American Crime and the Era of Toxic Masculinity
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Are any of yall watching American Crime? If not, I’d highly encourage you to do so. The second season, which just aired its second episode, is chronicling what happens when a young man acuses members of the basketball team of sexually assaulting him. Eric, the closeted basketball player is one of the characters the show is using to examine a concept known as toxic masculinity.
While shooting hoops with his sons, Eric’s father tells Eric that he’s smelling pretty bad, encouraging him to wash himself or use some body wash so that he can get someone. Eric responds back with a pretty tough response that he doesn’t want to smell like a bitch. It’s a brilliantly awkward and revealing moment, played very well by young actor Joey Pollari.
Now, my first thought during this scene was why is the father of a boy waiting till his son turned 17. I mean my dad told me that I shouldn’t smell like a billy goat when I was like 10. But the scene immediately settled into something much more profound the more that I thought about the exchange. This dude Eric is so turned off by the fact that he might smell like anything other than a man, or be less than, that he responds to his father in a brusque manner. I mean what is there to be afraid of in keeping up with proper hygiene, particularly when your father is mentioning it in the conversation around getting a bae?
It felt like every #straighttwitter conversation I’ve seen roll down my Twitter timeline. The list of things straight men believe they aren’t allowed to/told they can’t do is exhausting (read this thread or this article for the proof). I sent a tweet to Kirk Moore, one the writers, saying that perhaps they modeled the character off of straight Twitter.
It’s partly hilarious to me given that later in the ep he meets some dude from Grindr later. I was shouting at the screen “Eric no man is fucking you when you don’t bathe properly” cause if he’s a bot…you know what, I won’t go into this today. The scene, like most on the show, is brilliantly done with the flashes to black and the heavy breathing, insinuating that the moment is getting more aggresive, when Eric breaks away and states that he doesn’t want it like that, he just wants to kiss. His date obliges and they engage in some sweet kisses.
There was so much in this moment, and right before, from Eric enthusiastically racing his date’s car (super masculinely) to the admission that he doesn’t like what they’re doing. Despite how ridiculous I found him earlier, my heart crumbled in sympathy at that moment. Here was a kid, a young man, who was only able to be vulnerable in this moment. Though he forceful, I saw a glimmer of the sensitive soul that Eric doesn’t like to show and probably doesn’t want to be. You can see that it’s fracturing him and forcing him to act in a way that if he were free of the expectations, he might not. Of all the things that drew me into that character, the moment of breakdown is what made me feel like he was a fuller, well rounded person, an actual male human being, rather than a cookie cutter straight jock.
This got me thinking that one of the brilliant things American Crime is analyzing is the concept of masculinity. The trailers hit on it with the “Boys don’t do that to other boys” line, but this episode so eloquently drove it home. It’s not that masculinity in itself is bad, but the toxicity that comes with the expectations. It’s not just unhealthy physically (I’m still unable at him not wanting to shower) but mentally (the sneaking around to meet with men, the having to be a different person with his friends, etc). Nevermind the fact that masculinity is rooted mainly in heteronormative patriarchy, but how does one go through life having to rid oneself of enjoyable things or bottle in feelings just to be considered masculine? We’ve seen it all the time recently with Odell Beckham Jr and the drama surrounding him just how ridiculous and draining accusations of non-masculinity can be. I just want to ask every straight man that ascribes to this way of life “Ain’t you tired?” Everyone has expectations put on them but shit, you can’t enjoy eating fruit if you’re a man? How Sway? Masculinity, much like femininity, should be able to encompass a wide variety of tastes and actions, and when it doesn’t individuals run the risk of not being fully formed.
Eric’s decisions, actions, and beliefs have all been influenced by such a warped sense of what being a man is. His masculinity is so fragile (to pick up another twitter term) that the mere thought of doing something that’s even slightly not masculine generates such a hostile reaction. I have no idea what is going to happen to the character, but I know that Eric’s storyline is gonna be rough to watch as his identity is so rooted in a weird sense of what he should be. Once the foolery starts to really pop off, I’m intrigued to see how the writers will handle it. This era of toxic masculinity is this vice that’s actually hurting people more than helping, as we can already see with characters on the show, and I’m glad American Crime is here to hopefully show how we can move past it.
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