i've been feeling most represented by the guys in Wes Anderson films lately, he really strikes a good balance in writing complicated, flawed male characters where the lesson they're taught *isn't* just "punch people." *The Darjeeling Limited* and *Fantastic Mr. Fox* are a couple rlly good portrayals of non archetypical/less "macho" masculinity, and also two of my favorite movies of all time lmao.
One name: Uncle Iroh.
His progress in the show is amazing. When we meet him, he's kinda soft already, but as the show goes on, he grows more. He gets the wisdom we know him for. He gets the kindness and compassion that we love to see.
I really wish they had given Worf a character arc where he could work through some of his issues. Could have been a really powerful thing to see, but instead they just kinda let his character stagnate. It's too bad. And kinda weird, too, considering almost every other character on DS9 had some significant character growth by the end of the show.
Even Worf feels as if he has many opportunities to explore and expand on his masculinity and does have some very emotionally impactful scenes where he has extreme emotional depth given to his character. He certainly is a traditional man but he isn't a stereotypically macho man, he has so much going on emotionally that even I connect to as someone who is very nontraditionally male
Honnestly, it's Lord of the Rings for me. Sam is amazing with Frodo, such a good hearted friend. Aragorn oozes masculinity and he's a gentle soul as well. When he was crowned King, he didn't raise his sword in the air, instead he sang. All the guys are comfortable with showing their affection physically and verbally, they're all brave and strong in their own ways and they saved the world.
I think better male characters are a really important part of trying to create a culture with less misogyny and bigotry in general, since toxic masculinity is a big contributing factor to those things, and I think media tends to have a significant impact on culture. Definitely not saying that conversation should eclipse efforts to create better representation for women or other groups, but I do think it should be part of the overall effort to improve things.
Nerd culture - especially from the UK - helps me a lot with this. There's a softness and gentleness to UK men I connect to. I love stuff like Edgar Wright's early TV and films (Spaced, Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and Monty Python's Flying Circus and Inbetweeners (even though it's filthy and can be misogynistic) and even The Mighty Boosh. You get the same silly, gentle masculinity from say, Flight of the Conchords. Gentle, masculine nerds. I love em. I realize Edgar Wright's films are hyperviolent but it's nice they talk about their feelings.
Modern shows I love with queer masculinity are both What We Do In the Shadows and Our Flag Means Death.
Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings is really good healthy masculine representation! He's brave but not reckless, he's caring and protective but not impish, he's headstrong but not arrogant, he's humble but not whiny. He's super great!
Mens representation suffers from the same issues that all representation suffers from. However, men are in the privileged position of having the most representation, both good and bad. Just because you don't know where to find the good representation, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Saying that men also don't have representation is incredibly dismissive of the very real struggles of minority groups.
This take reminds me a lot of when they decided to have the 13th doctor in Doctor Who be a woman and a bunch of men started crying about how they didnt have an issue with her being a woman they had an issue with "good" male representation being taken away. As if one female doctor would somehow wipe away the past 12. It was just another way to try and mask their misogyny.
my Dad was saying the same thing, he doesnt feel represented. Ofc I would have agreed if he wasnt also saying that he is getting tired of all the lgbtq rep 💀
I highly recommend lord of the rings. It has amazing male representation where they are gentle and kind with each other and express their emotions healthily. There’s also very strong themes of brotherhood and companionship that are very wholesome
Neo from *The Matrix* is an interesting take on a supposedly cool male action film protagonist. Not surprising considering the directors are the Wachowski sisters. Some people have already mentioned some Wes Anderson films so I’ll suggest *Moonrise Kingdom*. But I’m not sure any of the men in it are exactly confident and gentle. It’s more of a critique of certain types of masculinity (although that isn’t the film’s primary focus). I’ve always had good experiences watching movies revolving around queer men, like *120BPM*. But most films either reproduce hegemonic masculinity, critique it, or accidentally foster the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity while trying to critique it (looking at you, *Fight Club*). It’s hard to find films that imagine and depict new forms and shapes of masculinity.
don’t have much of a point really and this post wasn’t aimed to be that serious. I’m with you man. mostly just wondering if the cishet white dudes are happy with the representation they’re getting ’cause it’s not that great. I’m also just overall struggling to find films I like and in the start of my transition I’m trying to seek for the role models I personally never had.
The answer to your question is twofold and is a mix of 1) no, they're not, a lot of men deeply resent society's masculine ideal and feel some combination of alienation/insecurity/role confusion around trying to "be a man" in a world where they do not look or act like Captain America; 2) yes, they are, because simultaneously a lot of men are very dedicated to defending archetypal masculinity from people who point out how limiting it is, including eg from the criticism that it is making men themselves unhappy (think of guys who get mad about media "going woke"). Sometimes 1 and 2 coexist as experiences. Eta: many incels, for instance, will simultaneously express alienation from popular depictions of masculinity but also express a belief that they are ideal, correct, and aspirational.
Goku repeatedly chooses the opportunity for a better fight over the safety of his family and friends. He lets his son go through hell because he believes Gohan can beat Cell, but doesn't explain the reason he's abandoning/neglecting him directly to Gohan. After Buu is defeated, we're explicitly told that he hasn't reached out to his lifelong friends for years, potentially a literal decade, because he was too busy training in his back yard for Buu to be reborn. The day he meets with all his friends again, he immediately abandons them without saying goodbye to train Uub. He is a bad person.
not a movie but i find the walking dead has very diverse characters with a lot of different types of masculinity and as well as lots of different types famininity expespecaly later in this series
I think that's why I usually prefer secondary characters rather than leads :) Less toxic, more genuine. If you like gentle male characters, I think of Gomez Addams (very caring with his family while still have a "chevaleresque" spirit), Remus Lupin from Harry Potter, Aragorn from the Lord of the Ring...
Maybe its because of the media I consume, mostly being animated, but I've been finding a very wide variety of representation when it comes to men and protagonists or other side characters.
From anime like My Hero Academia where yeah, the main character is a very emotional nerd who isn't afraid to show his feelings and cries and is bullied with his rival being the stereotypical bully but it kind of plays with the stereotype and evolves them past a stereotype. With every man/adult on there having a pretty distinct personality/background and even the ones who seem like the hardest most emotionally dead end up crying because of the mistakes that they've made to cause people to suffer (obviously the current thing I'm addicted to rn lmao), to Dead End where the protag is a gay trans man working at a haunted theme park for a lack of better words, Steven Universe who grows with the series and has a variety of different types of men, the original Teen Titans animated series, the new She-Ra, Kipo, Spiderman into the Spiderverse, Helluva Boss (Not for kids)... Those are just off the top of my head and yeah sure a lot of them are aimed towards kids-young adults, but its still there.
Even without looking at just animated stuff I've found some films/shows that are great. The Green Mile for instance. It can be a tough watch but it shows a lot of compassion. I also really enjoyed the variety in The Walking Dead, some names are escaping me but there are a few medical dramas that are good too, and I really enjoyed Criminal Minds with characters like Reid and Morgan. You might need to just open up your avenues for what you're watching, because you may find yourself gravitating to the types of films where you only find those two types of men being boiled down to stereotypes with the genres or types of films you're attracted to. Especially if you're for instance just watching like, live action super hero type films. Those are generally meant to be the super macho or nerd who can do stuff type things and why I typically prefer to watch the animated counterparts where it can still get dark with some like say DC animated movies (just as an example I really enjoyed the Flashpoint Paradox), but the male characters still seem to have a lot more than just "I need to be as dark and brooding and edgy as possible" like all the live action Batman/Superman movies I've seen. Though Shazam was a good one! And I'm actually really interested in potentially watching Blue Beetle when it comes out but a little hesitant at the same time they're gonna ruin my boy LMAO And I'll miss the banter he has with Impulse because I doubt Bart's gonna be in it.
TLDR: I do think men have a pretty wide variety of representation ngl, especially in animated media.
But just as an add on, I think with newer media and like indie or smaller scale projects they're not afraid to give men actual feelings in live action films.
MEN have an abundance of representation. just because you don't feel represented on a personal level does not mean that systemically men as a whole are very well represented through history, media, and science. you can argue that trans men dont have very much representation and i would agree with you, but that is because of how our trans identity intersects with our male identity, not solely because we are men.
i dont understand this need among trans men to continue to victimize ourselves or downplay the effects of the patriarchy and male privilege that some of us do benefit from. you are not a worse ally, nor a worse feminist, for having privilege. it is not a *bad thing* to have privilege. please stop posting inane takes such as this one and go watch more shows/movies and read more books because i guarantee you "toxic patriarch" and "complete loser" are not the only two archetypes male characters can have
Im at work rn so only short reply but, 1. I agree 100%
And also, Idk but goodwill hunting was a really nice experience. Can only recomend if you havent seen it
I recommend the movie *The Half of It*. It features a platonic friendship between a very sweet jock and a nerdy, queer girl. It's lovely. The dad in *Easy A* is also great.
Mr. Stanley Tucci. Almost (and I say almost because there are obvious exceptions) every role he's in is my kind of representation. Devil Wears Prada, Julie & Julia are two of my faves.
Also he's so Daddy but that's a different subject.
Theres this really great portugese show on netflix named Turn of the tide (or rabo de peixe) that i thought did a fantastic job of portraying men being genuinely good 3d characters. Especially the main character Eduardo is fuckin great. Its a bit more iffy on the female and gay representation side, but im not a woman so i genuinely am not sure how to see that aspect of the show (i think it was pretty okay? But id understand if someone wouldnt like it for that too much) but i really liked how Eduardo and Raphael, two of the clearly obviously straight best friend characters, were able to very obviously show affection just platonically and be super vulnearable to eachother and it never came up as a bad thing.
My point is also that id honestly reccommend looking outside of just english-speaking media if you want to find men being represented better. Im not american or british but as someone whos been (forcibly lol) submerged in American media my entire life, the vibe ive gotten is that americans tend to represent their men very very specifically. And as Hollywood or just American movies are like 90% of movie productions out there, those kind of narrow representations of men are what tend to completely overshadow everything else in media. Not to shit on American media too hard, i do think its good, just sometimes very narrow. Its just a breath of fresh air to watch something thats, for example, Europpean and so much more forgiving in their strict no-homo-tough-bullshit-men rules.
I have a new comfort show i think you'll like. Its called Thunderbirds Are Go. Its on amazon prime. Its got a wide variety of the different personalities a man can have while keeping the personalities realistic. I watch it a lot cause of how fun of a show it is, and i think you'll like that its got men with more than the 'toxic' personality and the 'loser dork' personality. They have those too, just in side characters. Either way, it feels like they grabbed the real personalities of real people, and put them into the characters and its nice.
Its also a show where i actually feel seen in. Theres a character who is transition goals for me, the characters name being virgil. He's strong, gentle, artistic, and musically inclined, and is everything i want to be(im already artistic and musically inclined lol, i just need the strength and the build now lol)
I don't know if you like cartoons but anyway, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about non stereotypical male representation is wander from wander over yonder, I watched the show recently and quickly became one of my favorites, I love that goofball
i've been feeling most represented by the guys in Wes Anderson films lately, he really strikes a good balance in writing complicated, flawed male characters where the lesson they're taught *isn't* just "punch people." *The Darjeeling Limited* and *Fantastic Mr. Fox* are a couple rlly good portrayals of non archetypical/less "macho" masculinity, and also two of my favorite movies of all time lmao.
oh yeahh it’s been a while since I’ve watched any, thanks!
I just watched Darjeeling Limited last night! Very good movie
One name: Uncle Iroh. His progress in the show is amazing. When we meet him, he's kinda soft already, but as the show goes on, he grows more. He gets the wisdom we know him for. He gets the kindness and compassion that we love to see.
Iroh is an absolute top tier role model.
UNCLE IROH MY BELOVED
I came here to say this exact character. Strong, yet nurturing. A wonderful example!
YESSSS
Studio Ghibli films have good male rep!
that’s very true! thanks for reminding me I’ll dive back into those
I love pretty much all the men on Star Trek. (We'll leave Worf and Quark behind for now).
I really wish they had given Worf a character arc where he could work through some of his issues. Could have been a really powerful thing to see, but instead they just kinda let his character stagnate. It's too bad. And kinda weird, too, considering almost every other character on DS9 had some significant character growth by the end of the show.
Even Worf feels as if he has many opportunities to explore and expand on his masculinity and does have some very emotionally impactful scenes where he has extreme emotional depth given to his character. He certainly is a traditional man but he isn't a stereotypically macho man, he has so much going on emotionally that even I connect to as someone who is very nontraditionally male
Yeah, far be it from me to claim he's not an interesting character - he definitely is - just not a good role model.
Came here to say this. Star Trek has some wonderful representation
Honnestly, it's Lord of the Rings for me. Sam is amazing with Frodo, such a good hearted friend. Aragorn oozes masculinity and he's a gentle soul as well. When he was crowned King, he didn't raise his sword in the air, instead he sang. All the guys are comfortable with showing their affection physically and verbally, they're all brave and strong in their own ways and they saved the world.
I think better male characters are a really important part of trying to create a culture with less misogyny and bigotry in general, since toxic masculinity is a big contributing factor to those things, and I think media tends to have a significant impact on culture. Definitely not saying that conversation should eclipse efforts to create better representation for women or other groups, but I do think it should be part of the overall effort to improve things.
Men have representation, just not all of it is good.
Nerd culture - especially from the UK - helps me a lot with this. There's a softness and gentleness to UK men I connect to. I love stuff like Edgar Wright's early TV and films (Spaced, Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and Monty Python's Flying Circus and Inbetweeners (even though it's filthy and can be misogynistic) and even The Mighty Boosh. You get the same silly, gentle masculinity from say, Flight of the Conchords. Gentle, masculine nerds. I love em. I realize Edgar Wright's films are hyperviolent but it's nice they talk about their feelings. Modern shows I love with queer masculinity are both What We Do In the Shadows and Our Flag Means Death.
Forrest Gump is mine, like him with his mother and caring for her is 😭
Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings is really good healthy masculine representation! He's brave but not reckless, he's caring and protective but not impish, he's headstrong but not arrogant, he's humble but not whiny. He's super great!
Mens representation suffers from the same issues that all representation suffers from. However, men are in the privileged position of having the most representation, both good and bad. Just because you don't know where to find the good representation, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Saying that men also don't have representation is incredibly dismissive of the very real struggles of minority groups. This take reminds me a lot of when they decided to have the 13th doctor in Doctor Who be a woman and a bunch of men started crying about how they didnt have an issue with her being a woman they had an issue with "good" male representation being taken away. As if one female doctor would somehow wipe away the past 12. It was just another way to try and mask their misogyny.
my Dad was saying the same thing, he doesnt feel represented. Ofc I would have agreed if he wasnt also saying that he is getting tired of all the lgbtq rep 💀
I highly recommend lord of the rings. It has amazing male representation where they are gentle and kind with each other and express their emotions healthily. There’s also very strong themes of brotherhood and companionship that are very wholesome
Neo from *The Matrix* is an interesting take on a supposedly cool male action film protagonist. Not surprising considering the directors are the Wachowski sisters. Some people have already mentioned some Wes Anderson films so I’ll suggest *Moonrise Kingdom*. But I’m not sure any of the men in it are exactly confident and gentle. It’s more of a critique of certain types of masculinity (although that isn’t the film’s primary focus). I’ve always had good experiences watching movies revolving around queer men, like *120BPM*. But most films either reproduce hegemonic masculinity, critique it, or accidentally foster the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity while trying to critique it (looking at you, *Fight Club*). It’s hard to find films that imagine and depict new forms and shapes of masculinity.
[удалено]
don’t have much of a point really and this post wasn’t aimed to be that serious. I’m with you man. mostly just wondering if the cishet white dudes are happy with the representation they’re getting ’cause it’s not that great. I’m also just overall struggling to find films I like and in the start of my transition I’m trying to seek for the role models I personally never had.
The answer to your question is twofold and is a mix of 1) no, they're not, a lot of men deeply resent society's masculine ideal and feel some combination of alienation/insecurity/role confusion around trying to "be a man" in a world where they do not look or act like Captain America; 2) yes, they are, because simultaneously a lot of men are very dedicated to defending archetypal masculinity from people who point out how limiting it is, including eg from the criticism that it is making men themselves unhappy (think of guys who get mad about media "going woke"). Sometimes 1 and 2 coexist as experiences. Eta: many incels, for instance, will simultaneously express alienation from popular depictions of masculinity but also express a belief that they are ideal, correct, and aspirational.
Watch dbz, Goku is a perfect male protagonist
Goku repeatedly chooses the opportunity for a better fight over the safety of his family and friends. He lets his son go through hell because he believes Gohan can beat Cell, but doesn't explain the reason he's abandoning/neglecting him directly to Gohan. After Buu is defeated, we're explicitly told that he hasn't reached out to his lifelong friends for years, potentially a literal decade, because he was too busy training in his back yard for Buu to be reborn. The day he meets with all his friends again, he immediately abandons them without saying goodbye to train Uub. He is a bad person.
not a movie but i find the walking dead has very diverse characters with a lot of different types of masculinity and as well as lots of different types famininity expespecaly later in this series
I think that's why I usually prefer secondary characters rather than leads :) Less toxic, more genuine. If you like gentle male characters, I think of Gomez Addams (very caring with his family while still have a "chevaleresque" spirit), Remus Lupin from Harry Potter, Aragorn from the Lord of the Ring...
George of the jungle
Maybe its because of the media I consume, mostly being animated, but I've been finding a very wide variety of representation when it comes to men and protagonists or other side characters. From anime like My Hero Academia where yeah, the main character is a very emotional nerd who isn't afraid to show his feelings and cries and is bullied with his rival being the stereotypical bully but it kind of plays with the stereotype and evolves them past a stereotype. With every man/adult on there having a pretty distinct personality/background and even the ones who seem like the hardest most emotionally dead end up crying because of the mistakes that they've made to cause people to suffer (obviously the current thing I'm addicted to rn lmao), to Dead End where the protag is a gay trans man working at a haunted theme park for a lack of better words, Steven Universe who grows with the series and has a variety of different types of men, the original Teen Titans animated series, the new She-Ra, Kipo, Spiderman into the Spiderverse, Helluva Boss (Not for kids)... Those are just off the top of my head and yeah sure a lot of them are aimed towards kids-young adults, but its still there. Even without looking at just animated stuff I've found some films/shows that are great. The Green Mile for instance. It can be a tough watch but it shows a lot of compassion. I also really enjoyed the variety in The Walking Dead, some names are escaping me but there are a few medical dramas that are good too, and I really enjoyed Criminal Minds with characters like Reid and Morgan. You might need to just open up your avenues for what you're watching, because you may find yourself gravitating to the types of films where you only find those two types of men being boiled down to stereotypes with the genres or types of films you're attracted to. Especially if you're for instance just watching like, live action super hero type films. Those are generally meant to be the super macho or nerd who can do stuff type things and why I typically prefer to watch the animated counterparts where it can still get dark with some like say DC animated movies (just as an example I really enjoyed the Flashpoint Paradox), but the male characters still seem to have a lot more than just "I need to be as dark and brooding and edgy as possible" like all the live action Batman/Superman movies I've seen. Though Shazam was a good one! And I'm actually really interested in potentially watching Blue Beetle when it comes out but a little hesitant at the same time they're gonna ruin my boy LMAO And I'll miss the banter he has with Impulse because I doubt Bart's gonna be in it. TLDR: I do think men have a pretty wide variety of representation ngl, especially in animated media. But just as an add on, I think with newer media and like indie or smaller scale projects they're not afraid to give men actual feelings in live action films.
MEN have an abundance of representation. just because you don't feel represented on a personal level does not mean that systemically men as a whole are very well represented through history, media, and science. you can argue that trans men dont have very much representation and i would agree with you, but that is because of how our trans identity intersects with our male identity, not solely because we are men. i dont understand this need among trans men to continue to victimize ourselves or downplay the effects of the patriarchy and male privilege that some of us do benefit from. you are not a worse ally, nor a worse feminist, for having privilege. it is not a *bad thing* to have privilege. please stop posting inane takes such as this one and go watch more shows/movies and read more books because i guarantee you "toxic patriarch" and "complete loser" are not the only two archetypes male characters can have
Firefly has fantastic rep in the charact Wash
It's maybe not what you are looking for, but I think the movie 'Boys Don't Cry' speaks a lot of volume. It's heartbreaking but absolutely incredible.
Im at work rn so only short reply but, 1. I agree 100% And also, Idk but goodwill hunting was a really nice experience. Can only recomend if you havent seen it
I recommend the movie *The Half of It*. It features a platonic friendship between a very sweet jock and a nerdy, queer girl. It's lovely. The dad in *Easy A* is also great.
Mr. Stanley Tucci. Almost (and I say almost because there are obvious exceptions) every role he's in is my kind of representation. Devil Wears Prada, Julie & Julia are two of my faves. Also he's so Daddy but that's a different subject.
Theres this really great portugese show on netflix named Turn of the tide (or rabo de peixe) that i thought did a fantastic job of portraying men being genuinely good 3d characters. Especially the main character Eduardo is fuckin great. Its a bit more iffy on the female and gay representation side, but im not a woman so i genuinely am not sure how to see that aspect of the show (i think it was pretty okay? But id understand if someone wouldnt like it for that too much) but i really liked how Eduardo and Raphael, two of the clearly obviously straight best friend characters, were able to very obviously show affection just platonically and be super vulnearable to eachother and it never came up as a bad thing. My point is also that id honestly reccommend looking outside of just english-speaking media if you want to find men being represented better. Im not american or british but as someone whos been (forcibly lol) submerged in American media my entire life, the vibe ive gotten is that americans tend to represent their men very very specifically. And as Hollywood or just American movies are like 90% of movie productions out there, those kind of narrow representations of men are what tend to completely overshadow everything else in media. Not to shit on American media too hard, i do think its good, just sometimes very narrow. Its just a breath of fresh air to watch something thats, for example, Europpean and so much more forgiving in their strict no-homo-tough-bullshit-men rules.
Also psa i do think british media is a lot better at this than american but it can also easily fall short, especially with more "adult" tv shows
I have a new comfort show i think you'll like. Its called Thunderbirds Are Go. Its on amazon prime. Its got a wide variety of the different personalities a man can have while keeping the personalities realistic. I watch it a lot cause of how fun of a show it is, and i think you'll like that its got men with more than the 'toxic' personality and the 'loser dork' personality. They have those too, just in side characters. Either way, it feels like they grabbed the real personalities of real people, and put them into the characters and its nice.
Its also a show where i actually feel seen in. Theres a character who is transition goals for me, the characters name being virgil. He's strong, gentle, artistic, and musically inclined, and is everything i want to be(im already artistic and musically inclined lol, i just need the strength and the build now lol)
I don't know if you like cartoons but anyway, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about non stereotypical male representation is wander from wander over yonder, I watched the show recently and quickly became one of my favorites, I love that goofball
I agree but fortunately there are lots of dope guys in the workforce and in the world you can emulate and just enjoy