During an interview in 1990 called “A Gathering of Men”, Bill Moyers and the poet Robert
Bly sat down to discuss the notion that in the modern-day world we find ourselves in
a crisis in masculine identity, symptomized by the apparent widespread lack of psychologically
mature men.
This led the famous poet to attempt to answer that fundamental question: “Where are the
mature, initiated men of power today?”
This, I believe, is the question that lies at the core of Richard Linklater’s spiritual
coming-of-age trilogy, consisting of 1993’s Dazed and Confused, 2014’s Boyhood and 2016’s
Everybody Wants Some!!
On the surface Linklater’s films are nostalgic slice of life pieces, cherishing the small,
mostly mundane and seemingly insignificant moments in life as one inches closer towards
manhood.
At their hearts however, these stories offer a profound exploration of modern masculinity
in the periods of transition in which boys attempt to be initiated into a more mature
masculine and individual identity.
Today I want to take a closer look at how Linklater explores these notions throughout
his films, and find out what they may reveal to us about the state of masculinity in our
modern world…
Linklater’s coming-of-age films follow the lives of several boys in various transitory
periods of their young lives, in which they are forced to reconfigure their place in the
world.
Dazed and Confused is set during the chaotic last day of school and the start of summer,
in which it’s the end of middle school for some and the beginning of senior year in high
school for others.
Similarly, Everybody Wants Some!! captures the transition between high school and college
set during the carefree weekend before classes commence.
And Boyhood, on its part, makes transition the focal point of its story as it follows
and revisits its protagonist over a 12-year timespan between the ages of 7 and 18.
In essence, what binds these stories together is that they’re explorations of the transitory
period of adolescence, celebrating the development of one’s individual identity in the formative
years that stand between boy and man.
In their book ‘King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the
Mature Masculine’, psychotherapist and mythologist Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette state that
this period of time is usually accompanied by the gradual emergence of the archetypal
Hero energy in the boy’s life.
The Hero stands as the bridge between what Moore and Gillette call the archetypal energies
of Boy psychology and Man psychology.
“What the Hero does is mobilize the boy’s delicate Ego structures to enable him to break
with the Mother at the end of boyhood and face the difficult tasks that life is beginning
to assign him.”
The Hero is a rebellious force who pushes the boy to distance himself from the forces
of authority who controlled and nourished him in his childhood.
Here we can observe the boy who sneakily embarks on his first night out in absence of parental
supervision, or the high school football player who refuses to sign his coaches’ NO-drugs
& alcohol contract.
This is the high school graduate who transitions into the near boundless freedom in life as
a college student, and its energy is also found in the disregard of the house rules
posed by the baseball coach.
And in Boyhood, the emergence of the Hero is marked by Mason’s increasing attempts
to distance himself from the control of various parental figures…
These rebellious ventures force the boys to face the outside world on their own.
“The Hero energies call upon the boy’s masculine reserves in order to establish his
independence and his competence, for him to be able to experience his own budding abilities,
to “push outside of the envelope” and test himself against the difficult, even hostile
forces in the world.”
The wise newly initiated Hero takes notes from other Heroes on how to negotiate this
new world and learns when and how to keep himself in check…
“The Hero throws the boy up against the limits, against the seemingly intractable.
It encourages him to dream the impossible dream that might just be possible after all,
if he has enough courage.
It empowers him to fight the unbeatable foe that, if he is not possessed by the Hero,
he might just be able to defeat.”
It is the Hero energy that helps to forge dreams and ambitions in the boy’s life,
that sparks his creativity and his inspiration, and that gives him the courage to go out into
the world and forge his own destiny…
But most importantly, the Hero is a force of individuation, reflected most notably in
his struggle against conformity, whether to the group mentality of a college baseball
team…, or to society as a whole…
“The Hero enables the boy to begin to assert himself and define himself as distinct from
all others, so that ultimately, as a distinct being, he can relate to them fully and creatively.”
It is the prowess of the emergent individual that stands at the core of Linklater’s films
about boys growing up.
The journeys of his boys are ones that capture the development of an identity within the
formative years of adolescence.
Ones that gives the finger to the grey conformity of society and the pressing hand of authority,
and that embrace the power and the freedom of the individual.
They’re love letters to that strange but magical period in life before one is pushed
into the responsibilities of maturity.
But in the meantime, the Hero, full of creativity and life energy, moves out into the world
in search of the next adventure to embark on, the next dragon to slay, the next frontier
to cross.
But it is exactly this depiction of the divinity of the Heroic individual, that inevitably
brings us to the flipside of the coin.
The ultimate function of the Hero energy is to prepare the boy to make the psychological
leap towards manhood and Man Psychology.
It is therefore vital that the Hero eventually dies in order for the mature man to be born.
But what happens when this transition remains absent in the boy’s life?
What happens when the Hero becomes the final stop in one’s psychological development?
This is the issue that lies at the heart of what Moore and Gillette see as the present-day
crisis in masculine identity.
They declare that due to number of societal factors, it has become increasingly difficult
for boys to make the leap towards mature manhood, leading to an enormous surplus of psychologically
immature men.
This dominance of stunted Boy Psychology similarly runs rampant throughout Linklater’s films.
This is especially apparent in Boyhood, in which Mason is forced to grow up under the
thumb of numerous abusive and at times even physically violent stepfathers.
These immature men do not welcome the psychological development of their children because it would
come to threaten their own immaturity.
Their stunted masculinity has given way to envy and resentment towards those who are
striving to unfold who they are in the fullness of their being.
These tyrants are scared boys at heart, seeking to conquer and dominate others rather than
truly relate to them.
On the other side of the coin we can observe the man embodying the eternal hero lost in
time.
This is the biological father who leaves his family because he fears that the weight of
parental responsibility will come to threaten his precious individual freedom.
He is the old devil may care rebel who drives an inefficient car without seatbelts, restless
in his urge to go on his next adventure in order to cling on to the blissful freedom
of his past...
The eternal hero is a man who cannot truly see beyond himself, beyond the pleasures of
short-term gratification and beyond the delusions of his impossible dreams.
For the man who is still possessed by his inner Hero hasn’t met his limit, hasn’t
shown true humility and hasn’t found his centeredness and his responsibilities as an
adult.
Therefore, he is stunted in his ability to guide the young towards manhood beyond his
own immaturity…
Without guidance of the mature masculine the boy becomes vulnerable towards the influences
of the Hero’s shadow pole, which fuels him with a need to impress and dominate others
to show his superiority.
When the Hero’s self-perceived birthright to the center stage is challenged, he may
act out in a rageful display of vicious verbal and often physical abuse, aimed at staving
off recognition of his underlying cowardice and his deep insecurity.
The Shadow Hero or the Grandstander Bully, is therefore not a team player, but a loner.
And if the boy fails to free himself from the pull of this archetype, he opens himself
up to the danger of alienation and ultimately of his own demise.
Without guidance the boy possessed by his inner Hero may be tempted to always put himself
above all and everyone else…
Additionally, he may come to overvalue his place as the Hero of his own story, and he
might therefore put the expediency of short-term gratification over investing in his future…
Oppositely, the lack of mature masculinity can also deprive the boy of the spirit, courage
and the clarity of purpose that would otherwise provide meaning in his life.
He may end up feeling detached, isolated and cut off from true human relationships, retreating
into a dreamy state through which he attempts to fill up this lack.
Alternatively, the boy may come to question and even rebel against the structure of reality
itself…
He may feel tempted toward the pull of pessimism, cynicism and ultimately nihilism…
And so, if Linklater’s films can be seen as celebrations of the adolescent Hero, they
simultaneously serve to showcase the danger of the Hero losing his way, of boys potentially
getting lost in a confused world.
And when examined through that lens, the final images of Linklater’s stories retrospectively
take on another meaning.
The driving away into the sunrise at the end of Dazed and Confused becomes not an image
of the celebratory freedom of youth, but of a misguided boy, possessed by his inner Hero,
refusing to grow up and take responsibility in his life.
Similarly, the final shot of Jake and Plum smilingly falling asleep at the start of their
first class marks the potential victory of the eternal hero, with the boys drifting off
into a dream of their next adventure.
And finally, Mason’s decision to trip out on mushrooms in the desert instead of attending
his University’s orientation can be seen as the final image of a confused and alienated
boy in desperate search of meaning in his life.
So what then are we ultimately to take away from these multi-layered stories?
In the end, Linklater’s films about boys growing up mirror the story of masculinity
in the modern age.
In doing so, Linklater reveals a deeper truth about our human experience and the role masculinity
has within it.
His films empathetically show us the power and importance of the Hero energy in a boy’s
life, and its ultimate destructiveness and its weakness if not harnessed properly.
But most of all these stories or these slices of life convey to us that masculinity as a
primal force is not something that’s to be taken for granted or to be done away with
entirely.
Instead, it’s a force in desperate need of guidance, something to be cherished, nourished,
and developed, now more than ever…