I watched Fight Club and Family Man back to back on cable last night. It got me thinking about Male Bonding. What a silly phrase with its implications of naked men in a drum circle. But its useful. I think both movies are investigations on how we are men .
In Family Man Nicholas Cage wakes up and finds him life as a Wall Street Shark disappear. He lives middle class in the suburbs . He has no idea how to proceed.
He gets advice from his best friend Jeremy Priven. He seems closer to his friend. His friend tells him how to navigate this road. He provides a moral compass. Nicholas Cage learns how to be the titular Family Man not because he has a family but because he was initiated into these new rites .
Now Fight Club. This is a movie that rejects the family. Brad Pitt says to Edward Norton that he was not sure " another woman is an answer" . The woman in their lives are psychopaths . They feel rejected by their society . So what do they do. They start by beating the shit out of each other. Maybe this is sublimated sexual desire . But it moves past this. They develop a society of Men. One where they can find the fathers and brothers they do not have. Fight Club must be all men . This seems to be the unwritten rule.
I think that the womens movement taught woman they could reject sex roles. I think that men need that moment. Affection between men is suspect. We need a way to be men without violence or retreating into family. We need a movement that teaches us that we as men can reject all sex roles. Make it a matter of Gender Liberation.
Refrences
Book: Iron John- Robert Bly
Movie - Fight Club
Movie - THe Family Man.

What i am listening to today- Hoyt Axton - Funeral of the King
Sun Ra- Planet 9
What i am reading - Black Water Volume One Stories of the fantastic - Edited by Albero Manguel

Qoute - whatever a man prays for, he prays fiàor a miraacle. Ever prayer reduces itself to this: Great G_d grant me that two and two be not four .
Turgenev