The recent accusations by women who had been taken
advantage of by Harvey Weinstein, the founder of Miramax isn’t quite the nightmare
it is being made out to be – women have had to battle such predators since the
origin of civilisation. Only that the world has taken cognisance of it at this
point in order to exploit it as a means of keeping the populace engaged in
order to promote readership and viewership percentages largely because of the
names of the famous people involved with the man in question. As cruel as it
may sound, and despite the rallies and remonstrations, this too shall pass, and
some other ogre shall be born, and history would repeat itself because at the
gist, human beings remain rather animalistic in their biological bearings.
Most recently I was drawn to a research that was
published in the journal, Men and Masculinities. It speaks curiously about how
social scientists are warning women about the upsurge of ‘bromance’ and how these scientists deem that
this bromance endangers heterosexual relationships. Dr Stefan Robinson, of the
University of Winchester, says in the research that the results were
‘significant and worrying’ for women and warned there is in emerging culture of
sexism and disdain in the way millennial men view the opposite sex.
“These heterosexual millennial men
cherish their close male friends, so much so that they may even provide a
challenge to the orthodoxy of traditional heterosexual relationships,” said Dr Robinson. “Given that young men are now experiencing a delayed onset of
adulthood, and an extended period of adolescence, men may choose to cohabit as
a functional relationship in the modern era.” He further elaborated, “Because heterosexual sex is now achievable
without the need for romantic commitment, the bromance could increasingly
become recognized as a genuine lifestyle relationship, whereby two heterosexual
men can live together and experience all the benefits of a traditional
heterosexual relationship.”
I mostly agree
with him, yet, some of that study happens to appear a tad unconvincing. What
the current generation is calling ‘bromance’ is nothing but another synonym for
intimate friendships between men. And men have found an emotional union with
men from the time menfolk existed.
A
BIT OF HISTORY
I have had the
privilege to make an acquaintance with therapist and researcher Geoffrey L Greif,
Ph.D. The author of 11 books, Dr Greif, is the professor at the University of
Maryland. In his book Buddy System:
Understanding Male Friendships, published by the Oxford University Press,
he us tells how friendship, like love, works best when a person can be himself
with another man. That being comfortable, first with oneself, and then seeking
out men who are a good counterpart is the best way to have meaningful
friendships. He explains how the very word friendship has been derived from freogan (an Old Goth root) that means
‘to love’. That friends have been partners in crime and in survival. That they
have hunted together. They have sat around the campfires and figured out game
plans. He throws light on how the very nature of friendship has changed from
the Palaeolithic Age to the Neolithic Age. In the former, small tribes
travelled from plain to plain in search of food (some 10,000 years ago), and in
the latter Neolithic age, farming commenced, and with it a sense of stability was
established in the communities. When men were on the move, men needed to be
dextrous at interpersonal relationships, and that is when the start of serious
friendships and relationships began to set. Barbarism gave leeway for the wise,
just as existential ideas about life and philosophy grew, and side-by-side thrived
friendships and relationships. Fraternising for professional requirements
became the norm in the Middle Ages, and The Friendly Societies of the 18th and
19th centuries operated more like an insurance by protecting their members from
natural calamities.
One-to-one bonds
were common amongst men in the 18th century, wherein men would most unreservedly
express their innermost feelings to each other in epistolary exchanges. One such
example is from 1779 by American statesman Alexander Hamilton to a friend: “I wish, my dear Laurens, it might be in my
power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you.”
Another example is U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and his close friend Joshua
Speed. The friends lived in the same room for 4 years, and slept together on
the same bed. Considering today’s utopian generation, who does not judge
sleeping in the same bed with a man as anything sexual or deviant, some 20th
century historians speculated that Lincoln and Speed might have been lovers,
although both the men married and stayed devoted friends until the
assassination of Lincoln.
Sex between
men was prevalent from centuries, simply, it was not a subject of speculation,
or considered abnormal until the 19th century. In fact, the very term homosexuality was sparingly used until
then. So what exactly happened you may ask? Weaving together the accounts of
historians and sociologists, it is evident that people, in order to preserve a
certain code of conduct to bestrew their faith began to inject the society with
the fear of homophobia. Men, in order to prove their allegiance to
heterosexuality had to cease being with men as much as they wished, and occupied
themselves by being primarily around women. The 19th century was the last era
wherein to hang out with men was not considered homosexual.
This ‘gay’ view
most rapidly infected minds, almost like an epidemic, and while it was not
immediately visible, the craze remained active for the last 125 years in
certain parts of the world. The result – devastating effects on the male psyche
in which men began to bottle themselves up, and this schism saw men descend into
a cavity of emotional turmoil, to the extent where, unable to deal with such anxiety,
they even began to take their lives.
THE
MALE AS ART
“My figures are
invariably caught on the move or in transition - I am fascinated by the subtle
interactions of muscle, bone and sinew that come into play as a body moves. A
half turn, a shift of balance, sometimes just an intention to move can animate
an entire figure. As this shows up most clearly and dramatically in male
anatomy, most of my figures are male.
The ordinary
actions of every day present endless pictorial potential. Quite unconsciously,
a man makes wonderful shapes in the course of pulling on a T-shirt, stepping
into a pair of trousers or towelling himself dry after bathing. These shapes
often suggest the urgency of sport or the measured grace of dance and every now
and again, bring to mind the posture of a memorable figure from a great work of
art. With these references in mind, even the most routine activity acquires
resonance.”
I was reading
that rather remarkable summation by artist Michael Leonard when a friend peeked into my phone and
stared at me, aghast. “Is something the matter?” I asked him with nonchalance.
“My man,” he said most mockingly, his finger pointed towards the screen of my
phone, “that’s homo!’ No sooner had those words escaped his larynx, I thought it
best to ignore his inanity, as I reflected that when I read or hear something
like that, I am not persuaded into thinking of the male as a sexual object, but
only as an object of art. What’s more? That is how I reckon any healthy mind
would perceive of the same. In earnestness I wished to inform my friend that
everything in life was nothing but a form of conditioning. That a child is born
with a clean slate, and what you engrave on that slate is what the child will
grow to accept as normal. I wished to inform him that if we were to leave ‘sexuality’
blank, it would be fascinating indeed to observe how the carnal desires of a human
being, when unopposed, would take shape in the real world.
With women it
is considered common to compare their anatomy in the flesh, but for a man to
even compliment another man on his sense of dressing, or his carved frame
raises eyebrows, and such compliments are conveniently labelled homosexual, or
leaning towards homoeroticism by a certain section of the social classes, and in
certain parts of the globe. It is here that I differed once again with the
research published that the sharing of friendship between men is a threat to
the heterosexual relationships we men share with women, and it is here, once
again, that I quite subscribed to the ideologies of the utopian generation,
where being a heterosexual male with absolutely no slants towards homosexuality
or bisexuality, when I was quite relaxed in conveying to my fellow men that I
liked how they dressed, or, how I adored their chiselled bodies, I wondered why
the other men could not follow the same? A man who is confident and comfortable
in his own sexuality would not find himself threatened or afraid of
appreciating anybody else from his own gender.
As I dunked
more into the research presented in the journal, the researchers revealed that ‘lad
flicks’ have made close friendships between men seem regular and rather desirable.
That the men involved in the study had had bromantic friends who they lived
with, and had known for at least 18 months. Apparently, of the 30 men
interviewed, 29 said that they had experienced cuddling with a friend of the
same sex. One man named Aaron even told researchers: “We hug when we meet, and we sleep in the same bed when we have
sleepovers. Everyone knows it, and nobody is bothered by it because they do it
as well.” Another man Martin said: “It’s
like having a girlfriend, but then not a girlfriend.” When asked to describe
the difference between a bromance and a romance, one undergraduate called Bob
answered: “Sex really. That’s all.”
If that is sufficient proof that there is indeed a healthy attitude in the
world today as regards feelings of the same sex, the enquiry elaborated how most
men surveyed said they shared with their male friends secrets, which they felt
unable to share with their girlfriends. And this is where Dr Robinson adjoined:
“Young heterosexual men are now able to
confide in each other and develop and maintain deep emotional friendships based
on intimacy and the expression of once-taboo emotional sentimentality. There are however significant and worrying
results here for women. These men perceived women to be the primary regulators
of their behaviour, and this caused disdain for them as a whole in some
instances. Much in the same way that
women are portrayed in contemporary cinema as objects for male gratification
several of the participants spoke of women they knew in a generally negative
way.”
BUDDY
SYSTEM:
UNDERSTANDING
MALE FRIENDSHIPS
DR
GEOFFREY L GREIF
Dr Greif’s
book is an eye opener about how people in the time he conducted his research
thought of men and the friendships they forged with them. He elucidates how the
obsession of being ‘gay’ kept these men from developing a deeper connection
with their male friends back then. If only the men who had found themselves
influenced by such dreadful ways of assessments had visited Asia, and some of
the other cultures around the world where men connecting with men is not
considered unnatural, they would have rid themselves of their prejudices to a
large extent. When I discussed this with the affable Dr Greif, he did throw
light on how when he was working on his book the scenario was rather different
than how tolerant it is today.
In an article published on September 27, 2008 in
Psychology Today, under the title Understanding Male Friendships, Dr Greif reveals:
On the topic of men and their male friendships, it
has long been established that people with friends live longer, healthier
lives. Men’s lives are shorter than women’s. By helping men to better
connect with other men through supportive friendships, I hope to help enrich
men’s lives. His
initial postings were based on his research on more than 400 men and 120
women about how they defined friendships, about how they make and maintain
friendships, and the suggestions they offer for enhancing friendships.
Some of these postings came from his book on men’s friendships and some came
from other events and research that he came across. Two initial points, he
says, to be made from the book are thus:
1. Men, from an early
age, are socialised by society to have difficulty establishing and
maintaining friendships. We have been raised to compete with other men
and not co-operate with them. We have been raised to hide our
vulnerabilities and have often lacked friendship role models in our fathers. Yet we have friendships with other men – do they look like women’s
friendships? No. But we have them and we value them.
2. Aristotle has written that friendships
are the purest type of virtuous interaction, a giving of oneself to the
other. He observes that one can only be a friend with a peer! If you
have something to gain from someone else, or that person has something to gain
from you, it is not a true friendship as one must be an equal to participate in
a friendship. Consider in your own life, whether your closest friends are
peers.
LES
DEUX AMIS (2015)
One
cannot but conclude this composition without the citation of Two Friends (2015). Written
and directed by Louis Garrel, co-written by Christophe Honoré, based on the
play The Moods of Marianne by Alfred de Musset, it is an intensely intelligent,
yet sweetly screwed up film. What is utterly fascinating is that Garrel and Honoré have succeeded in embodying the essence of life’s lessons
on what it takes to have and balance the attachments between the woman whom you
love and make love to, and the man, whom you love, just like you would the
woman, but do not make love to. This they have achieved in such a profound
manner that at no stage in the film is it burdensome on the brain, as one would
expect of such a byzantine subject.
It
is a nearly faultless metaphorical illustration of life, a charming ode to the
poetics of friendship, and an endearing annotation on the semiotics of
relationships. It is to cinema what Keats was to poetry, Cocteau was to
literature, and Goethe was to philosophy.
References:
Sarah Knapton (2017). Rise of the ‘bromance’ threatens heterosexual
relationships, warn social scientists. The Telegraph. 12 October 2017
Geoffrey L. Greif (2008). Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships. Oxford University Press; 1 edition (August 29, 2008)
Geoffrey L. Greif
(2008). Understanding Male Friendships. Male Friendships: Yes, we have them.
Psychology Today. (September 27, 2008)
Louis Garrel and Christophe Honoré (2015). Two Friends (French: Les Deux Amis). Based on the
play The Moods of Marianne (French: Les Caprices de Marianne) is an 1833 play by
the French Dramatist Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay.
Wikipedia.
Michael Leonard. Tonal Nudes. Under the Main Heading DRAWINGS on the artist’s website. http://michaelleonardartist.com
Michael Leonard. Tonal Nudes. Under the Main Heading DRAWINGS on the artist’s website. http://michaelleonardartist.com
A special note of gratitude for my dear friend
Jonathan Myles-Lea, the British artist and photographer for his continued
support in hearing me out whenever I have bounced something off him regardless
of the differences in time zones. Most grateful my dear, J!
