MovieChat Forums > The Man Without a Face (1993) Discussion > Another Mel male anxiety film

Another Mel male anxiety film

posted 13 years ago by bad_touch_granny
5 replies | jump to latest

Opens with a dj seguing into a song with the
observation that it's a good day to be "Born a Woman."

The implication, of course, is that it's a bad time to
be a man, as if the genders are locked into some kind
of zero-sum rivalry.

I don't believe that. I believe gains for women also
translate into gains for men. But in the metaphorically
titled MAN WITHOUT A FACE, the plight of the paternalistic
manly man in an era of feminism is social (facial) erasure.

Yet who is really doing the erasing here? In so many of Mel's
films, women scarcely matter at all. It is the Christian
tradition of long-suffering masculinity that interests him.

To Mel, women represent the corrupted present. The better, male
supremacist world lies in the past. I believe this is the true
significance of Mel's attraction to period films and to films
in which his heroic male protagonist emerges from out of the past,
poised to leave an enduring, if temporarily interrupted, legacy,
to future generations of men.

[–] goldsac 13 years ago

^
Stupid.

[–] Cantoris-2 8 years ago

You may be right about Mel, but you know what? He has a lot of company. MGTOW (men going their own way) in America, and "herbivore men" in Japan have in many cases learned the hard way in divorce court never to marry or remarry, and generally avoid all intimate relationships with women, because they have become too dangerous. Read all about it in _Men on Strike_ by Helen Smith.

As feminists' misrepresentations and demands go to more absurd extremes, more and more women distance themselves from feminism. Were it not for the laws and government policies that have been enacted in their favor, the latest versions of feminism would be a powerless laughing-stock.

[–] sanders_mike25 8 years ago

Still better than watching another one of Judd Apatow's bloated messes or Paul Feig's All Men Are Scum travesties.

[–] bishop-69757 8 years ago

I'm not sure if the OP needs to quit drugs or start them.

[–] Sandi-Herrmann 7 years ago

>> ... a song with the observation that it's a good day to be "Born a Woman."

No, the song is about the bad things you gotta go through being born a woman.
The song made it to the movie because the script writer wanted it in, not Mel Gibson.

>> But in the metaphorically titled MAN WITHOUT A FACE, the plight of the paternalistic manly man in an era of feminism is social (facial) erasure.

The title was written/ chosen by the woman(!) who wrote the novel. Again, not Mel Gibson.

>> In so many of Mel's films, women scarcely matter at all.

It's because many of his films are historical films. Women scarcely mattered in history, unfortunately.

I don't think this movie is mysogynic. It shows how family lives changed in an era of divorce being more and more accepted, single mothers, absent fathers, sexual freedom, new gender roles. For men and for women, but as the book/ movie is about a boy, his issues are focused on. And as I said, the story is written by a woman.