A new short film that looks at hyper-masculinity and internalized homophobia in American culture has just been released and it’s pretty intense.
Related: That James Franco/Nick Jonas Frat Boy Film Is Even Darker Than We Thought
American Male tells the story of a college student who feels the urgent need to prove his masculinity to both himself and his fraternity brothers. In the process, however, he is forced to suppress his own sexual desires, and bury the parts of his personality that might be seen as too “feminine.”
The film is directed by Michael Rohrbaugh and is one of the three winners from MTV’s Look Different Creator Competition, which invited filmmakers to submit pieces exploring social privilege and how certain aspects our identities give us advantages (and disadvantages) in life.
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“I would like for viewers to gain a better understanding of what life feels like in the closet,” Rohrbaugh told the Huffington Post. “I also hope they’ll reflect upon their own lives and think about falsehoods that might be holding them back.”
Watch American Male below…
zoomlens
That wasn’t very good at all. More like what a straight person thinks the closet is like than the actual experience of a gay person.
Robothedestroyer
Someone made a good point in the you tube comments (shock!): That MTV is a little responsible for encouraging that type of behavior. When looking outside the box a little, it’s kinda hypocritical.
Jack Meoff
Disturbingly and inaccurate. What a crock.
TylerM
Yeah, not feeling sorry for any prick, straight or gay or bi, who acts that way. You have a choice in life. Choose wisely.
MarionPaige
I thinks this film illustrates how tortured and psychotic White Guys can get when they don’t have access to Black / Hispanic d i c k.
it actually had to take W O R K to assemble that many people to be in a film and not accidentally select one Asian, one Hispanic or one Black. Where is this world?
the lead does do a good job of looking “pained”.
DarkZephyr
@MarionPaige: I watched the whole film to see if there was one single mention of black/hispanic peen and how the lack of it can cause internalized homophobia… and nope. Not one peep about it. You are so full of sh** MarionPaige.
Kim K Kute Kuchie
not all gays are faggots
dm10003
What people call “internalized homophobia” I see as a culturally coded and mannered homophilia.
The film is almost purely cultural. A different culture and different time would manifest different behavior.
RadChad
@MarionPaige:
It’s a frat house. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in or to one, but apart from the black frats etc, they’re pretty much white through and through. This is obviously a piece through the lense of white American eyes and their perspective of masculinity.
Your first sentence doesn’t really deserve a response, tbqh.
Aires the Ram
I watched it from start to finish, and all I can say is that this mirrors how many many men, at least in my generation (baby-boomers) grew up. It was the environment surrounding us. If you didn’t grow up in a liberal large city, and instead grew up in the hinterlands, this is pretty much how it was, whether you like to see it, or acknowledge it, or not. It may not have been every viewers experience growing up as a man, but it sure was, and still is, for many. I didn’t experience any of the frat-boy shenanigans, but everything else in this film was spot-on. You can opine about this kind of upbringing, but you can’t change the FACT that this is the way a LOT of guys grew up. All the bitchy/catty comments change nothing but others perception of you.
Billy Budd
I liked the movie. It is my personal belief that almost all men are sluts and feel attracted to beautiful guys too, not only beautiful girls, and would fuck a guy if it were fashionable.
Stilinski26
MTV the same channel who thinks segregating LGBT communities is a good idea………
kevininbuffalo
@Aires the Ram: I grew up in a working class family, I’ve been a Steelworker for 43 years and the video rings true. To survive I’ve had to lead two lives. I had to repress who I am and it’s a lousy way to live. It has little to do with frat houses or blue collar jobs, it’s about a society that devalues anything “feminine.” I feel sometimes like I wasted my life.
Lesson: be who you are. Don’t try to fit in find a place where you already fit.
ingyaom
I don’t get it, is this a film about white roid-rage? Flirty-guy was hot, though.
Aires the Ram
@kevininbuffalo: I grew up in a blue collar world in SW Michigan, and I know EXACTLY what you mean about living two lives. There was the “normal life” with work, neighbors & family, then there was the Friday & Saturday night life where you went to town to ‘have a few beers’; nobody knew the real truth. You couldn’t let them, you could loose your family, your friends, perhaps your job (or it would just become a living hell), loose all respect from the world you lived in. I wouldn’t want to go back and re-live it.
Aires the Ram
@ ingyaom
You wouldn’t “get it” if you didn’t grow up in that kind of world. And NO, this is NOT a film about white road-rage. (isn’t there such a thing as black/indian/hispanic/asian road-rage also?) It is a film about guys who grow up in a world that is totally unaccepting of any feminine behavior in males, and totally unaccepting of male homosexuality. This film could be reflective of any country, any race.
tony4444
While some of this is true, I found the parts about what guys do vs. what girls do to be very stereotypical.
Billy Budd
@tony4444: Did you not understand that the whole purpose of the movie was to criticize these stereotypes and prove them wrong and ugly?
Danny279
I’ll take “hyper-masculinity” over hyper-effeminacy any day. And btw, Queerty loves hyper-masculinity when it manifests in “transmen.” If a biological female changes her name, injects hormones and tries to swagger onto the cover of Men’s Health magazine, Queerty loves it. For Queerty, masculinity is only a problem when it manifests in actual men.
natosio
Sad to say, I recognized every single one of those stereotypical “rules” in this film, because they were part of a code that was very rigidly defined where I grew up in the Midwest. Every one of these rules dictated how boys, straight or gay or bi, were expected to act, at least in that setting.
No, it’s not a healthy form of masculinity, and it made coming out very difficult, because it’s hard to trust anyone who’s willing to fall in line with those behaviors, even though they may actually think otherwise. To this day, I have a very hard time trusting straight men and creating friendships with them, precisely because of the kind of thinking shown in the film.
mark_krasner
This film exposes the grim reality of toxic masculinity. Check out our review here: http://www.theauthenticgay.com/american-male-exposes-toxic-masculinity/