The Guy – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane
This week on the Wednesday Blog, some thoughts on what it means to be a man in 2023 inspired by Greta Gerwig’s new film Barbie. Yes, there are a handful of mild spoilers.
On Saturday I went to see the new and widely acclaimed Barbie film after many weeks of hearing glowing reviews. I was particularly caught by one review in the New York Times which discussed how a dance scene featuring multiple Kens, Barbie’s male companion, was reminiscent of and even nodding towards the work of the late great Irish American song and dance man Gene Kelly, one of my favorite actors. So, I went into this movie with that anticipation at seeing something approaching Mr. Kelly’s work again on the screen, and with a good humor about the whole experience knowing this is a film about a toy.
And yet as the film progressed it became clear that it was not just a film about a toy but a story about the roles which people hold in society as they are traditionally inspired and determined by their gender. It became clear to me that this film was both deep in its commentary and clever in its camp. I particularly loved the moments where the characters in speech more so than in action broke the fourth wall and joined the audience in the joke. Yet the core idea that there is a parallel world off the Pacific coast called Barbieland where the dolls created by Mattel live happy lives knowing what good they’ve brought to the human world is something with far older roots.
To me, this idea fit in with a sort of sense of Heaven, a land beyond our mortal imaginings where those who have made a good impact on the people around them end up and rest on their sunny laurels side-by-side with other do-gooders. The idea of a place where the streets are paved with gold, and where people go to be good neighbors fits too with the idealized image I admit to conjuring in my own imagination of California, especially on our darkest, coldest, and snowiest days here in the Midwest. I know all too well that this sunny dream is far from the reality of the Golden State or any other place on Earth, yet without that dream how can we bring such a place to life?
In the Barbie film, the characters that I felt were intended to be my proxies in the story were the Kens, Barbie’s doting male companions and besides the one Allan the only guys in Barbieland. To be honest though, none of the Kens really stood out to me as someone who I could recognize in myself. Sure, when I’ve had crushes or begun to feel affection for a particular woman, I’ve longed for her to notice me and signal that the affection is mutual, yet the idea that men ought to be like the Kens in the same way that each Barbie represents a different type of accomplished woman feels limiting to me.
I actually felt more of a connection to the one Allan in Barbieland because he at least could see what was going on around him, in part because of his isolation from everyone else. Michael Cena played the awkwardness of being the only person with a level of realization about the goings on around him that fits those of us who often watch the social scene unfold around them. What struck me most about the Kens was how extreme their swings were, from docile doting admirers of the Barbies to overacting and overcompensating defenders of patriarchy with a strange fascination for horses. Ryan Gosling’s Ken in particular seemed to draw a great deal of his character, especially when he took over Barbieland, from William Zabka’s character Johnny Lawrence in the Karate Kid franchise and most recently the wonderfully silly Cobra Kai series on Netflix. All the flaws of that hypermasculinity best characterized in the muscle-man action films of the 80s was visible in Gosling’s Ken, and this represents one image of the ideal American man which we still see in our society. He’s the kind of person who has the potential to gain power or high status in business yet lacks the depth and self-awareness to make him an emotionally mature adult.
I’ve known a lot of people like this, and in many ways, they are one side of the big spectrum of what I’d call the guy, the average American male. I’ve been thinking about writing something called The Guy for a while, and I may still go all the way and write a novel with that title describing an average man just trying to go about his life. To me, when I think of this guy, he’s somewhat of a cross between Harold Lloyd’s character in The Freshman (1925), or Robert Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show, or more recently Adam Scott’s character Mark Scout in the recent Apple TV series Severance. The guy is the straight man in his world, yet he could be the comic to those around him and not be in on the joke. He sees his life as not quite what he dreamed of but he appreciates what he has and dreams of better things. He might be in a relationship or married, he might be gay or straight, he could be of any ethnic or racial background, what’s important is that he knows who he is and has found a culture to make his own.
In some ways, I tend to think of myself as the guy. I certainly haven’t had a normal American story, I’ve traveled and am only now at 30 starting my first full-time job, yet in many ways I recognize that I have less control over the world around me than I’d like, and so I hang on to what I can and go with the flow. The guy relies on others, whether consciously or not, and appreciates being seen and heard, even if he may not be comfortable admitting it. The guy might like watching sports but isn’t necessarily an athlete. All around, the guy is the Illinois of American males, about as ordinary and run-of-the-mill as you could imagine with some interesting bits here and there in his life.
So, watching the Kens take the stage together in that Gene Kelly-inspired dance number at the end of Barbie, I got what they were trying to do, but they were all on such a far extreme end of being a guy from me that I had a hard time emotionally connecting with them. But then again, they represent the ideal American male in our popular culture, the popular guys in school who became the fraternity brothers in college and eventually the corporate executives in their careers. That’s not me, and I’m okay with that. I like it when I see other people accept that they don’t fit this ideal definition of manhood, yet I worry when some who do accept that fact then also lose interest in trying to better themselves, when they lose interest in becoming their own ideal self. That goal should never be forgotten for the sake of convenience. The best thing about the guy, above all else, is that in his finest moments he remembers to dream of better tomorrows, and will even find a way to make it happen.
Our society needs guys like that to keep imagining a better future and how we can make that happen. They are the ones who Aaron Copeland honored with his New Deal era Fanfare for the Common Man. When I picture the guy in my mind, it is often in the style of the New Deal artists, the WPA painters whose murals decorate many public buildings across this country now 90 years after the New Deal began. Like all of Gene Kelly’s characters, the guy can dream, and will be remembered as a someone who makes those dreams come to life.
Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane 