What men understand about life (that women need to learn)

Yes, let's talk about Top Gun!

I went to see Top Gun: Maverick the other day.

Great film.

It’s also Paramount’s biggest worldwide film ever. Some people are already calling it the “movie phenomenon of the decade”. The amount of money this film has made GLOBALLY is CRAZY.

It also made me think about MEN and EMOTIONS. That’s after all what these classic blockbusters do so well.

You might have noticed that films like Top Gun never end on the EMOTIONAL CLIMAX. In the first Top Gun film (the much more homoerotic 1986 version…) the EMOTIONAL CLIMAX is (obviously…) the embrace between Maverick and Iceman on the aircraft carrier.

- You can be my wingman anytime

-  Bullshit. You can be mine!

The scene then cuts to Maverick throwing his dead friend’s dog tags into the ocean. Finally letting go of his own guilt.

But the film doesn’t end there.

No.

It keeps going for several minutes.

A producer once told me that one of the reasons that war films tend to have this structure is that they are made to make male audiences cry. Therefore you can’t end them just after THE EMOTIONAL CLIMAX. Your (male) audience needs time to gather themselves and pretend they have not in fact CRIED

That’s what you are basically giving them.

Time to dry their tears before the lights come on…

This summer I did a (Swedish) radio program about men and masculinity. One of the things I talked about was the type of stories we sell to men compared to the stories we market to women.

We often think of feelings as something “feminine”. Society puts a great deal of effort into telling men that they have to shut down a large part of their emotional life in order to be “real men”.

Boys don’t cry.

And all of that…

BUT look at the stories we market to men. Look at the movies, books and TV series that men consume. Go and see Top Gun: Maverick!

Stories sold to men, whether it is Top Gun, Star Wars or a documentary about the German Spring Offensive of 1918 (or yet another book about Stalingrad…) they are all VERY DRAMATIC AND VERY EMOTIONAL.

Stories for men tend to be about stuff like FIGHTING the greatest EVIL or walking through FIRE for love. They portray the most loyal FELLOWSHIPS, the friendships that you are LITERALLY prepared to die for, relationships that are tested again and again in battle, or in small vessels tossed around on vast oceans or in GALAXIES FAR AWAY.

Stories for men are stories of HONOUR and SACRIFICE. About excruciating PAIN or total TRIUMPH. About playing BIG. Winning BIGGER. Or losing everything and therefore SEEKING REVENGE in ALL-CONSUMING ANGER.

Simply put, stories for men are EMOTIONS ON STEROIDS.

In Top Gun: Maverick Val Kilmer’s ageing admiral says to Tom Cruise that he needs to “let go” of the young man who has become like a son to him. Tom Cruise’s eyes when he replies “I don’t know how” is the reason he is the biggest movie star ON THE FREAKING PLANET.

It’s ALL about THE FEELINGS.

In order to make you understand my bigger point here I will need to do something (that I also did on the Swedish radio this summer) I need to break down the key scene of Steven Spielberg’s classic World War II film Saving Private Ryan.

Here we go!

At the end of Saving Private Ryan Tom Hanks has been hit by a shell from a German tank. Then he has been shot in the chest. Now he is dying.

Matt Damon runs over to him.

Up until this point the film has mainly been about Tom Hanks trying to FIND AND RESCUE MATT DAMON. Tom Hanks has succeeded BUT he has also risked the lives of eight men to save just one (Matt Damon…).

That’s the moral dilemma of the film.

SIDE NOTE: Matt Damon does get himself into tricky situations doesn’t he? In Interstellar he also has to be rescued from a faraway place. AND it’s the same in The Martian AND Courage Under Fire… Some genius (to whom I bow my head in deep respect) has actually calculated the TOTAL COST OF RESCUING MATT DAMON.

It’s 900 billion dollars!

Who would have known…

ANYWAY.

In Saving Private Ryan Tom Hanks is now dying and whispers to Matt Damon:

- Earn this…earn it.

Then he is dead and everybody is crying.

FINALLY reinforcements arrive…

What Tom Hanks means is that Matt Damon needs to understand the sacrifice that others have made for him. Freedom never comes without a cost. Others have died for your sake. Your life now needs to be in service of others, repaying a debt that can never be repaid.

Let’s just pause for a moment and APPRECIATE the depth of emotion in this scene. Its whole EPIC nature. Let’s then compare it to the type of stories society markets to women.

• It could be a novel (loved by critics) about middle-class couples who bicker and have dinner with each other over 250 pages…

• It could be a period drama concerned with who will marry whom in the English countryside. ..

• It could be a TV Series about skinny, white 20-year olds who are very bad at communicating their feelings but still have a lot of sex (while they hang out in different European capitals).

There’s nothing wrong about these type of stories.

They can be all sorts of excellent.

It is just VERY IMPORTANT to not confuse them with life.

Because life is not like that.

Life is Top Gun!

It is epic and big. It has got BETRAYAL and LOYALTY. GRACE. HONOUR and PAIN. FIRE and MAGIC. Impossible situations and REAL BRAVERY. People who will carry you up the mountain when you can’t walk. And people who won't.

DEMONS. Dark forces. THINGS WORTH DEFENDING. Dragons you must seek. Love that conquers all (but never in the way that you think…). Dark forests where you wander for years without realising that you are lost. Fates you cannot escape. SHADOWS. Stuff you need to blow up. Levels of excellence that you need to strive for. AND the realisation, that can be found in every good fairy tale (like Top Gun!) that what you are always fighting against is (some aspect) of yourself.

All of this IS TRUE.

Women are just not allowed to take life this seriously.

But life IS this serious.

That’s why it’s such a problem that stories for women tend to be about small emotions. While stories for men are allowed to be about the big ones…

It’s simply not fair!

Men have monopolised BIG FEELINGS and BIG DEEDS. They will tell you that they are off to watch a film about “cool fighter jets”.

They are lying! They are off to FEEL ALL THE FEELINGS and think about themselves through the lens of an epic story.

Joseph Campbell the great scholar of mythology (who popularised the term “the hero’s journey”) was once asked about women.

Was there a “hero’s journey” for women? A universal myth that could help women make sense of their own lives as epic adventures?

But the great scholar or mythology answered that women didn’t need stories like this.

- In the whole mythological tradition woman is just there, he said.

- All she has to do is realise that she is the place that people are trying to get to!

According to Campbell we are all Penelope. Waiting patiently for Odysseus to come home. Endlessly weaving and unweaving.

Not getting anywhere.

That’s what the great scholar of mythology thought. And to quote Maverick in Top Gun:

- Bullshit!

This is just one of the ways our culture KEEPS WOMEN SMALL. It denies us a heroic interpretation of our own lives which cuts us off from experiencing the full EPIC REALITY of being alive.

No wonder women dial down their ambitions, choose to live smaller, hesitate to think big and shy away from setting out to make history! THIS is why I will not rest until Sally Rooney writes a novel featuring laser swords/dragons/fighter jets.

And it’s not just about putting a woman in a superhero costume.

Or having her fly a plane like Tom Cruise…

It’s about crafting stories where women are allowed to process their personal emotions and dilemmas in BIG WAYS through epic storylines.

The main message of Top Gun: Maverick for example is about parenting. And WHEN are women’s parenting troubles EVER set to this kind of music?!

NEVER!

They should be…

Fundamentally it’s about taking up space in the world. And women’s personal struggles are still not allowed to do this.

BUT there is always hope!

I thought Madeleine Miller’s novel Circe was a tremendous achievement precisely when it comes to building a heroic narrative for a female character.

I hope they don’t mess up the film version.

Tom Cruise should probably produce it.

After all he seems to be a safe pair of hands when it comes to these things…

Happy Thursday!

Katrine