Hey there, fellow movie enthusiasts! I’m on the hunt for films that portray positive masculinity. We often see movies with traditional, stereotypical portrayals of masculinity, but I believe there’s a world of cinema out there that can challenge these norms and offer a fresh perspective.
So, I’m turning to you, the experts of Lemmy, to help me discover hidden gems and well-known classics that showcase men in a positive light, breaking free from the clichés. Positive masculinity can encompass a wide range of qualities such as empathy, vulnerability, strength in character, and emotional intelligence. I’m interested in any genre – from drama and comedy to action and sci-fi – as long as the films make us question what it means to be a man.
Let’s curate a list of films that define positive masculinity in cinema.
If you’re interested in animated shows, Avatar: The Last Airbender’s uncle Iroh is a really solid depiction of healthy masculinity.
He’s kind and gentle, but has a tremendous amount of strength both emotionally and physically. He’s empathetic and loving, diplomatic and wise, but very humble and doesn’t take himself too seriously. He loves tea and flowers, and doesn’t get bothered or embarrassed when other male characters tease or mock him for his hobbies.
Sokka also has very good character growth in terms of healthy and positive male traits. He starts out as a bit abrasive and sexist. The opening scene of episode 1 is actually just Katara going off on him about sexism. The scene is kind of abrasive but again, the character grows really well as the series progresses. And I think Sokka is important too. Showing that male characters CAN change and CAN become better people.
Plus, the show does have another case of character growth, with one of the most compelling in all media when it comes to Zuko. And towards the end of the show, he’s also showcasing a lot of positive traits. The duality with his sister is also important. Because this is one of the only shows that has the female counterpart as more violent/“evil” than a male character. Usually the female character is always the gentle, kind, loving one that tempers the male one. But they flipped that on its head. No, girls can be abusive too.
From the world of animation princess mononoke and for a very direct approach Vinland saga ( you have to be ok with ultra violence, but in this case it’s a clever device to lure in a specific target audience that actually needs to hear the message).
I’ll have to check those out.
Uncle Iroh may be my favorite character ever. Across all media. There’s an impossible amount to love about his story and arc
Yeah, he’s great for sure!
For purely positive masculinity, Avatar is good. It was great for it’s time, but I think there are some bits and pieces that haven’t aged the best. Most of the female characters end up being damousels in distress. The most prominent, Katara, is primarily a maternal figure who mostly adheres to traditional heteronormative gender roles. Toph was originally written as a joke, according to interviews with the writers. It’s hard to say for sure how much was on the writers vs the execs at Nickelodeon. For the time, it was still fairly progressive.
Korra is a worse show for a variety of reasons, but this is one of the places where I think it’s better than Avatar. Another show that shares some writers with Avatar is The Dragon Prince. It’s still not done yet and it’s not perfect, but so far seems to be pretty good.
I do think Avatar helped to bush the boundaries and opened up doors for later shows. Adventure Time is probably the biggest, and I’d say Finn is a fantastic example of a boy growing up and learning to avoid toxicity. That spawned a wave of what some derrogatorily and erroneously refer to as the “Cal Arts” era, which I think are even more great examples of not just positive masculinity, but positive humanity. Steven Universe is probably the most relevant here, but it seems like almost everyone who worked on Adventure Time went on to get a show of their own after, and most of them are pretty good.
HIGHLY disagree with the damsoules in distress comment.
While Katara does take on a motherly role in the group (which is even addressed in “the runaway”) she is never portrayed as that way even in that episode where her and toph are taken prisoner as bait for Aang, she busts them out on her own. And is scarily powerful in episodes like “The Puppet master” or “Ths souther Riaders”
Then Toph is a fucking badass.
Suki is also a fucking badass and has a whole mini arc with Sokka about NOT needing him to save her in “The serpents pass” and while she is part of the jail break in “the boiling rock” she is never the motivation for that story, Sokka’s dad is. And the jailbreak is a team effort, not her being saved.
Azula is fucking Azula
Mai and Ty Lee are a little underdeveloped but are badasses through and through and never really need saving and are even the ones to save the Gaang in “the boiling rock”
Katara had an entire character arc where she flipped gender roles.
She was also an active participant in the action rather than a passive emotional anchor
For sure, it is of its own era 100% I never watched Adventure Time but I heard a lot of good things about it. My spouse is into Steven Universe and I’ve watched a few episodes. From what I’ve seen it’s pretty good!
Kinda off-topic but since you’re talking about Adventure Time’s legacy I have to bring this up. It all started with Flapjack, really.
I can’t see that reddit post without downloading the app, but I think I understand.
With Flapjack, I know that Quintel. Was involved too and he went on to do Regular Show, which ran largely parallel to Adventure Time. A lot of shows in that era of CN I lump together: Flapjack, Chowder, Foster’s, Regular Show, etc. They’re all fine, often with similar and interesting visuals. I think if you’re just looking at technical aspects like the animation, the use of textures, sureal world building, and more you can draw that back to Flapjack.
But I think there’s a huge gap in the writing. Those other shows are mostly just “hijinks of the day”. The writing isn’t all that different from shows throughout the 90’s and 00’s like SpongeBob, Billy & Mandy, Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Lab, CatDog, etc. That’s where I think Avatar really pioneered, and Adventure Time differentiated itself. Tackling heavy emotional topics in a way that was accessible to a young audience, almost educational with regards to emotional intelligence. Getting children to think and feel complex things instead of just re-hashing the same 2 dozen episode tropes. I never cried watching a Flapjack episode, for example.
I don’t mean to say that it wasn’t done before Avatar. Samurai Jack is notable for going an entirely different direction. Or you can point to Japanese anime (a lot of which gets referenced by these later shows, like Evangelion). Even when it comes to Adventure Time, I would point to Over the Garden Wall as a stronger influence in terms of what made AT unique than Flapjack (though McHale worked on all 3). I didn’t bring up OtGW earlier because it doesn’t really have many examples of positive or negative masculinity, but it does have a lot of dark themes and some serious character development.