Tough Guise Film Review

In the 1999 film, “Tough Guise,” Jackson Katz shows masculinity being portrayed through media and how societal perceptions of masculinity and violence are linked to these media interpretations. This film shows that masculinity is put in place to mask any sense of vulnerability and to reiterate the importance of being tough, dominant, and powerful.

Violent roles were primarily taken on by males, and Katz provides statistics showing that 85% of murders were committed by men, and  physical assaults, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse, and rape were all 95% or more committed by men.  Most cases involving woman were committed in defense, where as men’s motives were just men being men, holding strong to their tough persona.

In media, male and female violence is portrayed differently, depicting different expectations for each gender.  When a male commits a violent crime, such as some of the recent school shootings, the media talks about “kids killing kids,” whereas when a woman mutilated her husband, the media made sure to state her gender clearly. Male violence is generally expected, which is why there is so much more emphasis on female violence in the media, because it is look at as being unfeminine and going outside of the social constructions about how a female is supposed to behave.

There were two sections of this film that showed male dominance by the degrading of woman, that strongly argued the point of this film. One example was the increase in size of male figures, them becoming more muscular and having bigger guns, as the size in females, such as a once valued Marilyn Monroe, became devalued and skinnier women were more ideal. The decrease in size of females allowed men to take up more space on the screen, showing that they were the more dominant figures and more important than women. The second example that also reinforces the importance of male dominance is the acceptance of degrading jokes from people involved in media such as Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh.  Their joke making approach reinforced the negative connotations of woman and increase the importance of masculinity and power to their audience.

I couldn’t find any areas of this film that I found to be unconvincing to me. I think Jackson Katz gave a lot of strong arguments on how masculinity is portrayed through media.  This film strongly relates to our class because it identifies all of the underlying social constructions of what an ideal male is supposed to act like.  The film shows that wearing a mask to cover up any form of vulnerability and putting on a tough guy act is the ideal route for men.  This strongly relates to our discussions of how we perceive a male to act, and what ideal characteristics and standards we value men to have. 

Something that stood out to me in this film was that violence isn’t necessarily a natural instinct, but a learned behavior. I would base a study around this by randomly selecting different males that were exposed to different things while growing up (access to media, no access to media) and see how their perceptions of masculinity differ.

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