Tough Guise: Film Review

The film Tough Guise takes an in depth look at the social constructions of masculinity through media in the 1950s through the end of the century. The main concern of the film is that the representations of maleness in media are perpetuating a society where men are increasingly violent towards women and other men. In the film Jackson Katz states that the over representation of male characters as violent in television is clearly sending a message to viewers of the “real man.” He continues to state that this phenomenon is only multiplied when it comes to the representation of non-whites in media. He states that often men of color are shown in overly stereotypical roles such as the Asian martial arts hero or the African American gang leader yielding a big gun and a threatening stance.
While discussing reports of crime in the news Katz indicates that when men commit violent crimes gender is taken out of the equation. He illustrates this by showing head lines that say things like: So Many Women Were Raped, as opposed to This Many Men Rape, or reports of Kids Killing Kids, not Boys Killing Classmates. In their article What Triggers School Shootings, Kimmel and Mahler agree with this point. They say that society has completely “missed the mark” with regards to school violence and that “…desire to make sure that others know that you are a “real man” plays a pivotal role in these school shootings” (Kimmel & Mahler, 2010). The film Tough Guise illustrates the methods used to “train” these boys to be real men. It is possible that society is not seeing this violence in boys as a social problem because we do not see men as a deviant group therefore, society prefers to claim that violence is an individual problem not some inherent problem with today’s men as a whole (Fish, 2010).

The most convincing point made in the film is that men have over compensated to women’s’ challenges in business and politics and therefore, the depictions of men in media have gotten physically bigger and of women physically smaller. The film illustrates this point by looking at how much bigger and muscular heroes such as Batman, Superman, and GI Jo have gotten over the years. It would be interesting to do an experiment to see how boys today would react to the super heroes of a few decades ago to see if they thought they were “real men.”

This film is a good representation of how media continues to manipulate our ideas of normalcy and non-deviance. This film should be shown to high school children in an attempt to challenge their ideas of masculinity and to show them the preposterous ideal they are trying to achieve.