Texas Speech Communication Journal

American Manhood

Legends of the Fall (1994) is a long, splendid visual tour de force based on Jim Harrison’s 1979 novella. The movie features Anthony Hopkins playing Colonel Ludlow, a retired army officer who is put off by betrayals of the U.S. government perpetrated on Native Americans during the Indian Wars of the 1800’s and so, along with his most trusted friend, a Native American named Stab, moves to a remote ranch in Montana to raise his three boys, Alfred (Aidan Quinn), Tristan (Brad Pitt), and Samuel (Henry Thomas). The film begins as Stab, serving as narrator, describes the youngest brother Samuel’s return from college with his new fiancée, Susannah. Before the two can marry, however, Samuel encourages his two brothers to ride to Canada with him and enlist in what becomes World War I. Although Colonel Ludlow is adamantly against his sons involvement in the war, all three brothers enlist; Tristan and Alfred as much to protect Samuel as to fight the Germans. While at war, Alfred is wounded and sent home, and despite Tristan’s attempts to protect his younger brother, Samuel is killed and dies in his arms. Tristan, already a recalcitrant loner, goes nearly mad and not only kills but also scalps a large number of Germans before cutting out Samuel’s heart, sealing it in paraffin and sending it home to his father in Montana for burial. Tristan moves to the center of the story now after he is discharged from the army for going mad. He spends some time at sea before he returns home to Montana, marries Susannah, and attempts to impregnate her as a way to replace Samuel and ease his guilt over Samuel’s death. Susannah cannot get pregnant, however, and it is not long before Tristan becomes restless and he leaves Susannah and the ranch. He spends the next several years traveling abroad, and becomes a hunter in the South Pacific and Africa, while wrestling with the guilt over Samuel’s death. Although Susannah vows to wait for Tristan’s return, she gives up on him as lost at sea and marries Alfred who has become a successful businessman and eventually a congressman in Helena, Montana. Eventually, Tristan returns home again, this time with a herd of horses breathing new life into the ranch which had grown decrepit after his father was incapacitated by a stroke. Tristan accepts Susannah’s marriage to Alfred and marries the daughter of a close family friend, Isabelle-II. Tristan finally puts his wild ways behind him as he settles down with Isabelle-II who bears him two children while he supports the family working as a bootlegger smuggling in liquor from Canada during Prohibition. The peace is disrupted once again when Isabelle-II is accidentally shot by a corrupt police officer with connections to Alfred. The movie concludes with violence and mayhem as Tristan and the family are reunited in an effort to avenge Isabelle-II’s death. Stab’s narration explains that Tristan, having to escape to the mountains to avoid punishment for the revenge killings, lives a long life before being attacked by a grizzly bear. In Stab’s words, Tristan dies a good death.

The real star of Legends of the Fall is masculinity. Masculinity moves the story along as each of the three brothers’ attempts to please their father by replicating his sanctioned view of manhood. Alfred and Samuel, however, are no match for Tristan, who is able to emulate his father’s patriarchal qualities and virile masculinity. The audience quickly learns why Tristan is his father’s favorite son as Alfred and Samuel are portrayed as weak, impotent, and feminine in comparison. The film, then, is able to offer important insights into masculinity as a powerful rhetorical phenomenon. In Legends of the Fall, masculinity consistently exerts itself to craft identities and construct hierarchies. The audience knows who the star is by knowing who the most masculine is. This paper uses Legends of the Fall to develop a better understanding of masculinity; what it is, what it can accomplish, and how it works in American culture.

The story of American culture has largely been a story about the struggle over masculine representations. Not because masculinity is an objective reality, but because masculinity as a cultural concept functions as a conduit to make connections to issues like competence, morality, and leadership ability. Masculinity by itself is meaningless, but when it is used to make connections, it can influence what wars America fights, how Americans vote, who Americans marry, and what kind of work and recreation Americans participate in. This is not to argue that American masculinity is superior or more important to the nation’s mythos than Spanish or German masculinity, for instance. I would, however, like to argue that the way masculine representations are reproduced and reinscribed is unique to the American national character. There is no single discernable masculine representation, but folklore – the stories we tell to make sense of our world – makes it appear otherwise. Masculinity works with popular culture to create a powerful cultural myth. That is why I look to Legends of the Fall for particular insights into a phenomenon that has been an important part of American cultural representations.

It is the communication scholar who has unique insight into these representations because there is nothing essential about masculinity. Masculinity is a symbolic, socially constructed phenomenon that relies on rhetorical framing for its heavy lifting. What it means to be masculine is constituted and reproduced through discursive structures and a wide range of rhetorical devices, such as movies. The masculine representations put forth in Legends of the Fall are not based on inherent biological sex differences between men and women. Although most men are taller and heavier and have different anatomy than women, those are essential differences that relate to sex. Gender on the other hand, is described by Judith Butler as performative and contingent (1990, 276, 293). Little boys are wrapped in blue blankets and given guns to play with while little girls are wrapped in pink blankets and given dolls, for example. Gender is constantly being worked out – rehearsed, refined, and modified. As Connell argues, gender comes into existence and people act (1998, 154). One such area where masculinity is worked out is through cultural representations, like film.

This essay sets out to use the masculine representations in Legends of the Fall as a way to learn more about what masculinity is, what it does and how it subordinates and elevates. To do so, I will first cover the research on masculinity by beginning with Crisis theory. I will then sketch out the five features identified by scholars researching masculinity before analyzing how those features are displayed in Legends of the Fall. I will conclude by explaining some implications that reinscribing an idealized masculinity has on our culture, society, and the field of American Studies.

Masculine Identity Crisis

To begin to understand what masculinity is and what it does it is important to start with crisis theory. Crisis theory has recently emerged in the 1990’s in the field of Men’s Studies as a way to explain male identity crisis brought on by postmodern changes. Crisis theory is a way to explain public anxiety about a perceived threat to the values and interests held sacred by society and what is a perceived threat to the moral order itself (Titus, 2004, 145). Typically, the crisis has been set off by cultural and historical transitions that resulted in instability resulting in questions about traditional representations of male identity. The crisis is situated between a disconnection from an idealized past and a predicted future calamity (Titus, 2004, 148). The result is men feeling like a persecuted majority, leaving them wounded and vulnerable (Titus, 2004, 150).

This crisis has produced numerous jeremiads that call for a return to a particular social order as way to off-set the inevitable calamity that is sure to result. The causes of the crisis are dragged out as tales of woe and lamentation for what these changes are doing to men in particular and society as a whole. Numerous remedies have been proposed, some that begin in grade school where boy violence and learning disabilities can be remedied by “guy-ifying” schools and making them more boy-friendly through active learning and fantasy and adventure stories (Titus, 2004, 158). Men with wealth can compensate for insecurities about masculinity through conspicuous consumption including riding a Harley Davidson, a body-by-Soloflex, or an expensive baseball card collection (Holt & Thompson, 2004, 425). The evangelical Christian can join Promise Keepers or read any number of “manly” Christian books to recover a lost past and re-assert God-approved transcendental authority (Traister 2000, 290).

What these reactionary attempts are trying to do is recover a lost or dissipating myth. Myth, a cultural representation built on collective images (Kuklick, 1972, 73), is especially important during times of struggle or crisis. For men, the myth of masculinity becomes crucial to identity construction when their sense of place is questioned. As Bruce Kuklick attests, we invest these collective images with moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities (1973, 72). When employed they reinforce identity and explain the behavior of the collective. Myths are constructed and reinscribed often through popular culture, such as movies, television programs, and magazines. Scholars have identified five distinguishing features of masculinity that consistently emerge in cultural representations.

Physical Force and Control

The first distinguishing feature of masculinity is based on physical force and control. The male body is central as it represents strengthen, force, athleticism, toughness, courage, and violence (Trujillo, 1991, 291). Physical status is then connected to competence, which allows the superiority of men to become naturalized (Connell, 1983, 28). Violence represented by the desire and willingness to fight is often the single most evident marker of manhood (Kimmel, 1998, 61). For example, Buffalo Bill put forth a masculine image based on his reputation as an Indian slayer and his role as the “greatest buffalo killer whom the west has ever produced” (Dickenson, Ott, & Aoki, 2005, 101)

Work and Occupational Achievement

Masculinity is also characterized through a man’s work and occupational achievement. Work is divided along gender lines so that “men’s work” and “women’s work” can be clearly identified. Masculine work is often based on what one is able to materially produce. This is one of the reasons men in the arts are deemed effeminate. Ballerinas, painters, and poets and even white-collar cubicle workers and managerial types do not produce tangible results from their labor as blue-collar construction workers and carpenters do.

Patriarchy

The third characteristic concerns the male role in the family as head of the household. Men are to work hard and devote themselves to their careers so they can provide for the family at home. The patriarchal male is to support and lead the family. As the nation moved from farmers and small businesspersons this model was gradually reconfigured to align with corporate requirements of large bureaucratic corporations (Aden, 1999). The male takes on the role of “breadwinner,” “family protector,” and “strong father figure” versus female roles such as “housewife,” “sexual object,” and “nurturer” (Trujillo, 1991, 291). Male domination over women and children in the family is then extended to male domination over women and society in general (Lerner, 1986, 239).

Outdoorsman

The fourth characteristic is the daring and romantic outdoorsman that is so crucial to the Frontier thesis. Men like Teddy Roosevelt who participate in “manly” activities like big game hunting, strenuous hiking, and long horseback rides epitomize the guardian on the edge of civilization. Images like the cowboy archetype and rustic hunters and trappers were represented as uncivilized and fiercely independent men who lived on the cusp of the wilderness.

Heterosexual

Finally, the masculine man defines his identity through sex. He embodies personal characteristics which are manifested through adult male relationships with men and sexual relationships with women. This requires not being effeminate (a sissy) in physical appearance or mannerism, not having overly intimate relationships with men, and not failing in sexual relationships with women (Herek, 1987, 72-73). John F. Kennedy, for example, compensated for his physical failings through sexual conquest (Dean, 1998). The heterosexualized masculine image creates a hierarchy that grants men privileges over women and gay or emasculated men (Conslavo, 2003, 30).

In sum, men use these five characteristics to help them deal with a perceived masculine identity crisis. Are men limited to these five choices when attempting to put worth a masculine image? Certainly not, but it seems that masculine portrayals in cultural representations, like Legends of the Fall, offer only one way to be a man. I turn now to a more in-depth analysis of how masculinity is reinscribed in terms of these five distinguishing characteristics.

Legends of the Fall

To understand masculinity in Legends of the Fall, it is important to understand how the three brothers, Alfred, Tristan, and Samuel, are portrayed. Samuel is the youngest and most effeminate. His dress, baby-faced physical appearance, voice, and mannerism stand-out in the rugged Montana frontier. He is able to identify the various flower types in a vase and writes letters to his fiancée, Susannah, which read, “You are all that is clear and cool and pure. I close my eyes and fix my thoughts on you.” His education also emasculates him. He is a graduate of Harvard, is able to speak fluent German, and is knowledgeable about foreign affairs as the build-up to World War I takes place. Samuel is also shown to be involved in the arts, a traditionally feminine pursuit. As a child, he is said to have drawn birds in the canyon and in one scene, sings a very feminine sounding song about a maiden sitting down at the edge of a wood while Susannah plays the piano and his father and brothers watch from a distance.

Alfred, the oldest brother, represents the over-civilized businessman. He is always formally dressed, with short, dark hair and a clean shaven face. He is more masculine than Samuel, but not wild enough to be fully masculine. Alfred holds too tight to rules and convention. After Tristan has sex with Susannah for the first time, Alfred asks him, “When are you planning to be married” in order to fulfill his obligation. His “stuffiness” is clear when he attempts tries to persuade Susannah to marry him in awkward fashion. Alfred explains his failings to put into words his desire as what he calls his mother’s overblown romantic imagination coming out in him. He seems to be too much like his mother for Susannah to love him. Alfred is also at home in the city, not the frontier. After Susannah rejects his advances and falls for Tristan, Alfred moves to Helena where he becomes a successful businessman at home in the hustle and bustle of city life. He writes a letter to his mother that reads,

September 7, 1915: I think I may have found my place in this world. Helena is a city turned modern over night. Bursting with all the energy and vitality of our time. I feel alive here. There is much opportunity for anyone willing to dedicate himself to his labors. Already, I seem to have acquired a reputation for honesty and fair dealing and am pleased to call Helena’s most influential citizens my friends. They are determined to see this city grow and so am I.

His over-civilization and adherence to convention allow him to thrive away from the frontier, in the more feminized city.

Tristan is different from both Alfred and Samuel. His masculinity separates and elevates him so that he can be the star of the movie, most loved by his father, most desired by women, and able to live the fullest and longest life. He stands apart from his brothers because he closely adheres to the five distinguishing features of masculinity.

Physical Force and Control

Tristan epitomizes physical prowess from an early age. Stab narrating says, “Every warrior hopes a good death will find him, but Tristan went looking for his.” As an adolescent, Tristan is shown waking a sleeping grizzly bear, fending off the bear’s attack and responding by cutting off one the bear’s claws which sends the bear limping away in pain. At war, Tristan displays his physical prowess and bloodlust. While searching for Samuel on the battle field, Tristan kills three Germans even though they are on horseback and he is on foot. He then kills two more Germans after they unload their Gatling gun into Samuel. After holding Samuel in his arms as he dies, he stabs him in the chest and cuts out his heart. Later that night, he uses the blood from the dripping heart as war paint as he stalks, stabs, and scalps two more German soldiers.

After returning from war, Tristan continues to display his physical prowess. He attacks a bartender who outweighs him by 20 pounds and puts a gun to his head because he will not serve Stab a beer. In another scene, he pulls a knife and almost stabs Susannah as she wakes him in bed. After Tristan leaves Montana again, this time for the South Pacific and Africa, he writes a letter to his family that reads, “I have become a hunter. Tell Stab there are creatures here that cannot even be found in books. And I have killed them all.”

Work and Occupational Achievement

Tristan’s manhood is also displayed through his work and occupational achievement. On the ranch, all engage in work such as tending the garden, sawing logs for a horse pen, fixing the wheel on the carriage, beating the house rugs, and washing clothes, but it is Tristan who engages in more productive work that is, therefore, more masculine than other kinds of labor. Tristan goes hunting, a more valued occupation, while the others stay home doing chores. When a horse breaks loose from the pack, it is Tristan who is able to track it down and break it as Susannah watches longingly from her window. Alfred, Samuel and Father all pick Susannah up when she arrives in Montana at the train station, but Tristan is nowhere to be found. When he finally shows up (as Brad Pitt for the first time) the audience learns that he was out hunting as he approaches the group riding a horse and carrying a dead deer carcass on another.

Patriarchy

Tristan also displays his manhood as the patriarchal leader of his brothers. It is Tristan who is specifically charged with taking care of Samuel by his father as they leave for war. When Samuel is wounded in a trench battle, Tristan holds him out of the fight, even though Samuel is only scratched on the cheek. In Alfred’s words, “Tristan came to France less to fight the Germans than to act as Samuel’s nursemaid.”

Tristan’s reproductive abilities are also fundamental to his patriarchal role. After unsuccessfully trying to impregnate Susannah, Tristan packs his horse and prepares to leave her. Before he can go, Susannah asks, “If we’d had a child, or if I were pregnant, would you still be going.” His answer is yes, but the point is made. Later Tristan is able to finally display his reproductive abilities after marrying Isabelle-II and having two children with her. His oldest boy, Samuel, is the manifestation of his masculinity. Alfred recognizes this as he says, “He is a fine boy, Tristan.” At the conclusion of the movie, Tristan passes on his patriarchal role to Alfred who cannot have children because Susannah is barren. When it becomes clear that Tristan must leave civilization for the revenge killings of the police officers, he says to Alfred, “I want you to watch over my children. Watch over Sam.” Alfred responds, “Brother, it would be an honor.”

Outdoorsman

Tristan also stands above his brothers through his outdoorsman persona. The audience learns early on that Tristan has a special connection to Stab and because he is a Native American, a connection to the outdoors. Stab introduces Tristan by saying, “Tristan was born during a terrible winter; his mother almost died bringing him into the world. His father brought him to me and I wrapped him in a bear skin and held him all night. As he grew to be a man, I taught him the great joy of the kill. When the hunter cuts out his (sic) warm heart, holding it in his hands, setting his (sic) spirit free.” Stab also points out the connection Tristan has with the grizzly bear that he provokes as a child and eventually mauls Tristan to death when he is an old man. After the first encounter, in which Tristan cuts off the bear’s claw, the bear is spotted in the valley near the range. Father, Stab and Tristan all take aim at the bear with their rifles, but it is clear that this is Tristan’s shot. He hesitates, however, and the bear shuffles away unharmed. Stab explains, “The old ones say, when a man and an animal have spilled each other’s blood, they become one.”

The voice of the bear becomes Tristan’s guide throughout his life. During a particularly violent period in Tristan’s life, Stab says, “I think it was the bear’s voice he heard, deep inside him, growling in dark and secret places.” When Tristan eventually calms down, marries and raises his children, Stab says, “It was then when Tristan came into the quiet heart of his life. The bear inside him was sleeping.” And when Tristan is gone from home for a long time at Sea, Stab prays that the bear’s voice inside him would grow silent and Tristan would come to live in the world.”

Heterosexuality

Finally, Tristan exerts his masculinity through sexual prowess. Although the main female characters in the movie want him, he keeps them at a distance and is able to objectify them as they pursue him and his virile manhood. After Tristan’s mother left Montana, Alfred and Samuel still write her letters, but Tristan refuses to speak to her. As the most manly, Tristan also has the worst manners of the three brothers. He is uncouth and informal, always the last to stand after his father and brothers as a woman enters the room. He is also more animalistic in his attitudes towards sex. When Samuel reluctantly discloses his insecurities about pleasing Susannah sexually, Tristan reassures him by saying, “You’re good at everything you do. I’m sure it will be the same with fucking.” In shock, Samuel responds, “Tristan, please. We are talking about my future wife.” Tristan replies, “Oh, you’re not going to fuck her?” To which Samuel sheepishly says, “I am planning to be with her.” Tristan retorts, “I suggest fucking.”

Tristan’s heterosexual masculinity is displayed through the attraction of the female characters. It is clear from Susannah’s first hours in Montana that she cannot help but be attracted to Tristan. She watches him longingly from her bedroom as he breaks a horse in the pen and is shown biting her nails in anticipation as Tristan returns from one of his journeys. Tristan, unlike his brothers, also has several sex scenes, including one where he is shown having sex with Susannah from behind displaying his sexual power and status. Tristan also has the attraction of Isabelle-II, who begins the film as a young, pre-adolescent girl but grows into a beautiful woman. As a young girl, Isabelle-II talks often of marrying Tristan when she is older, which she eventually does, much to Susannah’s dismay. After Isabelle-II is accidentally shot and killed, Susannah admits to Tristan that she still dreams of being the mother of his children and admits wishing for both Isabelle-II and her late husband Samuel to die, so she could be with Tristan. After this admission, the next scene is Susannah crying in her bed. Soon after, she kills herself in anguish and jealousy. Alfred writes to Tristan, “You have won. I am sending her home,” as her coffin arrives at the ranch.

In sum, Tristan is elevated above his brothers because he best fulfills the five features of masculinity. This allows Tristan the top spot on the hierarchy, over women, but also his less masculine brothers. To conclude the movie, Stab summarizes Tristan’s life by saying,

“I remember when he was a boy, I thought Tristan would never live to be an old man. I was wrong about that. I was wrong about many things. It was those who loved him most who died young. He was a rock they broke themselves against; however much he tried to protect them. But he had his honor and a long life and he saw his children grown and raise their own families. Tristan died in 1963. He was last seen up in the North Country where the hunting is still good. His grave is unmarked. But that does not matter. He always lived in the borderland – somewhere between this world and the other.”

As Tristan is mauled by the same grizzly bear that he fought as a child, Stab ends the movie with, “It was a good death.” What the audience learns from Tristan is that he has lived the best life. The other brothers, the women, and supporting male characters in the movie long for Tristan’s masculinity, but always feel short. Because of this, they live less than fulfilled lives; some even dying at a young age. Tristan’s reward for his masculinity is a long and fulfilled life with an honorable death.

Implications

Tristan’s masculinity allows him to be the star of the movie, his father’s favorite son, most desired by women, and respected by the young and old characters, white and Indian. In this way, Legends of the Fall reinscribes the five distinguishing characteristics of masculinity in the same way they are used to sell Miller Lite, Wrangler blue jeans, and Chevy trucks. I now turn to the implications of reinscribing an idealized masculinity and the impact this has on culture, society, and the field of American Studies.

To begin, it is important to examine what is excluded from the five features of masculinity. If Tristan shows us what it takes to be a man, what is not manly? What is excluded from that definition? If Tristan is manly and therefore, superior, it is important to ask, what is he not? Identifying what Tristan is not can open up larger conceptual explanations of how masculinity is used to empower and disempower.

The proper starting point is to place femininity and Tristan at polar opposites. If masculine were to be placed on continuum, Tristan is on the opposite end of femininity – opposed to and set against it. This is what makes him superior. What is he then opposed to? What is he set against?

First, idealized masculinity is set against authority. Both Father and Tristan, throughout the movie, display an uneasy relationship with authority. They are masculine because they are autonomous and unwilling to submit to convention and rule. This disdain for authority can be traced back to the first U.S. settlers who arrived from England (Holt & Thompson, 2004). The U.S. became an ex-colony forged out of a defiance of a distant, restricting colonial power and fought to make the U.S. a place where man was completely free from binding institutional authority (428).

This is evidenced in Legends of the Fall by Father’s general attitude towards the government. A former Colonel in the army, Father was soured by his experiences with the massacring and displacement of the American Indians. These experiences influence his attitude towards government and authority throughout the movie. As Alfred returns from Helena to ask for his Father’s blessing to run for Congress, Father attempts to dissuade him by saying, “Congress is government and I worked for the government once . . . Indians were the issues those days. I assure you there is nothing quite so grotesque as the meeting of a child with a bullet or an entire village slaughtered while sleeping. That was the government’s resolution of that particular issue in those days and I can see nothing in its behavior since then that it has gained wisdom, common sense, or humanity.” Later in that scene, when discussing Samuel’s death with Alfred, he says, “Samuel chose to be a soldier and that’s what soldiers do: they die! Sent to their slaughter by men in government; parasites like you!”

Tristan, as the embodiment of his father’s masculinity, also sets himself against authority. He refuses to stay with his unit while fighting in the war choosing to instead protect Samuel. After Samuel is killed, Tristan is discharged because he has gone mad and cannot fit within the authoritative structure of the military. Tristan eventually becomes a bootlegger on his father’s beckoning and settles down with his wife and two children, but as a criminal whose livelihood is set against authority. Alfred summarizes Tristan’s contempt for authority by comparing his life to Tristan’s. He says, “I followed all the rules: man’s and God’s. And you . . . you followed none of them and they all loved you more. Samuel, Father, and my . . . even my own wife.”

In the climactic scene of the movie, the whole family gets to display their disdain for authority when several police officers come to the ranch to kill Tristan. Father will not allow that to happen, though, as he draws a double-barreled shotgun from under his coat and blows two officers away. As a third officer is taking aim at Father, Alfred, from behind the barn shoots the last officer, saving his father’s life. Alfred is finally accepted by his father with a warm embrace because he has shunned his authority position and became a part of the family.

The implications of masculinity’s disdain for authority are intriguing because masculinity is supposed to mirror an uneasy relationship with authority while men still hold most positions of authority. This explains the ambivalence and uneasy relationship with authority many modern men struggle with. Men realize that to fulfill other masculine roles, such as the Breadwinner, they must submit to bosses for paychecks and police officers for security. This ambivalence can explain some of the roots of modern man’s perceived crisis. How is man to defy authority and reap the benefits of authority simultaneously? Like a house divided against itself, the fractured masculine identity cannot stand.

The masculine ideal also displays a disdain for civilization. The real man cannot function within the constraints of society, so he must live (or at least long for) the wild boundary on the edge of civilization that divides chaos from order. The Montana ranch in Legends of the Fall is an example of this. The ranch is set apart from civilization. There are no neighbors to be seen. When Stab tells the audience why Father wanted to move to the wild, he says, “The Colonel wanted to lose the madness. The madness over the mountains. To lose the madness.” Just as overcivilization motivated early American settlers to the frontier, Father wanted to shun the overcivilized society in favor of seclusion and isolation.

Withdrawing from culture has become a theme in modern men’s movements. Books like Iron John by Robert Bly and Wild at Heart by John Eldredge exhort men to find an authentic masculinity outside of culture’s constraints. Civilization cannot handle real masculinity, they argue, so withdraw from it and find it in the wild frontier. Society should only be used as a means to an end; as a place to be tolerated and then escaped from.

The problem with this definition of masculinity is that withdrawal leads to apathy. Even if most men do not literally retreat to the wilderness, the idea still reflects a disdain for society. This leads to disengagement and indifference. Why engage if it is all evil anyway? Why vote if nothing good can come from it? Why participate and attempt to improve society when it is all gone to hell anyway? The real man would choose instead to be riding a Harley on the open road or a hiking up a secluded trail.

The masculinity in Legends of the Fall also shows a disdain for compromise, dialogue, and negotiation and a preference for violence as a method of conflict resolution. This topic has been written about often when critiquing men’s culture. Resolution is met not through dialogue but through physical force and control (the first distinguishing feature of manhood).

For example, Tristan finds healing in Samuel’s death by hunting, stabbing, and scalping numerous German soldiers. Isabelle-II is avenged through the gunning down of the police officer who shot her and running another government official through with a pitchfork. Tristan is immortalized in the final scene by being killed by the grizzly bear who had been his inner voice throughout the movie. Stab concludes, “It was a good death” (because it was a violent death).

The most obvious and disturbing implication of eschewing dialogue and negotiation for violence as conflict resolution is reflected in current U.S. foreign policy. U.S. presidents are to model masculine leadership, just like Tristan. One way to do that is through deployment of the military. In Iraq, for instance, military force and violence is favored as a method of resolution over inspections and United Nations negotiations because American masculinity constantly needs to be reasserted and reinscribed.

Fourth and finally, masculinity is set against familial responsibility and respect for women. Tristan, for example, wants what the traditional family can offer him, but he is unwilling to adjust his life if any of his masculine features must be compromised. What I mean here is evidenced by Tristan’s treatment of Susannah. After it is clear that Susannah cannot bear him any children and fulfill his patriarchal duties, he leaves her. And consequently, because Isabelle-II is able to produce two children for him, he remains to support her. Tristan’s masculinity shows a disdain for women as they are relegated to objects used to fulfill his masculinity role.

The male in the audience can see from Tristan’s behavior that family and intimate relationships with the opposite sex are designed to fulfill a masculine need. And if that need is not being met, it is perfectly acceptable to leave. If your wife cannot get pregnant, or if children become too constraining, it is perfectly acceptable to exit in the pursuit of masculinity.

Conclusion

It is important to understand how the five features of masculinity are reinscribed through Legends of the Fall because they serve a hegemonic function. Hegemony explains the structures of oppression and domination that are made to appear natural. This is what reinscribing a masculine ideal in Tristan’s character does. He is at the top of the masculine hierarchy because he best fulfills the five features; therefore, it is natural for him to be on top. That is just the way it is.

As Connell (1990) contends, masculine is hegemonic when it puts forth an idealized form of the masculine character (83). A man cannot climb the hierarchy if he sings like Samuel or is rejected by women like Alfred. The audience perceives Tristan to be on top because the idealized form of masculinity is so widely accepted in society. This particular version of masculinity becomes common sense and is then connected to decision-making, competence, and morality. It defines what it means to be a man. The result is not only the subjugation of women and marginalization of gays, but also the creation and reinforcement of a hierarchy for all males trying to be Tristan that can be displayed through bar fights, sexual conquest, and unilateral war.

But is this how masculinity has to be? Can masculinity serve a positive, even counter-hegemonic social function? Possibly, but not through promoting a monolithic, idealized definition of what it means to be a man. Idealized masculinity naturally sets up structures of oppression that are reinscribed from the elementary school playground to the corporate boardroom. As a remedy, opening up the five features of masculinity would be a smart place to start. It is important to recognize that there are always multiple, competing definitions of manhood. So that empowering the disempowered and giving voice to the voiceless may also be masculine activities. Although opening up the definition of masculinity may not help sell beer and blue jeans, it may help eliminate structures of oppression and domination that have long been reinforced by hegemonic masculinity.

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