Guest post: Male role models are not achievers
Originally a comment by Rob on Watch out: too girly!
I’m not at all convinced that the style of learning has a big impact on whether boys or girls do better. As a purely anecdotal point, I always did much better with internal assessment and assignments, because my technique and discipline for a single end of year exams swot absolutely sucked.
I suspect the biggest factor in declining male academic success is simply that over recent decades male heroes and role models are no longer scientists, engineers, academics, poets or ‘elites’ generally. They’re anti-heroes, the fighters, drinkers, womanisers, sneerers. In fact, engineers, scientists, or educated males in popular culture are more likely to be cast in either the role of the bad guy or a sidekick. It’s not just Bond films. Popular culture, the current zeitgeist, just doesn’t push boys to want to become highly educated and expert men, so fewer of them do. Girls by contrast have been told loud and clear – and have seen – that the way to get ahead and not be stuck in the kitchen or working as a cleaner or in a shop, is to become educated. They’ve done so in droves.
Now, what happens when some activity becomes seen as a ‘girl’ thing to do? It becomes even less attractive to boys, because sexism (at best) and misogyny (at worst) is the air we breathe and the water we swim in.
You can make pathetic excuses about how boys need to be taught differently, but frankly, until society gets over itself and values education and doesn’t denigrate anything and everything girls do as icky, pointless or loserish, male under-performance will be the result.
Pick a country. Keep the education system exactly the same, but ban woman from education. Simultaneously increase academic and professional salaries by 30%, and make such people societies heroes. I guarantee that within a generation boys will be falling over themselves to succeed academically.
Thanks Ophelia! Note ‘women aniseeds’ should be ‘womanisers’. Thanks autocorrect, I really don’t know how that came about.
Or, if they are, like, say, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Hank McCoy etc., they are portrayed as just innately brilliant rather than hard working. Which fits well with something others have said (I believe I first read it from Richard Feynman, so not an entirely new phenomenon): Boys were “allowed” to do well in school as long as they didn’t make too much of an effort to do so. You were simply supposed to be so smart that every question was “easy” and “obvious”. There is certainly nothing in my own experience that fills me with urge to disagree. When I went to school back in the 80s and early 90s, being a “striver” was almost as unacceptable as being a “nerd”*.
To link it back to sexism, it reminds me of something I once read from an MRA-type. His point – based on the highly scientific method of Argument from Personal Impression – was that it was reasonable for an employer to favor male applicants over female ones with identical formal qualifications. Why? Because when he was a student the best girls seemed (to him) to be getting top marks only by working their ass off, whereas the best boys partied and slept their way through the University and still got top marks simply by being that much smarter. Therefore, so his argument went, the best women/girls were probably already close to the end of their potential whereas the best boys/men were more likely to have large reserves of untapped potential at their disposal. That’s how easy it is to get from any set of data to a desired conclusion.
* Of course this was before being a “nerd” or, even better, a “geek” became cool…
Once again I think the “face-saving” aspect is hard to overestimate: From a purely ego-boosting point of view, the worst possible combination of effort and outcome is failing despite trying your best. Then there is nothing to blame but your own talent, intelligence etc. If you don’t try and consequently fail, then at least you can tell yourself and the world that you could have done better if you could be bothered to put in the effort. Succeeding may be preferable to failing in general, but even then succeeding without effort is preferable since is makes you look like a genius: “How smart must he be to succeed at something so difficult without even trying!”
To return to the question of role-models, I didn’t necessarily think Captain Marvel was a brilliant movie in general, but from a purely feminist point of view Carol Danvers herself seems to me about as good as it gets.* Not only is this the most seriously badass and powerful superhero in the whole Marvel universe so far, but she was portrayed as a heroic character even before acquiring her superpowers. She is also portrayed as someone who has faced a lot of struggles and met a lot of resistance as a woman in a male-dominated field, but “non the less persisted”. Carol goes through 3 main “transformations” on her way from heroic but human test-pilot to the semi-divine being who singlehandedly annihilates Thanos’ entire war-fleet. Right before her second transformation the A.I. leader of the evil Kree empire is trying to break Carol by showing her all the times she failed, but then we’re showed what happened immediately after all those failures and how she always got back on her feet and continued fighting. I think I find her story more inspiring than that of Tony Stark.
*If there is something deeply problematic about the movie or its protagonist from a feminist point of view, then I don’t know what it is. This might jut be male privilege and cluelessness talking, but it’s the best I can do given my current level of understanding.
I’m not really an expert on pop culture, but at what time in the USA in the past were the male cultural heroes the scientists, engineers, academics, poets, etc.? I’m not asking to be contrary, I really would like to know. I mean, when I was growing up (70’s & early 80’s) it was generally pop music stars that we kids knew about. Feynman, for example, was alive, but even though I was a hardcore nerd I had never heard of him. My father was an engineer, which is why I chose a STEM field to pursue–that was the real deciding factor for me. Both my parents encouraged me in that, my father especially.
For him, he grew up in the 1940’s and early 1950’s. Back then the male role models (as far as I can tell) were movie stars–John Wayne, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, etc. Not exactly academic or scientific role models. My father chose to purse engineering because his father, a lifelong rancher, encouraged him to get an education and to rise above a life of hard manual labor, and because the Korean War came along just in time for him to use the GI bill to pay for it.
So at least in my one-off family’s case, the key factor was involved, supportive parents. The same was true of my peers in my age cohort, because those of us who ultimately ended up succeeding academically all knew each other as friends, being in the same classes and having the same parental expectations of high achievement. I haven’t kept up with the men with whom I grew up, but a quick web search showed me that at least some of the ones who never went to university (and who came from what I suspected were broken childhoods in some way, generally crime or domestic abuse) are now adults in unenviable life situations (like the schoolyard bully who is about to embark on a five year prison sentence for multiple DUI’s).
So, I’m not a social scientist and so I can’t weigh in definitively, but I suspect that rather than pop culture role models (or lack thereof), the influence of family and the way that it has been changing over the previous decades may have a stronger influence, when it comes to the question of why boys are losing ground academically. I don’t know why changing familial roles would favor girls over boys, either–maybe it’s just more socially acceptable within families for girls to attend university now? Using my anecdotal evidence again, I can say that my sisters were both expected to go straight from high school to university, but that my aunts on my father’s side were given little or no direction and, being subject mostly to societal expectations as a result, got married shortly after high school and started raising families back then in the late 1950’s.
I will be among the very first to say that anecdotal evidence is not definitive, though. Just food for thought and grist for discussion here.
In the words that The Bard, put into the mouth of Horatio: “so have I heard, and do in part believe it.” (Hamlet, Act 1 Sc 1).
One can see through the bullshit of a Bond film, and at the same time enjoy the spectacle of it. (I am a great fan of Westerns as well.) Good vs evil, with plenty of sex for a side-dish. Takes me back to my randy teenage years at the local ‘itch and scratch’ (ie movie theatre.) Ah, them were the days.! And to buggery with Puritans of all stripes.!
I hadn’t considered before how anti-intellectualism can be bound up with sexual politics. Thanks for that, Rob. I find myself agreeing with James here – what was that golden age when professional males were idealized? I am also, apparently, too young to have experienced it.
I recall the movies when I was a kid that featured male scientists almost exclusively included them as one of two types: figures of ridicule (think Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor, Rick Moranis shrinking his kids, or Doc Brown in BTTF), or mad scientists (Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Jekyll, Lex Luthor, Dr. Seth Brundle…) As a thirsty young nerd, I noticed the few occasions when male scientists in movies were not ridiculed or insane. I noticed Indiana Jones, for example: he was a college professor, and an archaeologist, and wicked cool. That movie came out in 1981.
The landscape of male role portrayal hasn’t really changed much, though there were a handful of movies after that which showed male intellectuals as neither ridiculous nor insane. The current of anti-intellectualism in American society is just too deep and too broad to be easily changed. When we see the intellectual relegated again to figure of ridicule or dangerous maniac, we are just carrying on the previous tradition.
The idea that “over recent decades male heroes and role models are no longer scientists, engineers, academics, poets…” seems incorrect to me. When were they ever? Did I miss these heroes and models? Am I just too young to remember them? When I was a young lad, my peers’ heroes were almost exclusively sports figures or movie stars, or maybe military heroes. It would be a very unusual young man who looked up to a scientist, engineer, academic, or poet. And college attendance? It was about 14% when I was born. I went to schools tracked by expectations, and only about 20% were in the college prep track. Few of my peers back then were planning to go to college at all.
What other contemporary cultural reasons could there be for boys doing worse in school? And is it really true that boys are doing absolutely worse, or just comparatively worse? Perhaps boys are really doing the same they always were, are the same testosterone-addled dumbasses they always were, but now girls are doing better. I know that even in my generation girls would be discouraged from looking forward to a STEM career – my wife was told in college that she shouldn’t take economics because girls are no good at math. Real barriers have fallen that prevented many women from entering STEM fields. Most boys being anti-intellectual may not be new, but most girls wanting to have careers might be.
The Atlantic had a good article about the sex gap at colleges.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/young-men-college-decline-gender-gap-higher-education/620066/
That author’s conclusions didn’t suggest anti-intellectualism, but the absence of fathers in families and men as teachers in schools, exacerbated by the collapse of the labor market.
That explanation seems reasonable to me, especially when we consider how much college costs have gone up. An impulsive teenage boy might be tempted to get off the academic track for the easy money he can make swinging a hammer. In today’s economy, that wouldn’t even be a bad financial choice. The cultural tendency for women to be heads of family would naturally accelerate, as girls come to see the provision of security as a female role.
Papito at #6 said “And is it really true that boys are doing absolutely worse, or just comparatively worse? Perhaps boys are really doing the same they always were, are the same testosterone-addled dumbasses they always were, but now girls are doing better.” That sounds quite plausible to me.
For the record, as a teenager my role models in popular culture were Mister Spock and Kwai Chang Caine..
The Taliban are doing the first part; now they just have to implement the second. (And I think you meant “society’s heroes.”)
And also, blame it on the education system being “girly”. “I didn’t try because it wasn’t a male way to learn.”
As for “male” learning styles, so far all the evidence I have seen on learning styles fails to pass muster scientifically (learning styles, not necessarily the evidence, though some does). And yet, for years I was getting these comments on my evaluation: “My learning style is visual; she taught to a verbal style”. And, on the same evaluation, same class, “My learning style is verbal; she taught to a visual style”. Learning styles are just a way to make excuses for failing.
As for who works harder. Learning comes naturally to me; I worked harder than many of the boys, but that’s because they were happy to settle for Bs and Cs; I knew a woman trying to get anywhere needed to do better than that. The males all expected to go on to great things; only a tiny fraction of them did, as would be expected. The females expected they would be part of the grind, but some of them succeeded more than they anticipated. And as an employer, I would say taking the slacker over the hard worker is ignorant hiring decisions. Hard work is often more important than brilliance in getting things done.
Papito, I agree. I suspect the real difference is that now the males have more competition, not just from women but from minority males.
@4 here’s a great book about that:
https://flexpub.com/info/shifting-gears
It strikes me that different segments of society have different role models and venerate different kinds of people.
For example, to urban/educated/liberal Americans, Dr Fauci is a hero. Perhaps not the first person who comes to minds as a role model for the young, but an example of an articulate and intellectual individual who is widely respected for his accomplishments in benefiting society.
Among the MAGA element, Fauci is seen as a villain, and given that subculture’s contempt for expertise and education, no one like him is ever likely to be highly regarded. MAGA world’s male heroes and role models are inarticulate, thuggish, anti-intellectual, brash, and emotionally stunted. Trump is the obvious example, but almost any man who exuberantly disdains the sensibilities of the educated or the vulnerable, and is perceived as “owning the libs”, is likely to emerge as an admired figure, at least for a while.
I’d be surprised if these propensities didn’t have some effect on academic achievement. National averages may be concealing large regional and class differences.
Since this comment was a reply to me, I’ll respond.
Rob, your comment has pretty much no substance.
Irrelevant; the dispersion within each sex is of course much bigger than the difference between the averages. I did explicitly say that I was talking about group averages.
Saying you “suspect” this amounts to little. There has been, by now, quite a large literature where people have subjected cohorts of boys and girls to different assessment styles, and studied the outcome. One can argue about the upshot of this, but it is pretty accepted that it is possible to bias the assessment style to change the relative performance of boys vs girls.
Your wording (“pathetic excuses”) suggest that you’re unhappy about accepting that there are systematic behavioural differences between boys and girls. Well, there are. Denying this will get you nowhere.
It’s like asserting that there are no on-average differences between boys and girls in sporting ability. (And an anecdote about one girl being good at sport wouldn’t cut it, nor would saying that you “suspect that” girls are, on average, worse than boys at sport because they’re given barbie dolls.) I’d have thought the trans issue would have moved us to the point where we can sensibly discuss actual (on average) differences between the sexes, no?
Which planet are you on, seriously?
He is on Earth. Those are the precise things that happen. Gay males experience that all the time, though treatment of gays has improved.
Behavioral differences and physical differences are not the same. One does not need to accept behavioral differences as innate just because they recognize that males are larger and more muscled than females. Those traits can, of course, influence behavior, but they don’t have to.
I don’t care whether it’s learning styles, lack of role models, entitlement, or whatever. The reality is that women were in precisely that position – the underdogs in education – for millennia, and NO ONE outside of a handful of women referred to as “radical” said anything about it. It was accepted. It was fine. There was no need to wring hands, clutch pearls, or faint.
Now that women are excelling the media is alive with hand winging, pearl clutching, and fainting as much ink is spilled about the poor boys. All I can say is fuck that. Again, many of us teach across multiple “styles”, a fact which continues to remain unacknowledged by education bashers across the political spectrum.
And…I taught a class specifically built on the so-called “male” learning style. It was designed for male students in the non-academic fields, the skilled and technical fields. From the moment I became the teacher after the other (male) teacher retired, the class began to decrease enrollment. I did many of the same things the male teacher did. The class taught the same material. The students were outside doing physical things. There was one test at the end of the semester. There weren’t assignments in the semester. EVERYTHING you’re supposed to do for males was being done. The outcome? I just learned last week that the class has been permanently removed from our list of offerings because of being dormant too long. Why was it dormant? Because the males it was geared toward didn’t sign up. Why not? Hell if I know. The main feedback I received during the class suggested the desire not to be taught by a woman. I was humiliated and abused semester after semester, and I WAS DOING WHAT THESE MEN SUPPOSEDLY NEEDED.
Somehow at this point, I don’t give a fuck about the supposed male learning style. I know many intelligent, educated men who learned in the same classes as women. They learned using the same learning styles as the women.
And many of these so-called feminine learning styles were in use when we were told women wouldn’t succeed because teaching styles were too ‘masculine’.
And I’ve seen some of those studies you talk about; they tend to lack robust data. The differences are often so small they are within the range of error. And they are too small to be what we refer to in statistics as important, even when they are significant.
@Iknklast:
But there are clear (on average) behavioural differences between men and women. Just for starters, men are *vastly* more likely to commit violent crime & sexual assault, and things that get themselves imprisoned. The brains are marinated in very different hormones. Yes, this has an effect.
True, but that’s rather irrelevant to the experience of a teenager today in the Western world.
Well, again, any group-average differences are smaller than the dispersion within each group. No-one is suggesting that all boys have one style and all girls another.
Along with the disempowerment, the “you only did well on the test because you’re someone who does well on tests by nature” attitude fuels othering and resentment. Someone with this view develops an external locus of control with respect to intellectual pursuits.
I’d have to disagree on that one. Although Captain Marvel has unmatched superstrength, she can’t compete with Black Widow, because Natasha Romanoff is a stronger character. As is Ellen Ripley. As is Sarah Connor. And Carol Danvers doesn’t hold a sputtering candle to Wonder Woman. (Honestly, aside from the involvement of Ares in the final act, which was likely the result of studio meddling, the 2017 Wonder Woman is a surprisingly well constructed movie that actually benefits from a close reading. This blows my mind.)
So the following is a nerd rant about why Carol Danvers is neither a good role model nor a good character.
1. Captain Marvel’s sex is basically irrelevant to the story. Contrast with Wonder Woman, where the significance of the protagonist’s sex isn’t just something that viewers bring to the film. Diana’s is a story of a woman; Carol’s is a story of a mercenary. Prior to Carol’s epiphany, she embodies unhealthy masculine stereotypes, essentially playing the role of cocky prick flyboy, and Brie Larson’s performance matches that archetype exactly. In fact, if you swapped her for a male and otherwise kept the script almost entirely unchanged, the story would work just as well. Even the bits about her being too emotional would have fit with the paradigmatic Maverick fromTop Gun, while being belittled for not being strong enough is a common male experience.
Thematically, Captain Marvel seems intended to be about emotion vs. control. Of course, the movie is so poorly written that this theme is muddled and unclear, because our protagonist is in most other ways just a masculine archetype with breasts. Nick Fury wants her to let loose, while she tries to remain controlled and composed, because that’s what Jude Law teaches–and because it’s masculine. What finally lets her go super Saiyan is embracing emotion; i.e., accepting the feminine stereotype. Her power acquisition doesn’t just reinforce gendered nonsense; it straight up endorses embracing that nonsense.
But really, where’s the meaning in unleashing yourself when you’re already a juggernaut even before you glow and get floaty hair? An army of alien baddies captures her, and she demolishes them all and their enormous ship while literally handcuffed. Dumped on Earth, she’s hyperconfident from the moment she stands up. We feel hardly any tension as she beats everyone up, because she always beats everyone up. Even she herself displays no concern as she sends Jude Law’s character flying hundreds of yards with a flick of her all powerful fingers. In contrast, Diana relies upon Steve and hides her power for the better part of the move by her own choice, recognizing her lack of knowledge and competence. She learns and eventually chooses to act openly. Wonder Woman is a moral agent. Captain Marvel is not.
Captain Marvel arguably doesn’t even have a character arc. What obstacles she faces are transient and quickly overcome. With the exception of now knowing that she was deceived, she’s the same person at the beginning as at the end. She doesn’t change; she doesn’t grow. Upon discovering the Iree’s deceit, she reacts exactly as they ostensibly predicted. And rather than find that she isn’t defined by power, she uses her unearned power to just win at everything forever. In other words, she exemplifies Feynman’s observation. Carol is the person who is the person to whom every question is easy and every answer obvious. Her story doesn’t tell girls that effort rewards, but instead that awesome gonna awesome. The gifted are just better than you, no matter how dedicated, diligent, and disciplined you are, you will lose to them in a comical fashion. The fundamentally hierarchical lesson is that it’s correct to judge people by their power, not by who they are. Having power makes the heroine.
Again, compare with Wonder Woman. Where Captain Marvel’s central conflict is accepting that she’s totally awesome and everyone who’s ever suggested otherwise is just stupid or actively suppressive, Diana’s struggle is with the evil that men do and reconciling the horror with her idealism. Here’s where being a story about a woman rather than a story about a mercenary who happens to be a woman matters: it means that the evil of men is the evil of men. Not humans generally; males specifically. Diana and the Amazons are woman; Steve Trevor and the world are man. Everything about our heroine’s journey, both physical and psychological, is inextricable from her femaleness. Everything reads from that frame, from leaving the safety of Themyscira for a world at war, to revealing herself as she walks into No Man’s Land, to experiencing her first love, fleeting, fragile–and its loss. Everything combines in an approximation of a female version of the monomyth, a heroine’s rather than a hero’s journey. Braving the journey makes the heroine.
Nullius
It’s probably a good thing we’re not on the same continent. If we got much closer, I fear we would annihilate like matter and anti-matter and take the whole inner solar system with us. The Earth may be fucked anyway, but I don’t want Venus on my conscience ;)
I already said that I didn’t necessarily find Captain Marvel brilliant as a movie*, although, as someone recently put it on Facebook, the fact that so many men are already trashing CM II before it’s even made makes me want to see it no matter what. From a purely feminist perspective, I still think it’s vastly better than Wonder Woman in every way. Diana Prince was never even human, but was created exceptional (even among the already superhuman Amazons) in the first place, and spent the first 5000 years ± of her life** in a world unlike anything any real woman has ever known. She is also literally a princess. By contrast Carol Danvers is portrayed as someone who shares the actual experiences of real women. I quite like the fact that she’s not portrayed as stereotypically “feminine” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), although the movie definitely does make a point of the sexism she’s had to endure (e.g. the male colleague telling her “you know why it’s called a ‘cock-pit’, right?”). She is not reduced to or defined by her relationships with men, she is not some guy’s love interest, she’s not sexualized or objectified (the thing about the male gaze is a much more obvious issue in WW), her closest friend is another badass woman, as was her (admittedly alien) mentor Dr. Wendy Lawson/Mar-Vell etc. etc. Although I’m sure there are things that could be improved, I think I can safely say that pretty much every other movie I have ever seen had worse problems than this one.
* Neither for that matter were most of the other Marvel Movies. CM was a lot better than Spiderman, Antman, Dr. Strange etc.
** A old for what’s supposed to be for a “coming of age” story…
Wow, I really wasn’t expecting that to garner so many comments, or such effort in those comments.
Coel, first of all, I wasn’t replying specifically to you and I apologise if my comment came across as an attack on you. That was not my intent. There’s an awful lot of generic ‘poor boys the education system doesn’t work for them’ out there [waves arms wildly] and I consider it pretty pathetic. I’m not an educator myself, but I’m deeply surrounded by educators. not so much adjacent as half buried in them. Both parents were teachers (one the HOD at a teachers college), 2 siblings, three spouses of siblings, an uncle, and at least five university and life long friends. Only one has much sympathy with the ‘poor boys’ argument, but then she believes that the man should be the head of the household, so I take her outlier view with a grain of salt. Apparently she thinks that’s my right because I’m a man…
WaM, yes, my spelling and often my grammar is appalling considering the number of teachers in my life. It’s worse when I’m tired and taking a few minutes break from work to comment here – which always seems to be the case. An edit feature would be a wonderful thing.
Like a few of you, I’m a child of the sixties, so I came of age during the 70’s and 80’s. By then we were deep into the age of the anti-hero, and anti-intellectualism. So it’s pretty much from our generation onward that there has been this cultural shift. Combine that with various experiments in teaching methods and I think there has been some unfortunate synergy in effect on education generally. I still consider it more likely than not that culture, rather than teaching method is primarily the cause of boys under-performance.
As to the mythical golden age when intellectuals and professionals were heroes. What about the scientists and engineers of the 50’s and 60’s? The pinnacle event of the 60’s having to be sending man to the moon. As a culture this was deeply admired and held forth as aspirational to young people. It was only as counter-culture took hold that the near association of these endeavours with the military and the potential for nuclear annihilation soured our attitude. Even as a youngster I was aware of the admiration for people in medicine and science pushing back frontiers of knowledge and improving the lot of people all over the world. Advances in agriculture and technology apparently solving hunger, poverty and disease. I think our generation forget what a leap forward occurred in the decades after WW2. We’ve also had periods in our not so distant past where writers and poets were lauded by society. Before Clint Eastwood and his ilk, the heroes of westerns were those who upheld the law, protected the weak, saw justice done and were clean living and moral. Shakespeare got a mention above. He’s widely regarded as one of our cultures greats, but at the time he was common and pretty bawdy entertainment. but common people understood and appreciated his wordplay. My grandparents and parents came from deeply working class backgrounds. Before my parents, no-one had education extending past 12 and some not that. As adults a number took advantage of Workers Educational Associations to complete and round out their educations. There was a strong thread through society in the early 20th Century that understood that the means to empowerment, improvement, and freedom was via education.
I don’t think the ‘issue’ can be boiled down to ‘we don’t teach the poor boys right’. I think rather it’s a very complex situation caused by our society going through an extended period of malaise caused by both internal an external factors. The underperformance by boys is a symptom of that, but is also beginning to feedback negatively.
Bjarte,
I can’t recall seeing a more politic way of saying, “Your argument is bad, and you should feel bad.” Well done. Of course, one of my favorite pastimes is
arguing aboutdiscussing interpretations of film and literature, especially when there’s disagreement. So I doubt our proximity to each other would lead to anything too cataclysmic.Unless you said that The Babadook was about coming out as gay.
But anyway, I suspect we are operating under different conceptions of “role model”, because in my view, what makes a good role model is inseparable from what makes a good character in a film (or book, or whatever). Those things give us the who and the why, which I find vastly more important than the what and how.
Nullius
Sorry if I came across as snarky. I strongly disagree with your take on this particular (very narrow) topic, and that’s just fine! It actually feels kind of nice to have a good old-fashioned disagreement with someone without having to hate and despise each other or attempt to have each other fired. I will hunt to the end of the world anyone who has anything good to say about Spiderman though ;)
I miss friendly disagreements. But nope, can’t have those when under the spell of a totalizing belief system. Not even escapism can escape it. When aesthetic judgements become matters of such grievous moral import that livelihoods must be destroyed, something is seriously rotten.
Trust me that in the early 1940s the male role models were Generals in the Army or Marine Corps, with a few Admirals thrown in.
“I’m not really an expert on pop culture, but at what time in the USA in the past were the male cultural heroes the scientists, engineers, academics, poets, etc.? ”
I grew up watching Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. The astronauts were the stars but don’t forget the high profile of the scientists and engineers of Mission Control.
My NFL and NBA heroes all went to 4 year colleges/universities.
And nerdy Peter Parker aka Spiderman from that era as well.