Be A Man! (What Does That Mean?)

The Big Country
OR
Are You Man Enough?

This is the blog I write every year on my birthday

when I think about aging and time.

I was born around 11 PM on July 24, 1944.
About four hours later during WW II, Operation Cobra began in Normandy, France. This breakout from the Normandy foothold by the Allies was a key moment that led to the defeat of the Nazis.

The other night, I was surfing the TV channels and came across a western movie, The Big Country. With nothing else worth looking at I decided to watch it, and, when I did, a flood of memories came back to me -- I had forgotten about this movie and the effect it had on me.

In 1958, when I was fourteen years old, I saw this film when it came out. This was a western like no other because the macho gun-toting way of life was being questioned, but more than that it was the first movie I can remember that dealt with what it meant to be a "man." 

As a boy at the age of 14, I was wrestling with just that question. Gregory Peck consistently refused to be bullied into a display of male strength. He was not going to prove his masculinity in front of a crowd. But he was going to prove it to himself. So time and again he turned down challenges and was seen as weak. He refused to retaliate against a group of drunken young men who harassed him and his fiancee on their way to her home. And he refused to ride a wild horse, they called "Old Thunder" that no one could ride, but trying to ride him was seen as a kind of masculine test.

Yet in private Peck did ride the horse and got thrown. Nevertheless, he finally tamed him and was the only person who could. But he made the man who managed the stables promise to tell no one. 

Opposite Peck was Charlton Heston who represented the western tough no-nonsense male who never backed down from a challenge. Later in the movie when Peck refused to fight Heston, he was seen as a coward, and as a result, his fiancee broke off their engagement. But again, in private, he and Heston had it out in a slugfest, yet promised to keep it to themselves.

And while rejecting being bullied into a fight, Peck had been quite open about showing his emotions for his fiancee. In one scene he kissed her passionately, so much so his future father-in-law, a retired major, felt the need to turn away so that he would not see their shows of affection. In this subtle way, the movie showed that the father was more comfortable with violence and killing than with expressions of love.

Carroll Baker tries to get Peck back after rejecting him for being a coward.
But Peck refuses her.

But the movie went one step further. When Peck's fiancee changed her mind and wanted him back, Peck refused. She had made the one unforgivable mistake; she had not trusted him and instead had sided with Heston who said Peck was a coward

This was not just another western role for Peck. He co-produced this film. 

"Throughout his career, he often portrayed protagonists with 'fiber' within a moral setting."

Grimes, William. "Gregory Peck Is Dead at 87; Film Roles Had Moral Fiber" The New York Times, June 13, 2003.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/13/movies/gregory-peck-is-dead-at-87-film-roles-had-moral-fiber.html

The message of the film was simple, at least for a 14-year-old boy. You need to prove to yourself what you can and cannot do, but not feel pressured into proving it to others. Your worth does not depend on what others think of you, it depends on your own sense of self. Furthermore, you get to choose what is important instead of being told by others what you should value. So Peck consistently rejected violence even though his fiancee's father and ranch hands assumed violence was necessary.

Recently I was reading reviews of this movie when it came out and none of them understood Peck's character. It was critiqued as merely one of hundreds of westerns, but without an awareness that Peck represented a different kind of man. One review even said that while it was a well-made movie, fighting and killing were much more interesting than a man refusing to fight. Oddly, the movie seems to be better understood today than in 1958. As one recent reviewer wrote, "The Big Country is a thoughtful film that explores anger, resentment and power in a western setting." 

I am not suggesting that this movie was a watershed moment for me, but it opened the door to questioning what a man should do and how he should think about himself. And, just as important, how much value should he attach to the opinions of others. So for various reasons, this movie struck a chord. Later in school, I would read the works of Nietzsche who mapped out in detail how to be your own man.

I went to an all-male boarding school where my father had gone and where the pressure to be a 'regular guy' was intense. A regular guy never showed his emotions, but he was tough and strong. Anything less was seen as weakness which meant that you were often shunned if you did not fall into line. 

After two years of trying to fit in, I realized that courage and bravery had various shades, that it took courage to be different, and that many boys who appeared to be regular guys were afraid to be different. I also noticed that a number of regular guys were awkward when they were around girls.

For some reason, by my senior year, I had reached a point when I no longer cared if I was accepted or not. As a result, I gained this wonderful sense of freedom. Then an odd thing happened. When I no longer worried about acceptance, I suddenly had lots of friends and a girlfriend as well. 

As an aspiring writer (who later in college got a B.A. in English with an Honors in Creative Writing), I was studying American literature and movies and theater on my own. It became apparent that the male role was in flux, and it was a consistent theme. Yet no authors seemed to know where it was going. Many stories were about the loss of a time when "men were men." But few stories were about what happens next.

The role of men was changing, in part, because the role of women had changed. After two World Wars in which the women were left alone while the men were off fighting, women had become independent and self-reliant. In addition, they had taken on difficult jobs such as welding and building tanks which were crucial for the war effort. At the same time, men had been asked to fight and die for their country. But when the wars were over, the women were different. They had tasted independence and difficult work and did not want to go back to previous notions of what a woman should be or was supposed to be. Nevertheless, many marriage vows still contained the pledge that a woman would obey her husband. Clearly, this was confusing for both men and women. But there it was and there was no turning back. 

Even as a teenager in an all-male boarding school, I was surprised that there was virtually no emphasis on relationships. We learned math and English and history but nothing about the most important thing in our lives, i.e., relationships and especially the relationships between men and women. I did manage to find my own solution which was to go out with a girl from a boarding school thirty miles away, even though it required lots of permission slips and many hours of train rides to get to her school where we were not allowed to hold hands or be close and were under the watchful eyes of her teachers. Phone calls were too expensive then, so we sent each other letters almost every day.

Now, today, I see male and female roles continuing to change. I have done my best to feel and express love and affection with a full range of emotions while at the same time having a Gregory Peck independent sense of myself. And just as important, I wanted to have a clear understanding of my own feelings and to be honest about how I felt. 

My wife and I have been together for 43 years and we are as close today as we were when our relationship began.

I don't pretend to have the answer or answers, but I have made a stab :) at it. The following is a poem I wrote about my time at boarding school.

A POEM
BE A MAN! (WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?)

Age 14-17, Phillips Exeter Academy 

Exeter, New Hampshire, 1958-1962

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

~ e.e. cummings ~

Manliness is not all swagger and mountain climbing. It's also tenderness.

Robert Anderson, Tea and Sympathy, [about Phillips Exeter Academy]

Hazers are themselves victims, wounded souls

who are acting out their own unfinished business.

Jayson Gaddis, Men and Hazing

Standing up to pain

became a badge

boys don't cry

take it like a man

be tough

is that all you got?

give me more

as a male it was your fate

to suck it up

never let it get to you

as said in Tea and Sympathy

to be a "regular guy"

and not just physical pain

but also emotional

such as humiliation by a teacher

only there was more to it

we thought we were just hiding our feelings

instead we were learning not to feel

like all boys, I paid lip service

to this show of manliness

later I realized it was like playing

5 notes in a 12-note octave

we were denied the full range,

confined to the sounds those few notes could play

as the depth of emotional chords and complexity

were not available

we were allowed to yell at sports

or to be angry 

-- perhaps the easiest emotions --

but sorrow or joy, hurt and affection

were off limits

and then I saw the results:

teachers whose dead-end lives

meant they took their anger out

on boys they were mentoring,

their cruelty masked as a rite of passage

a Latin teacher was noted

for taking a chalkboard eraser

and slamming it against the back of a student

when he did not give a correct answer

or took too long;

often the instructor picked on the same boys

who emerged from class

with their coats covered in white

-- like a mark of shame --

and the boys had to pretend 

to not  care

by my senior year I had found the truth:

what they wanted

was a kind of spiritual death,

it meant that my life would be one of shadows

where emotions became so disguised

I could never reach them

so I let some of my classmates think less of me

because as an aspiring artist I knew that

what I felt was at the heart of who I was

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,"

Robert Frost told us

when I had heard him speak at Exeter;

revered like a saint,

that was all the permission I needed