way they would call a play in a football huddle. Then they charge up the aisle. Savagely.
Several women in the theater clapped and cheered when they did. I looked around and was able to see all the men sitting silently, fists balled and jaws clenched. I?m sure I wasn?t the only man at that moment who in some stupid, visceral way wished he had been on that plane and done what those men did.
Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at [email protected].
