Month: September 2022

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This post will mark three weeks since I’ve started this series, and so I’ve decided it’s time to get a little more personal. Even though do you know about characters who have spoken to me, I don’t feel like you could get a particularly good sense of me a person, even though I’d like to think my writing style is fairly distinctive and reflective in some, way of what it’s like to talk with me.

So let’s do that, shall we? Let’s get personal and vulnerable, while exploring the same themes that we have been taking a look at in the last two posts. I feel as if it’s a good way to practice the kindness, empathy, and positive masculinity I’ve been talking about, and it’s an opportunity to bee kind not just to others, but to myself.

via GIPHY

About a year ago now, I went through what I would describe as a “rough patch”. I felt, somehow, as if a part of myself had “gone on vacation”. I am normally an extremely joyful person, and one of the things I take joy from is participating in witty banter or repartee with friends and acquaintances alike, a rapid stream of consciousness fire of zany pop cultural references that comes a mile a minute. People tend to make a lot of assumptions about me, so this dialogue which takes control of conversations and introductions is a way that I’ve adapted to politely dismiss these assumptions or play into them when appropriate.

All of these things apply to the eponymous Ted Lasso, played by the wonderful Jason Sudeikis. Here’s a link to one of my favorite moments in season one. I always connected with the scene, but didn’t put it together so that it could apply to my own experiences. Later on, in season two, sports psychologist, Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, says about Ted’s speaking pattern: “This is obviously your way of connecting with new people. Makes sense. It’s very disarming”. I woke up one morning, and I was no longer able to access any of those parts of myself. I was in this emotional state because I was unable to maintain my usual mood, just like Ted. I realized that maintaining one emotional state is an impossible metric and I wondered if my own attitudes were in some way artificial, contrived, nothing but a dangerous coping mechanism.

Over the next couple weeks, I experienced what I can only describe as feeling a profound outpouring of divine love, mercy, and grace as I was talking to some students about technical theater and later when talking with my therapist, I was able to access that part of myself once again, the one which I had wondered whether it would ever come back. I was able to realize that to feel a full spectrum of emotions is normal. This reignited my spark and I was able to accept that even though I was not always able to maintain my usual demeanor that didn’t mean it was not valid or just a coping mechanism, but a genuine part of the things that make me who I am, although not all of it, and not inherently toxic or unhealthy. All of this, because of Ted Lasso.

This, I think speaks to the power of stories to help us to better understand ourselves, and work through our issues, but there’s perhaps an even greater lesson to be found here: you are not, and are never, alone.

Continuing our series from last week on positive, kind, and optimistic depictions of masculinity in popular culture, let us look at a very well-mannered transplant from the jungles of Darkest Peru, one Paddington Bear, who is named for the London train station where he is found by the Brown family. I will specifically be restricting my analysis to the two films directed by Paul King, in which the titular character is voiced by Ben Whishaw (Despite this, it seems important to note that a series of books by author Michael Bond laid the foundation for the many interpretations of the character throughout the past several decades.) 

 In the films, Paddington is raised by his Aunt Lucy, and Uncle Pastuzo, who were found by a British explorer, and an excellent subversion of a British colonialist civilizing noble savages, they are already intelligent and cultured, and form a bond with this explorer, who installs in them a great love of marmalade and talking about the rain.  

Paddington moves to London as his Aunt Lucy goes to live in a home for retired bears, and the plot of the first movie revolves around Paddington becoming an accepted part of the community and the plot of the second film is too good to spoil here. He is opposed by a sinister taxidermist played by Nicole Kidman, and, in the second film, a narcissistic and washed-up actor named Phoenix Buchanan, played delightfully by Hugh Grant. 

The reason why Paddington is such a positive depiction of masculinity is that, like Clark Kent, he is unfailingly well mannered and gracious in a cynical world, changing others for the better and allowing them to become the best versions of themselves. Despite his many positive qualities, he is not without areas he has the potential to grow. His naivety, as well as his lack of understanding of human culture in general creates issues. He is also clumsy, although always well-intentioned. He also positively breaks down stereotypes by being scrupulously civil, and being interested in domestic activities like cooking and cleaning, as well as artistically inclined, and in contrast too many modern blockbusters is emotionally intelligent and non-aggressive, which are typically associated with women in western societies 

Let’s break down a specific scene together to look at how this excellent writing, paired with the whimsical cinematography and fantastic sense of comic timing endear us to Paddington and the characters around him, even when facing extreme adversity. In this scene, Paddington takes the jail where he has been imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit and betters his community, making it idyllic, even though previously his fellow prisoners were hostile to him, because of his overbearing politeness and the fact that he accidentally died all of their uniforms bright pink. He makes the best of any situation. 

By giving them a sense of purpose, and also improving the quality of their food, and their life in general, he is able to reform the prison for his fellow inmates, which previously focused on punishment, which created in environment where everyone felt alienated and angry, and transforms it into an environment where individual talents can be used, and not only are basic standards of living met, but people are able to enjoy simple pleasures, which respects their dignity and humanity, this is taken to a comic extreme by the fact that the guard institutes a custom of reading a bedtime story. This creates an interesting parallel between the way that Paddington is looked down upon in the first film buy some because he is a bear, and therefore different. The prisoners in the film are not bad people, they are simply misunderstood and were reacting to the lack of nurture within their own environment. The clip below can be paused at 10 minutes.  

Paddington | Making Friends in Prison | Friendly Faces 

I would love to talk about the ending of the second film, but it’s so good that I don’t want to spoil it, so I will close with a quote from the ending of the first: “Mrs. Brown says that in London, everyone is different, but that means anyone can fit in. I think she must be right, because although I don’t look like anyone else, I really do feel at home. I will never be like other people, but that is all right, because I am a bear. A bear called Paddington.” I raise my cup of tea and slice of marmalade toast to that!