Opinion/Brown: From Hollywood to politics, what does it mean to be a man?

During a recent Congressional hearing, then-Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked what it means to be a woman. It makes just as much sense to ask what it means to be a man — or how to define manhood.

On one level, this should be as easy as taking a peek down our pants. But the more we think about it, the more complex it becomes. Allow me to explain.

Recently, my daughter urged me to go see "The Northman"  — a tale reminiscent of Hamlet, set in Viking-era northern Europe.

“From the fury of the Northmen,” went a Dark Age prayer, “oh Lord deliver us.” 

A Viking warlord returns to his wife and son after a season of raiding, only to be murdered by his brother’s henchmen. The son flees and hears his uncle call to his men, “Bring me the boy’s head!”  Young Amleth evades his killers and escapes to sea. Before departing, he vows to avenge his father’s murder. Preparing himself to exact this revenge becomes the central purpose of his life — and the plot of the film.

Our hero has turned himself into a Nordic hulk. We watch him and his Viking band slaughter men and boys and grimly chase wailing women through the streets.

By the end of the story, Amleth has gotten his lover pregnant. They’ve set sail to start a new life. Will he become a husband and father — or will he stay in Iceland to confront his uncle in combat, and be carried by a Valkyrie to a warrior’s Valhalla? He kisses the mother of his future children goodbye, grabs his magic sword, and swims for shore.

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There’s a scene in the movie where Amleth and his lover lie naked together. Seen from behind, her alabaster body is voluptuous, snuggled against Amleth’s mountain of muscle. Old Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would have swooned over this image of Nordic manhood. God knows, there’s no sexual ambiguity here.

"The Northman" offers us a masculine vision: muscular, purposeful, the opposite of, say, a bespectacled Albert Einstein, who also happened to be a man. Traditional societies have always been uncomfortable with sexual ambiguity. Yes, we can always check for original equipment, but manhood is also a social construct. It always has been.

Liberal democracies have chosen not to legislate what gender is supposed to mean, but now we’re seeing a pushback against diversity in all its forms. Nationalists around the globe want to define what their fellow countrymen look like, act like, think like. And they want to legislate sexual roles and control the fertility of women. People who railed against mandating masks in a pandemic want to micro-manage the most intimate details of half the population.

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What does it mean to be a man — or a woman? If liberal democracies want to leave that up to individuals, illiberal societies do not. They’re insisting that the Alpha Male should be the template against which all men (and boys) should be measured. That’s why Albert Einstein might be nominally male — but not a real man.

Back at the time of the Sandy Hook school massacre, Remington issued a “Man Card” with every purchase of a Bushmaster AR-15. Maybe whoever wins the culture wars might get to define “manhood” for the rest of us … might get to decide what life for little Albert is gonna be like in middle school.

Political guru Steve Bannon extolls the seductive power of heroic fantasy. He offers a hypothetical “Dave from Accounting'' who drops dead and gets a modest funeral. But in the computer gaming world, Dave is "Ajax”, slayer of men. A hero. His fellow gamers give him a pagan send-off with a massive funeral pyre.  Thousands of online gamers attend.

“So who’s more real?” asks Bannon, “Dave from Accounting – or Ajax?”

We must beware of powerful fantasies. They might become preferable to the ordinary lives we’re living … more heroic.

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We hear talk of “hardening” our schools, but the whole point of civilization is the freedom public safety can offer. What if the fantasy for a growing number of Americans is heroism through violent action? Only in a less civilized society will acts of violent heroism seem necessary — and possible.

Maybe "The Northman" was just a movie, but I drove home in the rain profoundly depressed. I had seen the Iron Age’s definition, not only of a man, but of a heroic man for whom violent action and its possibility were essential for his sense of identity.

I’m fine with it as art. I just worry in our toxic age if this vision will become our politics as well.

Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times.  Email him at columnresponse@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod: From Hollywood to politics, What does it mean to be a man?