Senior Capstone: Defining Machismo

            When writing and putting together my story, I came across many patterns that become familiar once you’ve seen too many action films. One of which included to idea of “machismo”. This simply means “being macho”, which leads to “exaggerated masculinity”. The concept of machismo is simply preposterous because in real life, the average man cannot be defined as “macho” anymore. Usually the word is used to describe a man who’s being over-the-top with his manliness; a man cannot be macho if he does not shoot things or if he doesn’t have huge muscles. Just think of the action heroes of the 80’s: Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  These guys wouldn’t have been caught dead in a film with, say, Steve Martin or Matthew Broderick. Unless, of course, an unlikely team-up occurred: the buddy-cop subgenre. For this post, I want to focus on what “macho” really is, and why it’s important for its intended audience. I plan on saving the “buddy-politic” topic for next week.

Exaggerated form of masculinity

            When I see the word “masculine”, I think more than just “male”. It all depends on the situation (mowing the grass, playing football, shooting rifles), and it even goes as far as professions (police officer, boxer, military general); before political correctness, these stereotypes help true. Machismo is the most exaggerated form of masculinity you can get. To me, it’s so exaggerated, it’s no longer real; in fact, I see machismo as a way of making fun of very masculine men, without knowing it. In the 80’s action flick, most, if not all, main protagonist was a bulging mass of a man, just oozing machismo. One very good example of the macho hero is John Matrix, Arnold’s character from the film Commando. When the audience first sees Matrix, he is in the woods cutting down huge trees, carrying them OVER HIS SHOULDER, and splitting them into firewood, all the while gleaming with sweat and looking very “macho”. When you see the film, you can’t help but laugh at the preposterousness. There have been films where this form of machismo is parodied (Hot Shots Part Deaux) but in my opinion, these films make fun of themselves.

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando

            In Steven Cohan’s book Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, there is a chapter solely on the performance of masculinity. He emphasizes the fact that an action hero is not an action hero unless he clearly has bulging muscles (Cohan, p. 232). It’s the whole idea that the audience gets lost in the physicality of the character, therefore losing sight of his complexity of being an individual. Personally, I think that’s true in most cases, except for First Blood. Here, we have a character so lost in himself (he was tortured in Vietnam), any form of violence against him triggers his PTSD, and he becomes an uncontrollable killing machine. At the end of the film, Rambo breaks down and starts to cry on his commander’s shoulder (something completely un-macho). Cohan goes on to state that the reason as to why there is so much muscle in these films has to do with “sexual prowess” (Cohan, p. 233), and to that I say…DUH!

            How all of this is integrated into my story was the fact that I wanted to write a script that could focus on the sheer machismo of the Hollywood action film. I gave this a lot of thought, and I seriously considered giving my main characters bulging muscles, but I decided no. I agree with Cohan with the fact that a muscle-y hero detracts from the storyline. If I could take a stab by what is being implied here, I’d wager that the audience sees the hero as a big, dumb guy who can only solve his problems through violence and luck. I don’t want an audience to think that of the heroes I come up with. They need to be smart and witty and also have a knack at killing bad guys. If that means taking away the “machismo” aspect of the film, I’m sure it won’t detract from the entertainment at all.

Resource:

Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema