Response to Tough Guise - Brooke Dinsmore

Katz’s Tough Guise is definitely one of my favorite documentaries I’ve ever watched in a Sociology class. I think his insights about masculinity and the connections he makes to the mass media are accurate and extremely important. As I was watching the documentary, the main question I found myself thinking about was if Katz was going to make a Tough Guise 2 now, thirteen years later than the original, what be different? How has masculinity changed, if any, from the nineties? What examples would he be using?

For the most part, I think Tough Guise remains very, very relevant and those thirteen years or not, masculinity remains very much a “man behind the curtain” construction and that violence remains a huge part of the “guise” men are supposed to don. I think that video games would make up an even larger part of Katz’s analysis today, as the video games have only gotten more violent and more prevalent in the last thirteen years. I think Katz’s analysis of masculinity in the political realm also remains heavily true and that male politicians are still very much included in the tough guys so to speak. Rush Limbaugh remains a pivotal figure in conservative politics and his type of rhetoric, I would argue, has actually become more prevalent. One key example Katz uses is how Limbaugh uses language to denigrate and trivialize women. I immediately thought of Herman Cain (infamously) referring to Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Princess Nancy” in one of the Republican primary debates which is one of the best examples I can think of how women are trivialized in politics. The rise of Newt Gingrich as a serious presidential candidate can also be connected to the Rush brand of the tough guise, which is ironic considering his cameo in the documentary as pointed out by one of my fellow students. Gingrich’s masculinity falls square into the no-holds barred, take no-prisoners, show no weaknesses, control centered model of masculinity Katz is talking about.

A large part of Tough Guise is about the trivialization of violence against women in the media as seen both in the many sexualized portrayals of violence against women and in the use of the passive voice when talking about violence against women in the news. Anyone watching the Grammy Awards last night would have been reminded of how this remains all too true with the performance of Chris Brown and his win for Best R&B Album, symbolizing better than anything his “comeback” after his brutal attack on then-girlfriend Rihanna three years ago. The acceptance of Brown by both the mainstream media and by the public is a reminder of how domestic violence is not a deviant act from the norms of masculinity but rather an adherence to the masculinity based in violence and control described by Katz. Katz’s Tough Guise is clearly all too relevant today and his prescriptions for how to deconstruct violent masculinity and improve life for men and women remain extremely important.