What's wrong with men?

On male voters and movies for men

I’ve recently become obsessed with this ‘90s Calvin Klein ad starring Mark Wahlberg and Kate Moss.

“The best protection against AIDS is to keep the Calvins on.” The ‘90s were wild as hell but maybe this was effective advertising for Calvin Klein at the time, if not particularly useful information on how to prevent the spread of HIV.

Last week, a friend caused a debate on social media by wondering how Democrats are reaching young male voters.

It created a ton of responses about how we no longer need to "center" men in politics and whenever we talk about rights for women and minority groups, men complain about the fact that they're not being addressed. This is fair, but I found it to be a gross misreading of a genuine question: how does Kamala Harris reach a voter base that her team seems to be genuinely concerned about reaching?

This isn't being conjured from thin air, mind you. Whether a lack of support from Black male voters is real or imagined, Harris addressed it on The Shade Room. And as for white male voters, Donald Trump keeps going on right-wing bro podcasts. Both candidates are pounding the pavement (or podcast mics) for male votes.

It's an interesting snapback to a cultural movement that seemed to not give a fuck about what men, particularly straight white men thought about anything. I started working at BuzzFeed in 2014 and I remember the shift in how you were able to make jokes about men in posts, how you were able to counteract years of men objectifying women in Maxim or Playboy by writing thirst posts about men, how companies were making concerted efforts to hire diversely. Now, people complain about alleged DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) hires. Toyota is getting out of the gay ad business. Harris touted being back by Dick Cheney, a white man Democrats are supposed to hate. Are white men in again?

Kinda!

I saw an early screening of Gladiator 2 last night. I'll have a formal review coming soon, but it feels emblematic of 2024's shifting ideologies that Paul Mescal, typically a tender and emotional actor in projects like Normal People and queer thriller All Us Strangers, is now beefed up and playing a gladiator. Not that it's a shock, since I can tear up from an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place if I'm stoned enough, but I cried during the film. For all of the film's violence, it also makes you FEEL things. The first Gladiator film is similar. Yes, Russell Crowe impales people. But grown men cried during that movie.

The year Gladiator was released also saw the release of Memento, Remember the Titans, The Patriot, and Cast Away. These are all films about men that also gave men license to feel emotions. It was also the same year the original American Psycho was released and only a few months after the release of Fight Club. Two movies that examined what it means to be a man. There are reports that Luca Guadagnino is set to direct a remake of American Psycho. I'm gonna let Luca cook, but I think a possibly queer, cerebral take on the material is the last thing we need. Bret Easton Ellis is gay but spiritually, he understands straight white men better than anyone else. Just look at his memoir White. Or don't. Somehow director Mary Harron got into Ellis' mind.

I have the feeling things might turn out a bit like Joker: Folie à Deux. An awful movie, but awful because it felt like it was a course correction of Joker. I didn't love the first film that much, but it wasn't a mess like the sequel. And it had a lot to say about men and madness. Harron agreed in a Vulture interview: "I thought it was a great portrait of madness. It had a class theme you very rarely find in American films." The sequel felt like a response to men who enjoyed the first film. It felt it necessary to tell them they were wrong for enjoying it. It could've been an essay, is what I'm saying. Instead we got a long, boring movie. 

This isn't a call to action to make a ton of movies for men. First of all, we barely make films for adults anymore anyway. But addressing men doesn't mean centering them. It does mean letting them be seen and them offering them alternatives. That's what good art can do. It's what Gladiator does when it teaches men about honor and lets them cry. It's what playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney did in his play Choir Boy when he depicted a tender relationship between a gay Black man and a straight Black one. This is a relationship you rarely see represented in media. The only other recent example I can think of is in Barry Jenkins' film Moonlight, a script also written by McCraney. Instead of preaching, it lets the art do the talking.

Somehow, as art has become coded as "liberal," everything else has become conservative. The Barstool-ification of politics has seen a shift toward everything about sports online being codified as conservative or right-leaning. These are also the spaces men are in and how conservatives and other bad faith actors are reaching them.

Ever the shrewd businesswoman, one person who knows how important a male base can be is Taylor Swift. I don't just mean her relationship with Travis Kelce that has put her on the televisions of sports fans across America. Speaking of Barstool, owner David Portnoy is a Trump supporter but also a Swifite. When Swift endorsed Harris, Portnoy defended her choice to do so. He was rewarded with Eras Tour Miami tickets and also a personal letter: "Dave, I'm so happy to have you at the show tonight! I wanted to say thank you for always being so supportive, so loyal, and for having my back when a lot of people didn't." Maybe the Harris campaign should hire Swift's publicist, Tree Paine.