Let's Talk About Manpain and Masculinity

[eilowyn]

I had a new idea for my grad school writing sample.

MANPAIN.

It's a fan-coined term for "when a main character in a story (always male, generally white) is written with a particular kind of psychologically painful history that causes him to behave in specific ways."

Fanlore lists some of the criteria for describing a male character's history as manpain:

• It's marked by excess. The tragedies of the character's history are extreme: his reaction to them is melodramatic: his pain is tacitly or explicitly acknowledged by the story and/or other characters to be worse than anyone else's.
• It is self-centered and inner-directed; events, especially traumatic events, in the narrative are typically viewed through the lens of how they emotionally impact the bearer of the manpain, who is often a figure of isolation.
• The character's painful history is frequently (although not universally) created by exploiting the death/suffering/loss of a woman, or children, or both. These women and children are often not characterized as having any importance in the narrative other than as plot devices to create manpain.

Here's a flow chart to help you determine if your pain is manpain.

Manpain can also be understood as a visual aesthetic, as seen in thingswithwings's brilliant vid "The Price", complete with thinky thoughts.
pocochina has some of my favorite thoughts on manpain.

So here's my problem: I can't just write an essay saying "LOOK AT ANGEL/TEN/MULDER/DEAN/BATMAN'S MANPAIN!" I need to ground this thing in some sort of theory, so I'm positing that manpain is a trope that allows "real" men to show vulnerability. If they're crying over a dead woman, it's totally legit. And I want to talk about masculinity from a gender studies point of view,but I'm having trouble trying to figure out what sources I need/can use. So basically I need some scholarly essays on masculinity in speculative (sci fi/fantasy/horror) shows/movies. I don't know if I want manpain to be the subject or if I should dissect the video to show the manpain in the shows. Any ideas for a direction I could go in are welcome.