A Critical Look at a Flawed Documentary: The Mask You Live In:

Cherry Picking to Nowhere

Here is a link to the film's website so you can check it out before reading this. It is also available on Netflix as of writing this. http://therepresentationproject.org/film/the-mask-you-live-in/

Preamble:
I realize that this is an extremely critical article and that it could have been made more succinctly but I have time on my hands and I really do not like the way that this movie portrays the world or the issues it claims to care about. I love the documentary format and think it can be very useful in illuminating reality. Documentary film makers should realize that people take information seriously when presented in a documentary and they do not always look into the claims critically or use other sources to inform themselves. It is not the film makers job to hold their audiences hands but willfully misleading them is wrong.

Also, a documentary should have a clear message and include caveats where applicable. Simply cherry picking information that adheres to the agenda of the movie is blatant here and I do not know if I have ever seen something so biased as this film is. After watching it I still am not sure what it's message really is. Is it about parenting, schools, violence, boys, masculinity, culture or the media? I think that the vagueness and cherry picking in this film are deliberate tactics used to propagandize people into believing falsehoods about men and culture and it uses the real struggles of people to paint a negative picture of society with no real solution. At the end they talk about everyone taking action but this is still vague and at the end the film directs people to their website which immediately asks you to donate. Is the goal to get people to support their version of activism?

The saddest thing is that this movie could have been good if it would have picked a topic and examined it thoroughly from all sides and offered some hope. I came away from this movie angry and felt that a critical response would help me express my frustration. I hope most people see through the blatant propaganda that this movie expresses and will think critically when others define problems and offer solutions. I may have completely missed the point and I do not want to diminish the real issues males face in America but I did not make this documentary. I only watched it exhaustively in a hope to understand it's message.

Positive Remarks:
I will add some positive remarks here and during the play by play because this movie isn't all bad. There are some real sad stories from real people in this movie that should not be taken lightly. Many people in society do suffer in terrible environments and circumstances. Not all of negative experiences are nefarious outcomes of a society in shambles but illuminating the problems in society can be a useful exercise if done responsibly. I try to add into my critique points of the movie that I agree with or think are important topics to cover and how I think this movie goes astray. Also, some of the advice given by the experts in this movie are valid. 

Note to the reader:
This is meant to act as a companion to the documentary and offers critical analysis, questions and counter arguments in an effort to engage reader's critical thinking and skepticism. The time stamps are not perfect and come from my viewing of it on Netflix. If any of them are way off I would like to fix them so let me know.

Anecdotes do not define the group just like statistics do not define the individual. Give me a million sad stories and I'll find you 2 million happy ones.

A Companion From the Other Side

Play by play commentary begins:

00:00

The movie starts with a man talking about his verbally abusive father telling him to "be a man". Then he says that that phrase is "one of the most destructive phrases in this culture". The next scene consists of a rapid fire bombardment of "male-centric" phrases such as "get laid" or "man up". The very next scene shows newscast after newscast of suicides, gang rape, murder, overdose, beatings, dead children, and mass shootings. Then the main titles start to roll.

Within the first few minutes the narrative of the movie not only defines masculinity as a bunch of stereotypical phrases said to males by males and then links all of this "masculinity" to the most heinous violent crimes. It cherry picks the worst things people say to each other, or things said in jest among boys and then cherry picks news reports only about male generated violent crimes and suicides painting a proximal cause and effect relationship. (One leads to the other)

How big is the problem of violence anyway? What about other forms violence, such as spousal abuse against men? Here is an article:
Careful with the Panic: Violent Crime and Gun Crime Are Both Dropping
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/427758/careful-panic-violent-crime-and-gun-crime-are-both-dropping-charles-c-w-cooke

05:25
"Masculinity is not organic. It's reactive. It's not something that just develops. It's a rejection of everything that is feminine."
-Dr. Caroline Heldman
Political Scientist and Doctor

This can't be true because it assumes that femininity is the root of masculinity. If this is true then femininity is the "natural" form of human behavior and masculinity only occurs with the rejection of the feminine. Based on the beginning premise of masculinity being a terrible force in the world then we can deduce from this logic that femininity is the opposite and therefore more desirable behavioral characteristic. This is obviously biased and relies heavily on a negative presupposition of what defines masculinity and the ideal male. Why can't both, femininity and masculinity, simply define a category of traits that exist to make talking about behavior easier and can be thought of as spectrums that are not mutually exclusive or binding? (They mention these characteristics as spectrums later in the movie which is confusing due to the fact that this section explains masculinity as a rejection of feminism in this section and not as an equally valid descriptor)

06:19
"From the beginning we are taught as boys to lock down our emotions. We can't talk about being afraid. We can't talk about being hurt. We can talk about being pissed off. We can talk about being angry. We can't talk about being sad."
- Tony Porter
Educator & Activist

When this man says "we" I am not sure who he is talking about. Is he saying that every single male child grows up unable to do these things? Is it really that simple and stark? I am sure that the pressure to act in certain ways is put upon boys but those expectations are varied and depend on who they are around. It is the parent's job to steward, protect and teach children how to be and use their judgment to assess the environments they allow their children to be subjected to. When this man says, "we", I think he is really divulging something about himself or representing the children he has talked with. To generalize so greatly is misleading. 

06:54
In this section of the movie we are offered some definitions of masculinity from inmates at San Quentin Penitentiary. While it is important to define toxic concepts such as what these inmates are defining as "masculine" it is important not to then, take the leap in logic, that these definitions or the are the most common ones, especially considering the proportion of men in prison for violent crimes is a very low percent of the population. These men do not represent a generalizable set of data to extrapolate to the normal population.

09:20
A young boy says he wants to be a venture capitalist and Dr. Madeline Levine can't begin to explain how wrong this is. Why not? First of all, kids want to be all sorts of things and we don't automatically assume anything of it or that the kid really knows that it means to have a job of a certain type. Also, what is wrong exactly with being a venture capitalist (VC)? Venture capitalism is not in a moral category such as right or wrong. It isn't an inherently evil job or bad goal to have. I'm sure some VCs are terrible people but I bet a bunch of them are also fine fathers or mothers and decent members of society. In fact, I don't remember hearing anything negative about VCs ever.

09:40
"Sexual conquest is equated with masculinity."
-Joe Ehrmann
Coach & Former NFL Player

For some people this may be the case but when I grew up sex before marriage was a horrible sin and while some people around me were more promiscuous than others I never felt like it was a good idea to go out and have sex with all the females I could find. Sexual development in young people is complicated and good role models are very important but one must also consider the reality of the extreme desire to mate that comes from our physiology at puberty. To deny the natural instinct to mate is to deny evolution and all the evidence of sexual biology. Personal development isn't as simple as this movie portrays it to be because it cherry picks only the evidence that supports the narrative that masculinity is the problem. 

Here is a link to information far more interesting and nuanced than simply asserting that sexual conquest is equated with masculinity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

10:38
Privilege:
Being white gave his dad access even though his dad was poor. Interesting perspective if not well developed. Is this movie about white privilege? Male privilege? 

Where does the motivation to succeed and push yourself come from? Where would we be without fathers pushing their sons to succeed? There are good and bad ways to accomplish this but what happens when setting expectations becomes bad?

11:30
Your insecurities are your own and it is your job to seek them out and understand them. If you have support then it is easier.
Kids aren't cool.

11:26
This is when they talk about gender being on a spectrum and I think this is an accurate way to look at gender. I also think that the distinction between sex and gender are not widely known so it is good that they distinguish them here. They also discuss the similarities between the sexes as being 90% the same. This is most likely true but psychology is complicated so parsing out different traits would most likely lead to different bell curves and differing amounts of similarity.

For example: intelligence has a different curve based on my research which can most likely be explained by differing neurology that came about evolutionarily.

Google search for: "male female intelligence bell curve"
https://www.google.com/search?q=male+female+intelligence+bell+curve&espv=2&biw=614&bih=592&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd1-LA9PLQAhVDVWMKHWtBAqMQsAQIGQ#tbm=isch&q=male+female+intelligence+bell+curve&chips=q:male+female+iq+bell+curve,g_1:intelligence

15:10
The toy market doesn't necessarily reflect a societal fear of the "fact" that gender is socially constructed. It may be a response to the real preferences displayed by the consumer. I'm not sure if this doctor has studied economics but a large factor in the proliferation of certain products is based on supply and demand. The demand for these toys is generated by parents who are responding to preferences from their children. If you presuppose that all toy preferences are due to environmental factors then it all begins with the parents choosing for the child. What about cultures that do not have obviously bifurcated toy selections or studies where children are given both choices from birth?

I do think that environment plays a role in the development of children and their psychology but to take biology completely out of the picture is to assume too much and discounts all of the potential genetic influences.

15:22
"By the time a boy is 5 years old, he's pretty much taught that it's not OK to cry in public. He may still do it but the expectation is by the time he's ten that he's perfected it. And if he's 12 and he's still crying in public, there's a problem."
-Tony Porter
Educator & Activist

This is a massive generalization that can not be the case for all boys. Many parents simply ignore their children so identifying them as having been taught a certain expectation doesn't apply. Also, coping mechanisms can be trained in different ways. Maybe the child should learn to express them self by communicating issues instead of just crying. Sadness should not be occurring regularly in a healthy home anyway. This is not to say that people do not repress their child's behavior for their own insecure reasons and create unhealthy environments but the prevalence of this is unknown and to assume that it is a widespread problem without evidence is misleading.

Almost no one cries in public in general. People tend to cope with sadness in private and the reasons for this make sense evolutionarily. Historically, if you are seen as weak you may be preyed upon by others. This isn't the actual case in most situations now but biologically this instinct still exists. Crying is normal for humans as a response to both sadness and happiness and telling boys not to cry can be detrimental but I would like to see some studies about this phenomenon and not rely solely on conjecture. 

18:00
In this section of the movie it starts to highlight positive examples of men raising boys. The movie talks about things getting better in certain circumstances. This would be a great opportunity to start to talk about what people can do to make things better or offer a more balanced look at positive influences but it goes into another example of a terrible childhood for a boy almost immediately. And then another terrible experience. 

Then it talks about bullying and gives an insight into how some boys relate to each other and how some boys handle relationships. I can relate to this section and think that some of this certainly does occur. The prevalence and ultimate effects of these types of experiences are not known and should not be taken in isolation but I still think that this is an important topic to examine.

30:36
Drinking, drugs and sex.
There is no discussion of drug and alcohol policies and their potential impact on culture. As well as no discussion of the real outcomes of this behavior. If most teens do this and grow up to be productive adults then it is not the cause of societies problems.

31:40

This statistic is highly misleading. How could they possibly know this? Also, does this imply that 1 in 4 boys has done this once or does this regularly? Also, I'm not convinced by this that drinking is bad. Is alcohol always bad? What exactly are they saying?





32:18
Another example of a rough childhood with a terrible father. Are women incapable of finding and keeping good fathers?

38:07

Some statistics are impossible to attain. You can not know the amount of people who do not report something and what is a "mental health challenge". Also, I would like to know what sample size was used and what assumptions were used to generalize this stat? I do not buy this. Also, if this is true then what can be done about it? 



39:24
The mask metaphor:
Priming teens to think of the expression of personality as a "mask" can provide them with a metaphor to express repressed emotions and behaviors but it does not mean that all emotions are hidden behind "masks" or that all boys hide behind "masks". The teacher in this section is good to offer a place to discuss emotions and discuss things that are normally not talked about openly. This is a good example of how counseling can help people become more self aware and open to other's feelings.

On the other hand cherry picking one inner city school and using it as a representative of the "American experience" is a misleading generalization. It is an important example of real life but the struggle here may have culturally specific considerations that should be discussed such as heavy gang influence and proportions of fatherless homes.

43:44
In this section the movie points out some struggles boys have over girls in academic achievement. Addressing the problems with the public education system is very important. This movie offers mentorship, guidance and positive male role models as solutions to this issue and these are all good recommendations. Everyone needs guidance from experienced adults and kids in general do not get enough attention from the adults in their lives. 

Here is a video I saw recently addressing some of these issues. I have not vetted everything in this video but it gives some potential explanations and solutions to the issues of male academic achievement:
War on Boys by PragerU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4

46:54
Sports are bad?!
Addressing the issues of sports is important. It can not be all bad though and many people would give positive reviews of their experiences with sports and coaches. Good coaches, like good teachers can be a great influence on individuals and have a positive impact on society. Sports can be both negative and positive depending of the factors involved but we do not see a positive side of sports in this section. 

52:12
Archetypes in pop culture:
Stereotypes are certainly a large portion of popular culture in movies, television and video games but this is most likely due to the market responding to the demand of it's consumers not necessarily an indicator that men are becoming more like these stereotypes. Also, an expert mentions that ads are designed to change behavior as proof that media does change behavior. This is a huge assumption and doesn't acknowledge the difference between advertising and entertainment. Entertainment is not designed to get men to be more aggressive or sexual and even if this was the unforeseen consequence of entertainment, the actual weight of influence is not considered here. It is taken for granted that boys are effected negatively by the media but where is the evidence? If it has such a negative impact then we should see violence and sexual assault increase as media consumption increases. This does not seem to be the case in America. 

I do think that video games and media can become a distraction and influence people to be less productive and that it is important for parents to monitor their children's consumption of these things. Also, in a culture of such excess wealth we can afford to spend time with entertainment which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many productive people play video games and watch movies so it isn't causal. Just like anything that can become addictive we should be finding solutions to these issues that are as nuanced as the issues are. 

To be balanced this movie should discuss the potential benefits of playing video games.
Google search for: "benefits of video games"
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=benefits+of+video+games

47:48

This is straight up bullshit. No one can know this for sure is true. Also, real acts of violence or murder are different from simulated acts of violence or murder. To assert that people do not know the difference is invalid. The reason people are not traumatize by media is that they know that it is not real. This does not mean that violent media does no have an effect at all but evidence should be provided as to the significance of that effect. Also, if art imitates life it is simply a reflection of the fact that real violence occurs in society and throughout history. People certainly should not be getting their morality from most media sources but that does not mean that they are getting their morality from these sources either.

Just one look into the "video games cause violence" debate:
Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence?
http://videogames.procon.org/

58:00
Porn!
I think sex education might be the most important topic in society. Information about sex from scientific and social perspectives should be talked about in families, schools and culture much more than they are. Porn is a complicated topic and addiction to it can be debilitating I'm sure, but so what? Is the goal here to get rid of porn? Or is it that men should feel bad for looking at porn? I am not sure what the real message is here. 

This stat, like many in this film, is misleading. First of all, there may be some cases where real rape can be viewed online but for the  vast majority of porn sites rape is either simulated or would be considered domination. If porn sites had real rape on their sites they would be facilitating crime and would be prosecuted and the men in these films would be easily caught. Kids are not watching real rape on their computers unless they are able to get into the black market of the web which is not happening that often. Also, there is a lot of content online that is not hardcore. 

This does not discount the effect that hardcore porn can have an effect on sexually maturing people and the idea that certain acts are common or normal may lead to unrealistic expectations. That is why real sex education and communication in relationships are so important.

Second, what study found this, what where the methods and what was the sample size? Statistics are only as good as their methodology and the significance of their findings is debatable especially in psychological research. Just saying people see rape online does not mean anything by itself. Again, I ask, So what? Remember, a stat is just a stat unless it, at least, correlates to behavior. 

Why Porn Can Be Good For You (And Society)
http://www.alternet.org/story/154266/why_porn_can_be_good_for_you_(and_society)

01:01:30
"We have a rape culture. What that means is that individual rapists aren't just crawling out of the swamp, they're being produced by our culture."
-Dr. Jackson Katz
Educator & Advocate

At best the idea of "Rape Culture" is debatable. Just go online to find examples of pro and con arguments. By assuming that "rape culture" is simply a fact this movie displays it's obvious bias. This movie does not give examples of what healthy sex is either giving a generic view that men's sexuality is necessarily violent and unwanted. Calling men "predators" is pejorative toward men as a whole and doesn't account for the majority of sexual experiences which are consensual. 

"We live in a world, right here in our country, where men's violence against women is at epidemic proportions."
-Tony Porter
Educator & Activist

Prove it! This is an obvious case of hyperbole disguised as fact.

Sexual Violence Against Women Down 64 Percent In Decade, But Worrisome Rape Trends Remain

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/sexual-violence-against-women_n_2828653.html

01:04:20

Google search for "sexual assault statistics debunked"
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=sexual%20assault%20statistics%20debunked

01:07:35
Back to prison!
These testimonials are sad and salient. They represent some of the negative influences that help lead people to crime such as abuse from parents and other adults. This is a great opportunity to talk about personal responsibility on behalf of both the parents and the incarcerated but this does not happen. This movie takes really sad testimonials of life experiences and links them to the other topics in the movie to create a sense of overall despair.

If you're going to discuss violent crime then discuss it. Just saying men cause most violent crime just paints a broad stroke about all men and doesn't give any perspective to illuminate reality. Are we to take from this that all men are evil?

FBI: US Homicide Rate at 51-Year Low

https://mises.org/blog/fbi-us-homicide-rate-51-year-low

Just for balance:
The Surprising Truth About Women and Violence
http://time.com/2921491/hope-solo-women-violence/

01:14:22

(About mass shootings and violence in America) "...gender as a factor, when in fact it's the single most important factor." 
-Dr. Jackson Katz 
Educator & Advocate

If gender is the problem then what is the solution? To get rid of gender or change it entirely seems to be what this is advocating. If men are the problem then simply getting rid of men or making them into women would solve this problem. This is a very radical idea and demonizes all men on behalf of the minority of violent men. Also, broadly speaking gender can't be the main factor because most men do not commit acts of violence. So maybe there are other factors that matter such as gun access, mental health, terrorism and seeking fame through any means.

Just one article to think about:
Why the US has the most mass shootings
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/27/health/u-s-most-mass-shootings

The last ten minutes and conclusion:

In this section the movie highlights some positive programs and concepts that might help struggling men. Self awareness is very important so maybe the main goal of this movie is to promote counseling systems. If that is the case then that is a decent message but it isn't completely clear to me. Redefining manhood and masculinity is important when those definitions are harmful or invalid. Empathy and caring can be very important traits and people should not perpetuate negative stereotypes. Unfortunately this movie paints a negative portrayal of society and blames men for a lot of these evils. I agree that we need to challenge parents and society to be better but we can not do this if we cherry pick reality and misrepresent the world. 

The credits do not show the sources for the statistics used but there is a press kit PDF available on the website. I will need to look at some of these sources. There are some missing sources, though, for some of the stats used in the film.  As an aside, stats can be very useful if put into context and are vetted. I am sure that some of these stats are accurate but cherry picking stats to fit a narrative is still misleading. 

What makes this movie difficult to critique is that it has such emotionally salient testimonials and many of the topics it examines are important. It is in the portrayal of information and absence of critical information that makes this movie more propaganda than documentary. The vagueness of the message reveals it as a part of a particular agenda trying to convince people to see things in a certain, biased way. This movie utilizes a combination of truth, half truths, lies and cherry picking to discuss many things without really discussing anything. 

Thanks for reading!







More notes:

It seems like the overall message of the movie might be to not abuse your sons which is great, except, why focus only on the damage that abuse does on boys? 

Why not discuss the role of females in the facilitation and perpetration of abuse? 

If there are healthy ways to define manhood as this film suggests then why does it not discuss them instead of simply demonizing the masculine and praising the feminine? 

The Facts About Spanking by Stefan Molyneux
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONNRfflggBg

- Social Constructionism
"In the domain of social constructionist thought, a social construct is an idea or notion that appears to be natural and obvious to people who accept it but may or may not represent reality, so it remains largely an invention or artifice of a given society."
-http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/sociology-and-social-reform/sociology-general-terms-and-concepts/social-3



"Propaganda is "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view" ^[1]). Propaganda is often associated with the psychological mechanisms of influencing and altering the attitude of a population toward a specific cause, position or political agenda in an effort to form a consensus to a standard set of belief patterns."
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

- Cherry Picking
Talking about sexuality but not talking about female sexuality is unbalanced.
Talking about violence and not talking about female violence is unbalance.
Talking about negative environmental influences and not talking about positive influences  is unbalanced.
Highlighting only negative outcomes for men and not showing positive outcomes in unbalanced. 
Talking about environmental factors that shape development and not discussing biological ones is unbalanced.
Showcasing media that supports your theory and never showing counter examples is unbalanced.

Title: The Mask You Live In
Synopsis on Netflix: "This documentary on the American "boy crisis" explains how to raise a healthier generation of men and features interviews with experts and academics."

What is this "boy crisis" they speak of? Seriously, what is wrong with boys?

If you put a stat in a documentary the audience is assuming that it has been vetted. Why would they put out information that is misleading? Why indeed.

- Cherry picking anecdotes
Taking advantage of the sadness and bad experiences of people to tell a grim tale of a society is misleading. Were there no good examples of male development? Any good stories?

Parenting? Single motherhood?

If women are the primary caregiver of children for the majority of their developmental lives then why not focus on what women are doing wrong? If it is all environmentally driven then the mothers, teachers and babysitters must be part of the problem.

-Thanks to Josh Gray for helping with editing and contributing to this article.