"If you're always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be"
-Maya Angelou- |
This blog post has a connection with my previous blog from the film Miss Representation, my blog focus on the males' issues that cultivates in our society from the film The Mask You Live In. I will answer the same three questions that were asked from the post before, How do the film impact me? How does it impact on my knowing? How does the film impact on my being? In this blog, I will give my thoughts from a female lens and how I interpreted the film.
How does the argument in the film make you feel (impact on your being)? The film made me feel empathy towards men and broke down some barriers that I carried towards men, it allowed me to look at masculinity a lot different in a deeper and complex way. It also made me feel how dangerous our words are too little boys that are developing into men. Made me aware of how we don’t nature boys as we do women for the sake of fear of them being homosexual. The film also made me feel angry because of the culture we live in that we let our boys down we set them up for failure we give them this idea of what a man should be but in actuality we taught them how to become emotionally disconnected. How does the argument in the film make you think (impact on your knowing)? I begin to think about the men in my family that are my age and older and the issues that they carry or the different experiences that they had. Those circumstances could have been a lot different by the choice of was that was said to them growing up, it makes me wonder what moment in their lives was that moment when they first felt broken. How often I have heard women other men say to them “BE A MAN” without ever having full disclosure of what that means other than not being weak. It allowed me to think about even in my own community that I watched other men strip away boys identity by calling them names such as faggot, sissy and you act like a girl. It made those particular boys be an aggressive teenager some violent adults. I never associated self -destructive behavior such as cutting with boys that was a big eye-opener for me that men are no different than women struggling with identity issues. The film made me redirect the idea of porn, how porn is truly their first real identity to sex, but porn just doesn’t show sex it shows all different types of ways to dehumanize women. That concept alone is a scary thing because it is shaping the minds of very vulnerable misdirected boys into men. How does the argument in the film make you want to make change (impact on your doing)? There are a couple of things that stuck out at me the most in the film, the first thing was when the teacher was talking eight boys in the classroom in the circle and the teacher asked them a question “Why do you think we hold back our pain”? after they did the exercise what we were behind our mask. Communication with the men in our lives are just as important as communication with the women in our lives often times we forget about the young men and the men in our communities. My job is to make an effort to ask the men in my life a very simple question how is the day to begin a comfortable space to talk, to make a suggestion that my church developed a young boys group where they can express what they are feeling without judgment I received t. Another powerful message I received from the film and it sums up how I feel with my responsibility my men in my own community. “Everyone deserves to feel whole and each of us can do our part in expanding what it means to be a man for ourselves and the boys in our lives”.
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AuthorQuiana Tilghman I am writing to express my inner self from question from a questionnaire. Archives
May 2019
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