http://www.democraticunderground.com/11142756Oh my.
Bonobo (17,676 posts)
People who cry at movies are not "real men"?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1090551
Sometimes much can be gleaned from a single sentence. It can reveal the true mindset that lurks beneath all the poses.
This Group addresses in many ways what it means to be a man.
Some have attacked its existence, claiming that "real men" don't need to whine.
Implications that there is an element of woman hating or mother-seeking or inability to fight or make love.
All point to one thing. A deep-set insecurity about one's own manhood based on a false view of what it means to be a man.
And so, I leave you with these questions.
Did you ever cry during a movie and do you feel, like the OP linked above, that it undermines your manhood?
Or is actually this clinging to worn out ideas of manliness that is a central cause for some of the problems that exist for men, and indeed for women as we try to achieve a better balance and learn from each other?
radicalliberal (56 posts)
1. I first saw The Diary of Anne Frank on TV during the spring of my sophomore year ...
... in high school. The ending did bring tears to my eyes, and I felt embarrassed by my reaction (maybe even ashamed of it) because I had been conditioned to believe that guys should never cry for any reason.
Decades later I was chatting with my personal trainer at the local health club during one of my workout sessions. He's one of the most muscular guys I've ever met. I told him about my reaction to the ending of that movie. His reaction? Well, he said, "Everybody cries. That was something to cry about because it really happened."
I dunno. I have a problem with this.
When I was in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, I was once invited to a "private viewing" of the boot-legged
Schindler's List; this was in the mid-1990s.
Movies aren't my thing, I get nothing out of them.
Anyway, I was freaked out by the reactions of the small audience near the end of the film; they cried.
I privately thought, "Whoa.
"There's miles and miles of old black-and-white film showing
real people going to
real deaths--and here people are bawling about
fictitious people
fictitiously suffering?
"What is it about people that imaginary things grab their heart-strings, but real things don't?"
Bah, humbug.
Broderick (4,568 posts)
7. I could never be accused of not being a man, and I can not be accused of not being manly
But, definitely I have a problem with movies. I can well up and it is uncomfortable. Anything to do with death, love, children, animals, pain and suffering and journeys into the abyss of the mind brings it.
I would say I was conditioned to think it was a bad thing when I was much younger and growing up. Now I don't give a ****. I do avoid watching any movies that might bring it on with male friends. Too many other things to do anyway, and my impatience to sit for 2 hours makes watching a movie hard to do anyway. Some men hold that notion that it is wrong, but those types probably aren't my friends to begin with.
I notice I am much more affected by movies than any woman I have ever been with. Some movies I can say that make me cry are movies like Jacob's Ladder, 50 first dates, the Green Mile, Dead Man Walking, Million Dollar Baby, Marley and me, Big Fish, The Truman Show, The Pursuit of Happiness, and many of the usual suspects like The Notebook, Steel Magnolias, ET, Dead Poets Society, Shawshank Redemption, What Dreams May Come, The Sixth Sense, American Beauty, When Harry met Sally, Patch Adams, etc etc etc.
The two hardest movies for me to watch and I love to watch them are Jacob's Ladder and Big Fish. Both of those absolutely kill me. The journey of death and life I guess, and fear of death has nothing to do with being manly, but with general acceptance and mortality.
MicaelS (3,799 posts)
9. Hell, I cry at movies all the time...
And I'm a middle aged white man. Happy, sad, nothing turns on the waterworks for me like a good film. Not a bit ashamed to admit it.
I think trumad just hates men.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody (7,782 posts)
10. Wait, did I miss something?
Is this all in response to a "trumad bit"?
**** that noise.
MicaelS (3,799 posts)
11. Yup....
trumad
White Pastie Faced Doughboys who think they are tough guys...
I see it all the time... Ink some Tats, throw on a bandana, maybe some leather... carry a piece...
but underneath--- one empty insecure soul who balls like a baby at the end of Ghost.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody (7,782 posts)
15. Oh, I saw that
Not as silly as I imagined....but I'm doubting he sees it "all the time".
Besides, who's he writing it for? The white supremacists lurkers here?
opiate69 (5,595 posts)
12. He truly is a Prince of Projection....
and as for the crying issue, I find myself tearing up during all the tear-jerker moments on shows like Hells Kitchen (when they bring in the contestants families for example) and a shit ton of other times... moreso since my singer/best friend died 3 years ago (the last time I completely fell apart with sadness and openly bawled like the proverbial baby)
Warren DeMontague (37,840 posts)
17. Maybe he just hates dic....tionaries.
^^in case one didn't get the drift of the above exchange, the truemud primitive, the pasty-faced limpid wimpy primitive, is one of the biggest bullies on Skins's island.
Denninmi (2,992 posts)
16. Dude, I would blubber like a baby at the right scene.
And I wouldn't be the least bit ashamed of it.
And I would go see a rom-com film like 'Pretty Woman' any time over a dumb bang-bang shoot em up Rambo type movie.
Yeah, I've had issues at times in my life, when OTHER people have decided I wasn't "manly" enough. Like my late father, who pretty much told me so because I wasn't interested in HIS particular vision of masculinity, which was going out into the fields and streams and blowing away Bambi. I would rather stay at home and cook and garden and putter with things like making birdhouses. And I wasn't really what you would call a metrosexual, but there was a time in my life when I was more concerned about clothes and image etc. than I am now that I'm older, and he didn't approve of that either.
I still don't do the things that many men are into and are considered uber-masculine. I'm not an athlete, and I'm not a sports fan, either. I don't hunt or fish. I don't womanize, or get into bikes or cars or anything like that. And I'm not the least bit ashamed of it. And frankly, I think I would make an awesome husband to any woman and awesome father in a lot of ways, well, other than the dirt-poor part
I think real masculinity isn't macho garbage, it's being a good, decent human being who treats others with respect.
Edited to add - I read the linked thread and the OP. I don't remember tearing up at the ending of Ghost, but I'm pretty sure I had a really hard time during Schindler's List.
It's a pretty big campfire; if one has the time, I suggest one get out the boat and row over to Skins's island to see it in its entirety.
As mentioned earlier, franksolich doesn't do movies, but will admit to crying at sad endings of books.
The worst time was after reading the death-bed scene in a biography of Henry R. Luce; I was despondent for days.
Really.
And the death-bed scene of Douglas MacArthur affected me the same way, although not quite as much.
It was very sad, these people had to die.
