I watched the movie Sand Castle to analyze it for this blog post. It takes place during the Iraq war and contains a lot of themes regarding fear, death, and masculinity. In the movie, a U.S. platoon is assigned to fix the water supply of an Iraqi village. The water supply location was destroyed during a bombing by the U.S., so as a good publicity move they were assigned to fix it and bring water back to the village. Faced with an enormous task, the platoon tries to enlist help from the locals. They run into a variety of problems regarding who to trust and fear. The platoon members utilize hypermasculinity to cover their fear of the war, death, and instability they encounter. This shows in times of fear when they portray an effort to cling to traits of hypermasculinity: sexualization of women and objects, show of violence, and a lack of pain.
The movie opens with the main character, Ocre, admitting to the audience that he didn't join the army for some idealistic cause like fighting for freedom and defending rights. Instead, he joined because he really didn't know what to do with himself. He proceeds to slam his hand in the door of a Jeep over and over until it is bloodied and broken. This is presumably so that he can get sent home for medical reasons. However, the doctor doesn't buy his act and he is sent to another assignment. By choosing this as the first scene it sets the tone for the rest of the movie. It shows how scared they are, so much that some are willing to hurt themselves to get out of it.
After the tone of fear is set, the audience is hit by examples of hypermasculinity. As Ocre is walking around base camp, another soldier comes up to him looking very proud and asks him to come look at something. Behind him is a big military tank where, on the gun turret, the soldier painted "Pokey Mirra Loma". He explains joyously that it's his porn name because he's "going balls deep in Iraq". This ties in two traits of hypermasculinity: sexualization of objects and demonstration of violence. As they prepare to depart for their various assignments the soldiers probably feel nervous and fearful of what might come next. In order to cope with it and cover it, this soldier exemplifies hypermasculinity to draw the focus away from his fear. He sexualizes the situation as a form of dominating the situation and his fears. He also uses violence to dominate the situation by bragging about how much destruction he's going to cause.
Another example of hypermasculinity occurs later after the platoon searches a building. One of the soldiers got shot and another soldier picks him up, carries him down the stairs and says, "Quit your bellyaching, you're fine. Just a little gun wound". He says it a bit sarcastically with a chuckle because it's obvious the man is badly hurt. However, he's trying to wave off the pain and injury. This is a trait of hypermasculinity- to not show pain. It's being utilized in a stressful situation where they don't know if this man will live or die. It's just easier for them to cope with the fear by masking it.
In her book Masculinities, Violence and Culture, Suzanne Hatty states that "the raw and unfinished business of 'becoming a man' sometimes comes at great cost," (110). Hypermasculinity has its drawbacks and that's being recognized more and more. However, I think it's interesting to look at it as a coping mechanism when men are faced with high stress and fear. Overall, this movie was very interesting and it brought up some pertinent themes. I think it's important to recognize how people cope with things, especially in war. War is a display of violence that has such an impact on the soldiers. I think it would be useful to learn how they cope and why so that we can better help soldiers when they come back and have to readjust to society. This was a good movie that is still relevant today and has some important things to learn from.
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I think your post brings up some good points about coping mechanisms especially for soldiers. I agree with your claim some men try to overcompensate when coping with something by portraying hypermasculinity. Obviously active duty soldiers who are overseas are going through a lot of often times scary, uncomfortable, nerve-racking or dangerous situations. Unfortunately, society has taught us that men aren't supposed to show these emotions or be concerned with these types of things. Instead they need to be brave, tough and have no fears. I wonder if the coping mechanisms you bring up (sexualization of women or objects, violence and lack of pain) have anything to do with the fact that these are often things associated with younger men or boys. Immaturity, I'm sure, has a lot to do with it. When men are young, these types of things tend to get laughs or applause from their peers. Maybe because these soldiers aren't able to get any kind of reassurance or comfort that everything is going to be okay, they revert back to these ways in order to "lighten the mood", forget what is going around them, or even get those laughs/applause as a form of affection or reassurance that they might so desperately want or need in such difficult times.
ReplyDeleteJared Islas
Kathleen:
ReplyDeleteThe point I found most intriguing was the way you described Ocre as regretting his decision to join. I think that shows vulnerability because he realizes he is lost and confused and I think much like Ocre many of the men also felt fear but were afraid to show it. Hence, hypermasculinity can be seen as a coping mechanism. Men in today’s society (and in older society) are supposed to be tough and show no emotion, let alone fear. Yet people fail to realize that men have feelings too, especially men that have served for our country. They have seen inexplicable things and yet feel like they cannot be open about what truly happened for the sake of not seeming weak.
Foremost, I think that you propose a great argument in this post and I appreciate that you provided substantial examples for your claim. I definitely see the argument that you are posing and I would support Kathleen’s argument that even the mechanisms that the soldiers use (such as sarcasm), are even used by men today in current society. In regards to hypermasculinity, I have always wondered how that was a constant effective coping mechanism. I have also wondered where the origin of this vast phenomenon began and the root of its logistics. Something interesting that I saw within this post was the reinforcement from Suzanne Hatty and the quote from her book. I tended to think that hypermasculinity was a silent phenomenon but subliminal reinforcers such as this may keep this phenomenon present even within today’s society.
ReplyDelete-Kyra M.
I've yet to see the film, but from your descriptions it's sounds like the films does quite a bit to fly in the face of the traditionalist more romanticized portrayal of war and the ideals of fighting for things like "honor" or to "protect ones country" instead opting to paint a more grounded picture of the grim realities and the toll war takes both on the body and mind. I've always found the balancing act a lot of war movies find themselves in between having and or wanting to portray the subject reality if war in an honest manner but still having to find a way to make the scenes resonate on various emotional fronts fascinating. And it seems to me that this film brings up some interesting questions about Hyper-masculinity; chief among which being about the nature of it as an inherent thing. One could make the case that, since sexulizing the weapons the project some sense of dominance and control over it (and even just control in general considering the nature of their environment) was their go to mechanism for coping with their situation that that could speak to some underlying truth about how men in general are by nature. But one could also argue that, that response could just be a conditioned one from a society/environment that constantly reaffirms hyper-masculine values.
ReplyDelete-Kenneth
I found your post very interesting. I had the chance to work with people who have had sereved the country and who were assigned in Iraq as well. I had seen some men who tried not to show any kind of fear at all. Instead they stay tough and cope up to somethig by practicing hypermasculinity. It is obvious the reason for using this technique is for being through a lot of scary moments and not aiming to show some fear. I am glad that you brought up this subject. Great post!
ReplyDelete-Weini W.
On average, most war-like films produced contain fear, death and vulnerability. I really liked how you included the quote from the book about how becoming a man can sometimes come at a great cost. Men are taught to not express their feelings and thoughts of fear because it threatens their masculinity. By demonstrating such feelings, they are interpreted as signs of weakness. In addition, Ocre demonstrates how feelings of fear can cause an individual to react. He was willing to harm himself instead of discussing his mental health with the doctor
ReplyDelete-Sam U
ReplyDeleteI think this post was great I like how you broke down the different forms of masculinity that's where shown within the movie. Also, I like when you talk about the problem of men showing that they are hurting being a form of masculinity. In movies, that is a big problem they always show men as super masculine, especially war movies. Also, the point was great about how they try to make jokes over masculinity in movies.
-Montaya Mccloud