The Art of Manliness - #310： War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well one of the

00:00:18.320 primary roles of men across time and culture is that of the warrior indeed how we define

00:00:23.500 masculinity at its core is centrally shaped by warfare for example the virtues we think of as

00:00:28.840 manly like courage and physical strength and daring are vital in battle and because for thousands of

00:00:34.320 years men have primarily been the ones doing the fighting we expect men to possess those masculine

00:00:38.920 virtues but the way war is waged has changed throughout human history if warfare informs our

00:00:45.280 ideas of manhood do the changes in war change our ideas about what it means to be a man well my guest

00:00:51.780 today on the show answers that question in the affirmative his name is leo brody he's a cultural

00:00:55.940 historian and film critic and the author of several in-depth and engaging cultural histories

00:01:00.080 one of them being the frenzy of renown if you haven't read that book it's fantastic check it

00:01:04.260 out but today we're going to talk about his book from terrorism to chivalry war and the changing

00:01:08.720 nature of masculinity in this book leo delves deep into the cultural history of warfare in the west

00:01:13.860 and shows how the changes in battlefield weaponry and tactics have changed our ideas of manhood today

00:01:19.420 on the show leo and i discuss how the different ways achilles and odysseus fought battles created

00:01:24.200 two competing ideas of manhood among the ancient greeks and how we see that competition still going

00:01:28.200 on today we then dig deep into the chivalric code of the middle ages and how aristocratic warriors

00:01:32.980 combine christian piety with pagan warrior fierceness leo then walks us through how the rise of the

00:01:38.660 democratic nation state changed warfare and manliness and we end our conversation talking

00:01:42.600 about how the current war on terror is subtly changing our ideas of masculinity today this is a

00:01:47.840 fascinating show full of keen and thought-provoking insights after the show's over check out the show notes

00:01:51.940 at aom.is slash brody that's b-r-a-u-d-y leo brody welcome to the show glad to be here brett so a big

00:02:00.660 fan of your work the first book of yours that i read was the frenzy of renown which is a history of

00:02:05.140 fame in the west and a fantastic book and then amazon recommended i check out your another book you wrote

00:02:10.820 from chivalry to terrorism war and the changing nature of masculinity and i'm glad it recommended it

00:02:17.300 because it's just what i love about your writing is i mean your books are really thick they can look

00:02:21.540 seem kind of intimidating but they're a quick read surprisingly because it's just so jammed packed

00:02:27.060 with all these interesting insights and uh historical nuggets um but thank you thank you oh no yeah you're

00:02:34.500 welcome um so in from chivalry to terrorism it's about the changing our changing notions of masculinity in

00:02:40.820 the west um particularly how war um influences our ideas of masculinity i'm curious what was the impetus

00:02:47.300 behind exploring that was it something that you saw while you're researching writing the frenzy of renown

00:02:52.820 and you thought maybe there's a lot more to mine in that little vein of uh cultural history yeah i think

00:03:00.260 so and you know when i looking back a bit you know just like why i go from one subject to another i mean

00:03:06.020 it's i reminds me sort of a venn diagram so there's always some overlap between them and that's

00:03:12.100 something that say say a corollary part of one subject becomes a main focus of another of another

00:03:19.060 book and uh in this one particularly i mean after doing frenzy of course you know one of the issues in

00:03:24.820 in frenzy of renown is that you know how masculine the idea of fame is i mean they're certainly famous

00:03:30.580 women but they're you know they're a very small number compared to famous men and also

00:03:35.460 the famous not that many categories of famous women where there are many different categories

00:03:40.260 of famous men so it really that sort of started me thinking just about the whole idea of masculinity

00:03:46.420 and how masculinity gets defined and you know and from my my usual perspective i wanted to see it

00:03:52.660 not as an innate category uh but as something that has you know is potentially innate as you know there's

00:03:58.980 certainly physiological differences between men and women and things like that but that how that how

00:04:04.100 that difference gets shaped into cultural categories over the centuries right yeah that's sort of the

00:04:09.460 overarching argument you make throughout the book is um you don't discount biology completely so yeah

00:04:15.300 there's like two camps when it comes to gender there's like the biological determinists that say

00:04:20.180 uh biology determines everything about uh gendered behavior or ideas and then there's like the social

00:04:25.780 construct you know camp like the extreme one saying that biology has no influence gender's complete

00:04:30.340 um social construct right um you seem to make the art sort of like thread the needle saying yes

00:04:37.060 biology plays a part but we can't also discount the influence of culture on our ideas of of uh

00:04:42.740 masculinity or femininity exactly and you know i i start off in the book by by talking about tribal

00:04:49.780 rituals of masculinity about uh circumcision and other kinds of wounding that occur uh to kind of

00:04:56.740 initiate the the young boy uh into the tribe there too and so it's already starts as something that

00:05:03.620 you might even call ethnographic or anthropological uh and then mutates you know as civilization gets

00:05:09.220 more complex into into cultural categories right so let's start uh with the ancient greeks and romans

00:05:15.140 that's where you start um and like i feel like we're still haunted today by the greeks and romans and

00:05:20.980 their ideas of masculinity so and how did the ways in which the ancient greeks and romans waged war

00:05:29.940 because that's the thing you focus on war and how it influenced masculinity how was it the way they

00:05:33.620 they waged war influenced their ideas of manhood well i think in part certainly with uh starting out

00:05:39.780 with the greeks there too there's there's very much about the the importance of the group uh and your

00:05:46.420 role within the group in a warfare situation but uh when you look at an individual i mean there's a

00:05:52.500 famous story uh that told about socrates uh that when he was on the battlefield he would just you know

00:05:58.500 he would be barefoot you know he'd have his armor everybody who was a citizen then every male person

00:06:03.620 of course certainly not slaves uh would be a fighter in that and it was a kind of uh you know what the

00:06:10.100 romans later would call stoicism there too so there's a kind of stolidity a kind of you know

00:06:15.860 the the hero is not necessarily uh the great warrior in battle uh at that point it's it's really the one

00:06:22.740 who you know who sacrifices for the group who is part of the group who fights with the group

00:06:28.340 uh so that's sort of i think in in terms of you know the realities of warfare but then there's the

00:06:34.100 fantasies of warfare uh and you might think let's say of the difference between the iliad and the

00:06:39.220 odyssey a difference between achilles and odysseus as heroes you know achilles is the guy who can

00:06:44.900 actually fight who's but who has this wound this you know the achilles heel uh that he can be defeated

00:06:51.460 through uh whereas odysseus is not so much a physical fighter as he is a wily person as he is somebody

00:06:57.860 with guile who can trick people and that's how he so i mean it's almost like the iliad and the odyssey

00:07:02.900 are kind of this uh split version that's kind of almost jekyll and hyde version of the greek

00:07:08.820 idea of the ideal individualist hero right yeah and um you you can see in ancient texts they

00:07:16.020 venerated the sort of the achillean model right where it's you you you take on your combatant

00:07:22.740 directly because that's the honorable way to fight and odysseus was sort of seen as even though he

00:07:28.100 he's the guy that won helped win the trojan war according to myth with the trojan horse

00:07:32.740 he's sort of seen as like less manly than achilles yeah well less manly in that sense so i mean

00:07:38.500 it's the question of you know what is manliness then you know is manliness in the head or is it

00:07:42.820 manliness in the body there and i you know i think that's that's sort of a divided thing i mean if you

00:07:48.820 look at other kinds of um physical heroes let's say even in the iliad somebody like ajax there i mean

00:07:54.820 there's a sort of uh meathead side uh to the excessively physical hero right and part of part of

00:08:02.580 what happens to achilles i think in in the course of the iliad uh is that he becomes more internal

00:08:08.580 more introspective he becomes so i mean it's it's a you know an effort in a fictional sense uh to you

00:08:14.900 know for whoever homer was um or how many people homer was to you know to try to see uh masculinity

00:08:23.060 not as single noted yeah um and said was there one idea that won out amongst the greeks or were

00:08:29.540 they just sort of there competing amongst each other the sort of achillean i think they're always

00:08:34.100 competing and i think that's kind of part of the nature of of masculinity in general as you see it

00:08:39.220 across the ages that is you know to what extent um it's it's it's single noted to what extent it goes

00:08:44.500 to one end of the spectrum uh and to what extent it's a sort of continuing argument within culture

00:08:50.340 i think this you know this is part of the difference that to me historically at least between

00:08:54.500 masculinity and femininity uh that is because women are connected to nature they're considered

00:09:00.820 to be kind of invariable in a certain way they're they're not single noted but they're you know

00:09:05.460 they're because they're part of nature uh in that sense uh they are you don't have to argue about what

00:09:11.540 women are uh talking you know in terms of the authors themselves not necessarily in the actual

00:09:16.820 nature of femininity but then historically though masculinity is always part of an argument is this

00:09:22.820 kind of man better than that kind of man and i think you can see that thread uh through the ages

00:09:28.020 and how did the romans pick up that uh that thread well the romans started moving more towards the

00:09:35.540 and again taking clues uh clues from uh greek practices uh to different kinds of masculinity i mean

00:09:43.140 there was the the warrior and then there's the politician now a lot of them somebody like caesar

00:09:48.420 somebody like pompey you know tried to combine the warrior and the politician but then somebody like

00:09:53.220 cicero uh you know really that was about the politician the order and i think you know to a

00:09:58.980 certain extent you can see this again uh in terms of the uh the earliest views of the what kind of man

00:10:06.100 was important say the athlete in greek culture is a very important figure i mean if you won the hundred yard

00:10:12.420 dash there at the olympian games you could have the year named after you uh and so this that kind of

00:10:20.580 possibility was the physical hero but then there was the hero in front of other people like pericles

00:10:26.420 i mean pericles is a you know leader in battle but he's remembered for his funeral oration he's

00:10:31.620 remembered for his uh what he did as the kind of leader of athens in a political sense so this idea

00:10:38.820 is it the politician is it the orator is it the person who appears in front of public or is it the

00:10:44.740 person of physical prowess uh who is really the hero and uh you know go back to what i was saying

00:10:51.380 about socrates on the battlefield that socrates is a is a hero of of thought there and and when he when

00:11:00.340 he becomes a soldier he becomes a hero of a kind of not active physicality but of stoicism

00:11:07.620 right yeah the ancient greeks and romans they defined often to define courage as the ability

00:11:12.580 to stand your ground wasn't necessarily to actively battle but just be able to stand your ground with

00:11:18.260 the group yeah and you know one of the roman heroes was fabius maximus conctador and conctador

00:11:25.220 means the delayer he was the guy who who never got to battle or got took a long time getting there

00:11:31.220 because he was wearing out the enemy i mean it's almost like a you know chinese art of war strategy

00:11:36.580 right and um but you talk about in the book even amongst the romans there was that um there was

00:11:41.940 an argument about what is the most manly way to fight you had the professional soldiers who

00:11:47.860 put emphasis on standing your ground stoicism being well trained but at the same time the romans had

00:11:53.940 this admiration for the barbarians and sort of the more exactly like fierce and active a way of

00:12:00.100 fighting so what was going on there how did they how did they incorporate the two into their idea of

00:12:04.020 man man manhood well i think part of it is the fear and it's some and it's a kind of fear that arises

00:12:10.420 you know rises in later centuries as well i think even in in the 19th century in europe there it's a

00:12:17.060 fear of being too civilized it's a fear of being too orderly too cultured perhaps and so you look for

00:12:23.540 a source of energy and a source of renewal and reinvigoration uh in the primitive and so let's say in tacitus

00:12:30.500 for particularly you know there's a kind of hankering for that war that kind of warrior energy

00:12:38.100 that the barbarians represent that somehow we've gotten a feat we've gotten civilized in quotation

00:12:43.860 marks the romans that is uh and you know we need that that new energy right i think it's interesting

00:12:49.620 uh we had a fellow on the podcast he's a classics professor uh he does a podcast called the fall of

00:12:54.420 rome and we talked about the romans and the barbarians interactions it was interesting how

00:12:58.500 both cultures like they wanted what each culture had right so the barbarians like they wanted like

00:13:04.500 that sort of sophistication of the romans and then the romans they would like they started like naming

00:13:09.060 their kids after like you know german germanic names and like wearing wolf's you know clothing

00:13:14.660 like the barbarians did um so it's interesting how both cultures saw something in their culture the

00:13:20.340 manhood that they wanted yeah i think you know that's and again this is something that you can see in

00:13:25.780 in other cultures uh over the centuries i think let's say uh the you know the relationship between

00:13:31.620 the french and the english or the americans you know the french are the sophisticated ones and you

00:13:36.580 know there's a longing you know in that kind of franco francophile way for that sophistication

00:13:41.860 whereas the french value certainly uh in american culture and in english culture uh you know the

00:13:47.620 more primitive what they consider to be you know the more primitive expressions whether it's in the

00:13:52.980 18th century novel or whether it's jerry lewis let's say as a director well another another theme

00:13:59.700 that you you explore throughout this is an important concept into our notions of manhood throughout the

00:14:03.780 west is this is honor um we in the today have we conceive of honor sort of uh as personal integrity

00:14:12.020 um but that's not how ancient or even you know early modern people thought of his honor so how did

00:14:17.780 how did people think of honor what was honor um to an ancient roman or a renaissance or medieval man

00:14:25.060 well you know it's it's very telling uh that the word uh that our word virtue goes back to virtus in

00:14:32.340 latin and which means something that a man have a weird of dir which is the word for man in latin there

00:14:39.060 so if honor is only something and virtue by the same token is only something that a man could have

00:14:45.220 and again women are sort of left out of the equation there so it really depends on you know that is

00:14:51.860 honor itself and virtue itself you know for a long time depends on an idea of an ideal actually of

00:14:58.260 masculinity there i mean there's a warrior ethos there i mean you can see this uh in this is why i

00:15:04.980 begin the book well with chivalry because of the chivalric code the idea that there's there is a way of

00:15:10.900 being a perfect knight in that way a perfect warrior it's not just only about physical prowess there is

00:15:19.140 some idea of honor and virtue uh connected to it as well and you know it becomes a something again

00:15:26.420 something to be striven for it's not you can almost say you know if you need a chivalric code it's because

00:15:32.260 people aren't acting very chivalric you're very honorably uh otherwise right and again another

00:15:38.740 point you make um for honor to exist like it there needs to be an audience and i guess for the greeks

00:15:44.820 and the romans like other men were the audience and other men uh on the same level um but how did that

00:15:52.180 change with uh the medieval era and the rise of the chivalric code well there's a there's a big uh

00:16:01.300 conflict during the middle ages uh between the idea of the warrior let's say and the idea of the

00:16:07.140 christian there uh you know as and christianity struggles i think with with chivalry because chivalry

00:16:13.940 to a great extent comes out of paganism you know it comes out of um it comes out of the vikings it comes

00:16:19.460 out of the norsemen it comes out of this idea you know something like the um you know the early english

00:16:24.820 poem beowulf of a personal direct uh relationship with the forces that you are fighting with uh it

00:16:32.820 doesn't it's not about mercy it's not about those new testament values that jesus embodies it's something

00:16:40.420 else and so there's you know there's a there's an effort to pull those together to pull those together

00:16:45.940 in a kind of chivalric code that emphasizes both the physical masculinity uh as well as the moral

00:16:53.060 christianity uh of the warrior so how do they reconcile that then i mean what how did how did that

00:16:58.420 manifest itself that reconciliation of the pagan warrior ethos with the the more the christian ethos

00:17:06.260 well they managed it i think they managed it sort of with difficulty uh let's say i mean one of the

00:17:11.860 reasons that historians say that the um you know the the crusades were first being preached was not

00:17:18.100 only to as they said you know rescue um jerusalem and that area from uh you know from the pagans uh

00:17:25.380 from the moors and you know the muslims uh but also to make sure to to divert the uh the knights of

00:17:34.180 europe who were engaged in so many internet scene battles with each other for you know for power for land

00:17:41.380 for whatever it was for wealth there i mean there was so much killing going on in europe they wanted

00:17:46.900 to uh you know this is a more cynical view of the crusades they wanted this the theologians and the

00:17:51.860 people who preached the um crusades said look let's let's focus somewhere else let's look at some

00:17:57.620 you know the idea of a common enemy outside might subdue these fights within right and who were the

00:18:03.940 type of men who could lay claim to being a real man so these were knights i guess like the i guess

00:18:08.900 this is so is it aristocracy only that had this sort of could claim to be a man under this medieval

00:18:14.260 notion of manhood well the you know the um for the most part although some you know some people could

00:18:21.380 rise into that could get could gain that status through their own you know physical prowess and you

00:18:27.380 know the um the middle ages tended to divide society uh into three groups uh the the the in latin they

00:18:36.660 called them the laborers uh the uh or the oris and the um the pugnatories that is the people who

00:18:44.260 work the laborers uh the people who pray that is the priests and the people who fight that is the

00:18:51.620 knights the and the warriors and they were the ones who protected the kingdom so i mean that was that

00:18:56.500 was they were the three types of of masculinity uh and the the protectors then the warriors were of the

00:19:06.660 highest class for the most part uh and the laborers of course the lowest class and the priesthood you

00:19:12.740 know somewhere in between there so yes they they were there but the thing is above above the the warriors

00:19:20.100 though and this is kind of intriguing part of it above the warriors were the people who actually hired the

00:19:25.540 warriors were the real aristocrats uh and one of the intriguing things that happens in the course of

00:19:32.180 of of the middle ages is that because i would say because of the chivalric code because of the idea

00:19:38.580 that warriors have this honor or aspire to this honor uh people who were actually nobles with a lot

00:19:45.860 of money who hired warriors to do whatever they wanted them to do wanted to be thought of as warriors

00:19:51.300 wanted to be thought of as knights themselves um you know there's an interesting detail around 10th or 11th

00:19:56.980 century uh whereby various kinds of legal documents that used to be signed by these nobles as dominus or

00:20:04.260 you know lord or leader uh started being signed by the same people as equus or you know equestrian as

00:20:10.820 warrior horsemen interesting and at this time was there any sense of i like i guess we'll get into this

00:20:17.780 later but like national identity like do these knights think i'm fighting for king and country or was it

00:20:23.620 like i'm just fighting for myself uh so i can make money and get glory well this is nationalism is in

00:20:31.060 a very embryonic stage at this point uh you know and probably um i mean even in england i mean england

00:20:38.900 is really to me where where ideas of nationalism uh really get started and somewhat later than this 16th

00:20:46.100 and 17th century particularly 15th 16th and 17th because england and scotland they're islands so

00:20:53.380 they already feel separate uh and so the idea of separateness uh and the idea of nationalism

00:20:59.860 somehow go together and so the those places become a you know a better incubator of nationalist ideas

00:21:06.580 but in the middle ages you know you have um international catholicism sort of covers

00:21:11.380 all of england and scotland and europe and france etc there and so people could um uh not it wouldn't

00:21:20.580 they'd be fighting more they'd fight more let's say for their local lord i've made some comparisons

00:21:25.460 in the book with what's happening in japan at the same time there and you know you're fighting the

00:21:31.460 the ronin they're all fighting the uh uh the samurai they're fighting for their local lords they don't

00:21:37.300 really have an idea of japan behind this uh at all even when they're fighting uh foreigners that's

00:21:43.140 interesting um and so the laborers uh i mean i i i understand from my understanding of uh medieval

00:21:49.060 history there was sort of this competition between the the priest class and then the warrior class on

00:21:54.660 what what who was the man i guess is the way to get there um but the laborers were they even like in

00:22:01.540 the debate at all or were they just sort of ignored and by both the priest and the the knights pretty

00:22:07.700 much ignored i would say you know it's not you know they they were there there they did their jobs they

00:22:13.700 didn't fight particularly they probably you know got killed um and their houses you know their

00:22:19.140 villages burned uh you know when well knights would sweep through the neighborhood i mean there's

00:22:23.380 a certain amount of truth in game of thrones and and the way it depicts those those periods you know

00:22:28.420 that that the the people on the ground the lower class the workers and artisans and people on the

00:22:33.940 ground are just you know there to be uh you know run over by the the fights you know between the

00:22:40.180 the various knightly and noble houses there i think you know it'd be interesting it's interesting

00:22:46.100 to kind of take a look let's say at the canterbury tales uh and the way chaucer describes these

00:22:51.780 different people because he has a whole array of of social types there and he starts out with the

00:22:57.460 knight uh and you know and the knight is there and he's supposed to tell the first tale because

00:23:01.860 you know he's the highest status etc etc but almost immediately the miller butts in after the

00:23:08.100 knight's tale and um he tells his tale he said i want to tell mine he's drunk he's going to tell

00:23:12.580 his tale first so chaucer is sort of showing you uh you know even within the canterbury tales there

00:23:18.660 a picture of a society that is not quite stratified socially but is not quite uh let's say static

00:23:26.580 socially at all and you know there can be you know is the miller representative of a rising uh

00:23:32.820 class a rising mercantile class in there who knows i mean you can stretch that a little bit

00:23:37.940 but you know it there's definitely a lot of tumult um between the classes in that point and just one

00:23:44.340 other thing about the canterbury tales it's interesting that the two characters uh on the

00:23:49.060 trip that are considered to be uh you know the most holy let's say that are described with the least

00:23:54.580 irony the least satire the parson and the plowman who are actually brothers so it's not the parson and

00:24:02.020 kind of lower level member uh of the religious and the plowman certainly very low low level of the

00:24:08.820 laborers there are somehow seen as ideal figures even uh you know within the social array right so

00:24:17.220 we're starting to sort of beginning to see the rise of sort of democratic notions of not not only

00:24:22.020 manhood but individualism as well yeah and it's uh you know i think it's intriguing that um uh

00:24:29.300 uh that in you know chaucer is frequently being accused of being a lollard uh you know which is a

00:24:35.620 kind of early that's a kind of negative term for an early english proto-protestantism uh a part of

00:24:43.620 which uh wants the bible to be translated into english so that individuals can read it so i mean there's a

00:24:50.340 sense that that is the individual relationship to god without the uh priesthood being in between

00:24:57.300 there uh is is part of you know the kind of seed bed for a more secular individualism that comes

00:25:03.780 later um so another um thread you explore throughout the book is how advances in technology particularly

00:25:11.540 military technology um affected notions of manhood um so how did that how did technology change

00:25:20.420 what was considered manly amongst uh you know early europeans and even going back to the ancient greeks and

00:25:25.540 romans well the thing is from the ancient greeks and romans uh forward you know to the middle ages

00:25:33.620 the primary way that battles were fought was hand-to-hand was direct face-to-face hand-to-hand

00:25:40.820 you're using a sword you're using a spear uh you know there were there were kinds of group strategies

00:25:46.580 like the the testudo of ancient greece where a group would get together and use its shields to

00:25:53.140 being looking like a turtle there and moving across the field and being more impenetrable that way

00:26:00.020 but the ideal at least of the heroic of the individual individualist heroic was much more

00:26:07.300 hand-to-hand you are facing your opponent you are you're battling one person is going to win and

00:26:12.900 another person is going to lose it's really either or in that way but in the later middle ages when

00:26:19.460 guns start coming in and cannons and things like that uh you know that is uh it becomes very

00:26:25.860 different i mean it's one thing to you know to get on your horse with all your fancy armor and your

00:26:30.980 you know uh and your spears and what have you and ride against somebody else uh as opposed to being um

00:26:39.380 shot with a gun there i mean it knocks it down i mean so so the eye the status of a warrior

00:26:45.380 warrior uh you know becomes much more in question there of the war the ain't the older warrior hero

00:26:51.700 uh you know encased in his armor with his helmet and everything else now this you know of course one

00:26:56.980 of the classical moments when this happens is not really about guns but it's really about archery and

00:27:02.820 again archery is killing at a distance there uh so something like the battle of agincourt you know in

00:27:09.140 the 15th century there where the english defeat the french i mean it's the french aristocracy the

00:27:15.220 french are still holding to a an older ideal of warfare where each person is wearing his colors and

00:27:23.540 sallying forth on his horse and the horse is armored and the man is armored and then all these

00:27:28.260 lower class english archers are shooting hails of of arrows at you and killing people they don't even

00:27:34.580 know who you are i mean there's so much in in earlier battle about knowing who you are again thinking

00:27:41.060 about the iliad of people who face each other on the battlefield start telling their genealogies to

00:27:46.500 each other i am the son of x and the grandson of y there that is it's it is very personal it is very

00:27:53.140 family oriented very individualized uh but with archery and then of course even more so uh with with

00:27:59.780 guns and powder and ammunition and things like that it becomes much more depersonalized and was there

00:28:05.940 a pushback again amongst armies about adopting these technologies because it was considered less

00:28:10.980 honorable oh yes well certain armies yeah wouldn't do it uh you know they're very they're huge uh kind

00:28:17.220 of screeds against the use of cannons is considered to be satan's instrument why because you know again

00:28:23.860 it obliterates the uh the individual honor that is possible in battle right and you you also point out

00:28:29.380 this happened in japan as well i guess in the 17th century the ronins acquired firearms but they made

00:28:35.380 them illegal uh because it wasn't yes yes they wanted to go the japanese managed to go back to

00:28:41.140 to reverse reverse it uh and go back to the sword for for a long period of time when after uh firearms

00:28:48.980 were first invented um so but how did this idea of of of being known and knowing your enemy who you're

00:28:56.180 fighting uh it was a strong idea i mean how did this did this still manifest itself even in the 19th

00:29:02.980 century with you know the advent of modern warfare with the civil war did people still try to keep

00:29:08.820 that sort of uh classical idea of what it means to be a valiant warrior well i think it i think it got

00:29:16.100 more and more difficult and it sort of moved into the realm of not quite a fan well maybe cultural

00:29:21.700 fantasy you might call it that is you know you'll see something like um uh victoria's husband prince

00:29:28.580 albert you know dressed in an old style suit of armor almost and you know in a portrait that is it

00:29:35.780 it comes to signify a kind of heroism but that in fact doesn't really exist anymore on the actual

00:29:43.380 battlefield uh and so the fascination uh i mean you have something like tennyson's idols of the king

00:29:50.820 i knew your fascination with the middle ages uh in um in the 19th century is a fascination again i think

00:29:57.700 uh very much like uh what we were discussing or somewhat earlier about the way in which uh a

00:30:04.980 civilized society hankers after a more primitive society because it seemed to be purer and more

00:30:10.740 direct and a closer relationship to what they consider to be real values than what happens later look you

00:30:17.300 know from from the napoleonic wars to world war one uh the uh the ability to shoot a uh to say a single

00:30:26.660 bullet uh over a distance increases enormously enormously you know they're still using flintlocks

00:30:33.300 and things like that in the napoleonic wars by the time you get to world war one i mean you don't only

00:30:37.940 have these huge cannons like you know big bertha and things like that but you know you have guns that

00:30:44.020 can shoot 1500 yards so um you know the distance is increasing constantly and so there's a tremendous

00:30:51.540 pressure then on the idea of what constitutes um individual heroism in battle you know we'll

00:30:58.020 explore this this sort of this um this strand in the 19th century of sort of uh romanticizing the

00:31:03.860 medieval era and um sort of like it's almost like an anti-modern revolt a little bit but before we get

00:31:08.660 to there how i thought this is really interesting i never really thought about it how did the rise of

00:31:12.980 democratic nation states change warfare and the western ideas of of manhood well the rise you know

00:31:21.540 the rise of nation states you know which starts really in the 17th century i mean in a self-conscious

00:31:26.980 way uh it is very important i mean part of what happens with and especially with the democratic states

00:31:34.580 and what happens in the united states in the 18th century with breaking away from england and what

00:31:40.020 happens in the french revolution let's say um is i would characterize as this as a change from

00:31:48.580 being subjects to being citizens uh and that is instead of fighting for your local leader for your local

00:31:56.260 lord or even for your for your king as a as a figure you are fighting for your country the idea of fighting

00:32:03.460 for your country then i mean it was there in you know in the roman period it's you know this is not the

00:32:09.220 first time it happens but in you know that to fight for the country for the patria for rome um but it in

00:32:16.980 the 17th and and much more in the 18th century with the democratic revolutions in england and in the united

00:32:24.020 states there uh it becomes a much more of the moment very very contemporary uh in that way so as a citizen

00:32:33.620 then that is the object before this you know most of the most of the uh wars let's say from oh i don't

00:32:40.900 know you know just let's say from the renaissance forward into the mid eight mid or so 18th century

00:32:46.580 most of those wars were fought by people who by mercenaries by people who were paid to fight uh they

00:32:53.380 didn't necessarily have any uh national relationship to the country that they were fighting for

00:32:59.780 um but with of course again with the french and american revolutions it's about your own country

00:33:05.220 uh you know it's when national anthems get started really uh and this idea of creating a kind of

00:33:12.660 emotional relationship to your country uh that also involves a citizen's obligation a male citizen at this

00:33:19.700 point of course a citizen's obligation to fight for your country when it's threatened and in a way

00:33:25.060 a democrat not in a way that so that democratized manliness right more men could lay claim to manhood

00:33:31.380 it wasn't just for an aristocratic aristocratic warrior class or these mercenaries like the average

00:33:37.380 citizen could also show himself a man yes exactly no that's exactly right and it's that is you know

00:33:44.420 the the social side you know the uh time-honored traditional social side of only a certain aristocratic

00:33:52.740 class who then uh being the you know the bulwark uh against uh invaders and enemies

00:34:00.660 there uh kind of disappears and it becomes something that that everybody can feel a part of and certainly

00:34:06.980 uh the you know i think particularly to a certain extent in world war one but particularly in world war

00:34:12.500 two you know that becomes something uh that uh that government play government propaganda of course

00:34:19.140 uh plays upon you know that is your personal obligation uh the gold star mothers you know your

00:34:25.380 this personal sacrifices uh that are made by every normal ordinary citizen to fight uh for his or her

00:34:33.380 country and that might sound great on the you know more men can be considered manly but i think you

00:34:39.700 make this point in the frenzy around one of the the downsides of democracy that alexis de toqueville

00:34:44.260 notice is that yes you open up the the way for more people to gain status in a society but at the

00:34:49.620 same time you increase anxiety uh about your status because there's more people that you're competing

00:34:55.620 against for status so that happened with manhood as well as more men were able to lay claim to

00:35:01.300 being a man there was more of an anxiety like am i a man am i am i a real man yeah and i think you

00:35:07.540 know all not just masculinity but all ideas of status then you know are you know are cast into

00:35:13.940 doubt there uh you know in the old in the old format it was genealogical it came out of family you

00:35:20.180 know my family has been here for many many years and back to my great great grandfather we've owned

00:35:26.180 these lands and things like that but when it's open to when it's open to all then uh there's

00:35:32.740 simultaneously this the sense of importance of you know my my masculinity is important as anybody

00:35:39.380 else's uh but at the same time i wonder the downside of it i wonder you know whether i can measure up

00:35:46.900 will i be able to measure up um so you mentioned earlier um that in the 19th century there's sort of

00:35:52.580 this return to medieval you know chivalric ideas of manhood in the 19th century and um we saw something

00:36:00.180 similar in america with the the rise of teddy roosevelt's strenuous life what what was going

00:36:06.100 on in the collective psyche of the west in the culture that saw it seems like it was almost an

00:36:11.940 anti-modernist movement where you saw in europe people venerating knights and telling these stories

00:36:18.180 of knights and in america this interest in um native americans and sort of this admiration of

00:36:24.500 native americans and roosevelt's idea of the strenuous life what was going why why did that happen

00:36:29.700 well i think in part it's it's about again trying to re-individualize it i mean you know another one

00:36:35.060 of roosevelt's phrases was rugged individualism there that is you had to be tested there you

00:36:41.060 know and rose of course he came out of his own uh his own autobiography there you know his his mother

00:36:47.060 and his his wife dying so so close together uh and he leaves new york and he goes out to the dakota

00:36:53.780 territories you know to become a man in a sense you know to kind of to kind of face uh you know what is

00:36:59.460 toughest and the and this is something that the um certainly that the united states has in that

00:37:05.780 period that other countries don't quite have in the same way that is a an idea of a testing place

00:37:11.860 an idea of a place that is beyond civilization beyond the you know the barriers of civilization

00:37:18.820 with all its legalities and law courts and politicians and what have you to a place where

00:37:24.580 it's really about you and your your gun essentially uh and whether you can you know whether you can hack

00:37:30.980 it whether you can actually discover in yourself the man that you want to be uh in these in these kinds

00:37:38.260 of things and you know there's a phrase that's often used um uh about this period uh descriptively

00:37:44.500 it's called redemption through violence are you going to be redeemed through going into this violent world

00:37:50.100 whether it's the violence of other men whether it's the violence of the climate the violence of

00:37:54.980 wild animals whatever it is out there the west is the testing place for it and by the same you know

00:38:02.260 double the same paradoxical token there you can be redeemed through violence but also you could fail

00:38:08.180 you could lose through violence and violence could show you were not the man that you thought you were

00:38:12.660 that's really interesting um so we we're here in the 19th century uh we're we're going into the early

00:38:19.460 20th century and uh there was this sort of like a renaissance of chivalric uh battle right um and then

00:38:27.380 world war one starts how how did that sort of that that movement in the late 19th century in europe

00:38:33.460 and america how did that um i guess color people's idea of what world war one was going to be like

00:38:39.540 well most people thought that world war one was going to be over within a couple weeks

00:38:44.580 not when it started i mean look look look at the situation there uh in europe between the napoleonic

00:38:52.660 world wars and world war one there's almost a hundred years of comparative peace i mean the

00:38:57.700 only major war uh they are fought in years the franco-prussian war in the 1870s there which was over

00:39:03.620 actually fairly quickly united states is much worse because of the civil wars uh and the civil

00:39:09.300 war and to a certain extent becomes the model for world war one certainly in terms of strategic

00:39:14.660 thinking um you knew you're in europe there but the the problem is and the reason that people thought

00:39:20.900 it was going to be over with quickly is that he thought that that weapons you know weaponry had

00:39:26.900 advanced so quickly that that in fact it would just end you know somebody would be the obvious winner

00:39:33.140 uh in that way but of course it just dragged on with trench warfare it dragged on for years and years

00:39:39.700 and years and there's nothing very individualistic about trench warfare it's about masses of people

00:39:45.780 you know trying to get over the edge going through no man's land getting killed getting bombed uh getting

00:39:51.940 bombed by people who can't see you getting shot by people who see see you lighting a cigarette or something

00:39:57.460 like that i mean again uh it's like a total totally uh in terms of the past unhonorable way of fighting right

00:40:06.980 and that because of that it caused a whole bunch of disillusionment that's where we get the whole lost

00:40:10.180 generation hemingway and all those folks a lot of disillusionment uh and uh you know there's uh

00:40:17.380 the wilford owen poem uh uh dulce decorum est you know that is it's sweet and it's appropriate uh to

00:40:24.180 it goes back to a line of horus a roman line you know dulce decorum est pro patria mori uh it's

00:40:31.780 sweet and it's appropriate to die for your country there and of course the poem itself is like totally

00:40:38.820 ironic it's about slaughter it's about you know death for no reason at all um but why is it so if you

00:40:46.820 you know a couple years about a decade later um two decades later world war ii broke out and for some

00:40:52.820 reason like in our collective psyche i think we remember world war one as sort of this nihilistic

00:40:57.300 just senseless war um where our notions of honorable manhood were just liberated but in world war ii i

00:41:04.580 feel like we remember it sort of as a romantic war that reinvigorated manhood why why is it that we

00:41:10.340 remember world war ii like that but not world war one well i think the i we do remember world war

00:41:15.460 one to a certain extent and to a great extent it's because of the movies um you know in terms of air

00:41:21.140 warfare that is air warfare in world war one was where the heroes were you were by yourself in a

00:41:27.860 plane you were fighting and again the the so the ideal of hand-to-hand battle was still preserved to a

00:41:33.780 certain extent uh in air warfare uh you know you were going after the red baron or whatever it was

00:41:39.780 there um but world with world war ii and whereas uh just on the you know on the ground people were in

00:41:46.580 the mud forget about them they're all de-individualized but all the great heroes are up in the skies

00:41:51.940 by world war ii you know the movies have really helped a lot to to present this um but i think

00:41:59.620 also you know what do we think of we think of the greatest generation we think of band of brothers

00:42:04.580 things like that we're thinking about the group uh and you know the world war one squad excuse me the

00:42:09.940 world war ii squad uh is like the archetypal group you know it's uh in american certainly an american

00:42:16.500 film and american fiction there and in that squad you know there's martinez and there's cohen and

00:42:23.940 there's dombrowski and there's o'reilly you know this is like a whole panoply of the various ethnic

00:42:30.580 groups uh that exist in the united states there so it's a sense that the romance is a romance of of a

00:42:37.940 kind of national togetherness i think fighting you know fighting for an ideal fighting for the

00:42:45.780 um ideal are they fighting for the ideal of america it's unclear are they fighting for

00:42:51.460 against anti-semitism against nazism it's unclear i mean actually they did a big sociological survey

00:42:58.660 after the war uh called the american soldier come multiple volumes and one of the things they

00:43:04.740 discovered in it is that for the most part people were fighting why were they fighting why were they

00:43:10.340 being heroic why did they do things like that for their buddies they were doing it for their immediate

00:43:15.860 group there if you ask them about nazism if our communism or whatever it was if you ask them about

00:43:20.980 more abstract things they didn't really have much relationship to it um so this sense of the group

00:43:27.940 the sense of discovering that actually uh you as as what you know an irishman from boston had affinities

00:43:35.620 with a jew from new york uh or affinities you know with a um chicano from from los angeles or whatever

00:43:42.740 it was i mean that was the the discovery of the war and i think that's part of the why we romanticize

00:43:48.580 it we're looking back to a time especially right now when we seem so divided we're looking back to a

00:43:54.420 time um you know when people actually could stand together against a common enemy right and you also

00:44:00.500 make the case that the war had you know these large cultural implications on our ideas of manliness it

00:44:04.980 was you know after the world war ii where we see the proliferation of westerns right like john wayne

00:44:10.180 like movies just proliferate like what was going on there why did the cowboy and also you talk about

00:44:15.540 like the detective right the private eye why why was this um icon so popular amongst men um in the post-war

00:44:24.420 uh years well i think he you know both the both the cowboy and the detective are are kind of

00:44:30.900 idealized individualist figures uh the cowboy has to you know go it alone he has to fight

00:44:38.180 for what he thinks is right he has a kind of moral charge that walks with him and the detective

00:44:44.340 and of course he's in the wilderness he's in the west uh he's fighting uh who knows

00:44:50.900 crooked cattle barons or you know local town sheriffs or things like that um the um detective is in the

00:44:59.540 corrupt places of the city he has to make his way whether he's the you know the raymond chandler

00:45:04.820 detective or the uh mickey spillane detective let's say mike hammer uh you know he has to make his own

00:45:12.180 path and i think that's the ideal it's you know it's that effort to retain some sense of individual

00:45:17.940 moral virtue connected to violence uh that um is lost by the by the nature of modern warfare right

00:45:26.180 and also not the nature of modern warfare but just like the nature of modern bureaucracies modern

00:45:30.100 corporations etc yeah exactly modern bureaucracies modern corporations all the things that de-individualize

00:45:37.060 you that treat you as a number or a statistic or just a voice at the other end of the phone that

00:45:41.460 they have to get rid of as quickly as possible um you know all that kind of de-individualizing

00:45:46.900 kind of gives rise to heroes that seem more individual and what about the vietnam war did that

00:45:53.220 shifter ideas of manhood because of the way it was fought i think so i think the vietnam war was

00:45:58.660 is was an interesting change i think the vietnam war very specifically uh korea to a certain extent but

00:46:07.460 vietnam really cemented it uh it's the idea of what what that changed was the idea that we're on one

00:46:13.860 side of the line and they're on the other side of the line that is you know i was talking about face

00:46:18.740 to face the you know the importance of face to face in in ancient battle there well it gets translated

00:46:25.140 later on to you know us versus them we're we're over here then there's this no man's land as in um

00:46:31.380 world war one and the enemy is on the other side with vietnam the enemy was all around you you didn't

00:46:36.820 know who was the enemy that was the part of the problem that was the confusion of it so the sense

00:46:42.260 of a a world the world that we live in now where the enemy can be anywhere that there is no uh order

00:46:49.300 of battle that says you know and nobody wears a uniform you can't tell that you know the guys on our

00:46:55.460 side are wearing blue and the guys on the other side are wearing red or green or whatever it is

00:47:00.500 that is it's not easy to tell who the enemy is and i think that's that's really the the modern

00:47:06.740 situation and the modern dilemma in all sorts of warfare i think you know it's responsible for

00:47:12.980 you know kinds of of racism you know that say all muslims are going to be you know like terrorists

00:47:18.020 or things like that that is there's a desperate you can't figure out who the enemy is and you can't

00:47:22.580 figure out uh how to describe them right and so how's that going to affect how's that affect our

00:47:27.060 ideas of manhood is it just make it make it harder to figure out what it means to be a man what what

00:47:32.260 is all this confusion what do you think is going on there well you know i think in a certain way it's

00:47:37.540 it's make it's more positive it has a positive effect now i think that people realize uh you know you

00:47:44.980 know especially with with gay uh liberation and gay marriage things like lgbt things uh that in fact uh

00:47:53.380 gender in generally is on a continuum that is you know we may have lost the either or in battle but

00:48:00.500 it's a good thing to have lost the either or in in gender you know male over there female uh totally

00:48:06.980 on the other side uh you know we look at some of the uh some of the other societies around the world

00:48:13.140 where there's a more polarized relationship between male and female let's say and you know men are

00:48:17.940 supposed to be entirely one way and women are supposed to be entirely the other way we can we

00:48:22.980 can now i think a lot more easily see the problems of those societies and perhaps you know the reason

00:48:29.380 for um or at least the analogy with that that kind of polarization uh and their own kind of uh absolutist

00:48:37.540 violence and you know belief in their their own kind their own definition of virtue so what do you

00:48:43.300 think is the the future of of manhood in the west is it just going to be we have different

00:48:47.620 conceptions competing ideas of manliness are we going to see the same thread that goes all the

00:48:52.260 way back to achilles and odysseus continuing on today or continuing on in the future well i think

00:48:57.700 that will always be in the background you know absolutist ideas of masculinity uh will always be in

00:49:02.900 the background but i think they'll become less and less important uh along the way and they have become

00:49:08.740 less and less important along the way i think that you know there's an acceptance of more varieties of

00:49:14.020 masculinity now than there used to be just as there's an acceptance of more varieties of femininity and

00:49:19.540 and anything now in between there i think that can only be i mean that is you know if you're if there's

00:49:26.100 any kind of positive gleam in the present uh you know with a lot of shadows that we know all exist

00:49:32.660 they're all around us i think it's the idea that at least at the at the level of of gender uh in

00:49:40.740 fact uh people are more accepting of difference than they used to be they may they may be upset by

00:49:47.220 other kinds of things but um you know gender is not as much of a battlefield i think you know certain

00:49:54.420 areas of course it still is but i think generally it's it's improved tremendously certainly in my lifetime

00:50:00.420 well leo this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work

00:50:04.580 well you can check out my my website um leobrody.com uh and i'll try to keep it updated uh talks about

00:50:11.780 you know i have a couple recent books um and actually you know it the um when i started writing

00:50:17.940 from chivalry to terrorism or the seeds for that it happened a while ago actually in the in the 1980s

00:50:24.820 and at that point i considered it to be a kind of i wanted it to be a kind of uh alternate chapters

00:50:31.060 between what i was looking at historically and what would what was happening to me as i was growing up

00:50:35.860 in the 1950s especially as a teenager there uh but you know that seemed totally unworkable and and

00:50:43.380 chivalry turned into you know more of a view of history but i did write a book called trying to be

00:50:48.980 cool which is a kind of autobiographical thing came out in 2013 uh just about being a teenager

00:50:54.740 in the 1950s and being buffeted around by among other things movies uh rock and roll and ideas

00:51:01.380 of masculinity how was i supposed to grow up well yeah i'll have to check that out well leo brody

00:51:06.820 thank you so much for your time it's been an absolute pleasure my pleasure brett good to talk

00:51:10.500 to you hey that was great no good good my guest today was leo brody he's the author of the book

00:51:15.860 terrorism to chivalry war and the changing nature of masculinity it's available on amazon.com and

00:51:20.100 bookstores everywhere you also find out more information about his work at leobrody.com

00:51:24.580 also check out our show notes at aom.is slash brody that's b-r-a-u-d-y

00:51:32.740 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:51:36.980 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this

00:51:41.060 show have gotten something out of it over the years you've been listening to it or maybe just a few

00:51:44.980 weeks i'd really appreciate if you take us take a few minutes to give us a review on itunes or

00:51:48.740 stitcher helps that a lot as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is

00:51:53.460 brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - June 06, 2017

#310： War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity

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