Let’s talk about men.

Oct 9

TW: This post contains discussion of suicide and mental health. Please bear that in mind before reading on!

To add some context to that title, this post is going to be talking through/reflecting back on the second monologue of the Pocketfull Project, ‘The Flash’, which is available here and is definitely something anyone who is reading this should watch. Firstly because it’s a really strong piece of work and something that the whole team behind it is really proud of, and also because it touches on something that I spent a good portion of the end of my university career researching, and something that I think a lot of people would benefit from thinking a little more about. And that thing is, and bear with me as this may be surprising coming from one half of a female led theatre company, men. More specifically, how men act, think, and operate, and what this can mean for anyone who doesn’t identify as male.

(I should qualify, before I start, that I am as interested in applying similar ideas to the other genders, it just so happens that I haven’t put in the leg work in those areas to talk about them in as much detail. Not that I’d call myself an expert on all men by any means, but having the pinnacle of your university work be 12,000 words about them does help.)

There’s something so fascinating about how the way we identify affects the way we live our lives, and in turn how the way we live our lives affects everyone else around us. That fascination rang through loud and clear the first time I read James Hinchliffe’s script, and it still caught me every rehearsal, and still manages to surprise me every time I watch the final version. It’s packed full of those unspoken intricacies of male interaction, the ‘just deal with it’, the ‘men don’t cry’, the ‘no homo’. In ‘The Flash’ that becomes the ever repeated line: “I have standards to maintain”. Daniel as a character feels like someone entirely trapped by the mechanics of his own gender, because he’s never been around anyone who told him he can be anything else. In ‘The Flash’ it leads him to take his life, which to some may just be an unnecessary exaggeration or a meaningless exercise of morbid fascination. I know there will be people who may watch it and see it as just another by-product of the millennial society sub-sector that enjoys wallowing in the pain of a world that ‘doesn’t do enough for them’ or ‘doesn’t care’. I know this because I know people who think that way. I’ve had conversations with them where they treat issues with mental health, particularly in men, as diseases born simply out of a lack of will to get better. If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard someone say “they just need to get over it”, Haywire would have enough money to go on a national tour tomorrow.

The worst bit about it? It isn’t even that the supposed self-healing they’re discussing is entirely misguided (although it certainly isn’t a good way to go about it). It’s the fact that the kind of discourse they’re using kills, especially men. In 2019, the suicide rate for men in England and Wales was at its all time highest in the past 20 years, hitting a peak of 4,303 recorded male suicides across the country. Combine this with the recorded number of female suicides (1,388) and it’s clear there’s a definite disparity between the two societal groups (for reference, all figures used above are taken from this Guardian article, published at the start of last month).

Now, is this a comprehensive enough analysis alone to make concrete judgements about the way our country treats mental health, and the life-threatening implications this may have? Absolutely not. That difference cannot help educate people on the impact age group, race, social background, sexuality, or other external factors may have on someone’s likelihood to struggle with poor mental health and suicidal tendencies. If that is something you’re interested in, give that Guardian article a read, it goes into the issue in a lot more detail. Or just Google it, there’s an obscene amount of articles out there analysing the data properly, far too many for this to still be the issue that it is. And it goes without saying, if that is something you or someone you know struggles with, I urge you to get some help. Included at the bottom of this post are some resources I know to be useful in aiding with mental health problems, please use them.

What we can be sure of, is that this data speaks as evidence to the immense crisis that masculinity is facing in the modern era. Some men have flourished in the face of modern, changing attitudes to the previously structured and controlled version of what a ‘man’ can be. They embrace the possibilities afforded to them in areas of gender and sexuality expression, use the more positive attitudes being cultivated towards women and their place in the social structure to build stronger relationships, and use the steadily altering treatment of their emotional availability to help themselves, and in turn help others. But not every man can do that. Some find the change subconsciously terrifying, and respond with hatred and loathing to those men who do not fit into their traditional view of who they should be. They fight back, in chauvinistic displays of traditional machismo, because let’s be real, change is scary. It may sound odd to speak of it so seriously, as it feels like we’re at a reasonably good place right now in regards to gender expression and acceptance, but it is important to remember that outward acceptance sometimes isn’t always enough. We can hold our arms open and wait for emotionally vulnerable, struggling men to run into them all we want, but until those men accept their illnesses for what they are, until they accept themselves, they simply will never start running in the first place.

When I was growing up, I used to be obsessed with the ‘X-Men’ cartoon that would show on TV over the summer. I would wake up especially early to run downstairs and watch it, and although I never really seemed to understand what was going on (I never actually remember the episodes playing in the right order, although maybe that’s just me) the characters were cool, the superpowers were fun, and I enjoyed watching this ensemble of people play off each other. The coolest in the whole bunch? Wolverine. Before I’d even seen the forever iconic Hugh Jackman in the role, I knew that Wolverine was meant to be an awesome guy. He had cool superpowers, the bravery to stand for what was right, and he never backed down from a fight. Even better, he didn’t let pesky little emotions get in the way of his general superhero-ness. Wolverine was always fine, even when he wasn’t, because Wolverine believed in something more important than himself. He had a team to hold together. In the grand scheme of all that, how he felt didn’t matter. He was a hero, goddammit, he was above that. He had standards to maintain.

That right there, that’s how all of this rambling links back to ‘The Flash’. I fully believe that what that monologue showcases is the idea of a man who has been utterly, and fatally, enveloped by his pain because he never allowed himself time to look back on it and process. Because we teach a lot of men, even now, that their emotions are not important enough to warrant being given more importance than the rest of their lives (qualifying, of course, that when I say “their emotions” I obviously mean their sadness). We teach them that there will always be something more worthwhile to do with their time than “wallowing in self pity” (aka. processing what has made them sad and working their way through it). For example, when Bruce Wayne tragically loses both his parents in a fatal mugging, does he devote his time and billions to some extensive therapy sessions and a good old fashioned hug from his butler-dad? Nope, he straps himself into a spandex suit and mask and runs around smacking bad guys in the face, because if he isn’t going to do it then who the hell will. When Daniel in ‘The Flash’ loses first his best friend at war, and then the love of his life through negligence, and then his father and role model to illness, does he invest in some (albeit likely less expensive) therapy sessions? Does he ask his friends for a hug? Does he even tell anyone how much hurt he is feeling? Nope, he heads on down to the pub to hang out with his friends, more men who don’t know how to cope with their feelings, drinks a pint and gets over it. Except he doesn’t get over it. He just tells himself he does until it buries him. The worst bit? He doesn’t even have the tools to realise it’s doing it until his head is underground.

Performance like this is important. It does that very special thing that only theatre, live or digital, can do. It smacks you in the face with the vision of a person who you can’t look away from, because you know that no matter how much that actor might be acting, the person they’re playing still feels real. In doing so, it reminds anyone who might have forgotten that people like Daniel exist. That many of us (myself included) participate in a culture that creates, and then kills, them. And by doing that, it gives us the power to change our individual action. Performance engineers feeling, feeling engineers action. So if you’re reading this, whether you’ve watched ‘The Flash’ or not (although do go watch it), maybe ask yourself if there’s more you can do. Maybe check in with that guy you know that always seems to be just fine. Hell, check in with anyone you know like that, whether they’re a guy or not. Because honestly, you never have any idea how much something tiny like that can do to save a life.

Lucy x

-CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably)

Phone number: 0800 58 58 58 (open 5pm-midnight)

Website: www.thecalmzone.net

-Mind

Phone number: 0300 123 3393 (open Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm)

Website: www.mind.org.uk

-Papyrus

Phone number: HOPELINEUK 0800 068 4141 (open 9am-midnight)

Website: www.papyrus-uk.org

-Samaritans

Phone number: 116 123 (open 24 hours a day)