the MANLIEST PAIN OF ALL
So, we are all up to speed on thingswithwings’ phenomenal Man Pain vid and post? Well worth a watch/read but be warned of spoilers for pretty much everything ever.
It’s one of those wonderfully thought-provoking dark humor/righteous anger pieces, and it crystallized a whole set of my reactions to Man Pain itself, and other peoples’ reactions to Man Pain. STANDARD I-STATEMENT DISCLAIMER. This is me trying to identify a pattern and figure out why it’s so popular generally with writers and viewers, and MOST IMPORTANTLY to my enormous ego, such anathema to ME. I’ve tried to white-text or otherwise mark any specific Big Twists. Also, to clarify, I’m responding to the video and meta, and absolutely not criticizing it or the ideas behind it, because I think the whole project is brilliant. There are just a few issues it’s helped me draw out.
Man Pain that doesn’t bother me: in which I am defensive!
I’m no fonder of the poor me-ing on rooftops than anyone else, don’t get me wrong. But most Man Paining is, for me, a contextual problem with authorial laziness, choosing manipulation over earning our sympathy. But it’s just so common that it doesn’t seem to be a particularly instructive criticism of a character. Not all Man Pain is created equal. It’s partially picking my battles, I know. I don’t want to dislike every character with MAN PAIN. Even I would run out of sanctimonious rage. (Eventually.)
What Man Pain isn’t, or at least when it isn’t bothersome to me, is men who are unhappy. The context grates, that to be a woman worth camera time is to do everything backward in high heels and usually with a smile, or at least bizarrely cosmetic tears, on your face, while male pain is constantly shown as sympathetic. But I do like characters who are fucked up generally, even if it’s unfair that they’re usually men. That should be a little ugly; it should take over their stories from time to time. But it can work, if it’s that it is their damage, it’s about them, and it’s small and selfish and difficult to be around but not half as difficult as it is to live through it. When a character and his pain are deflated - comedically like early Wesley or Baltar, or tragically (and in his case damned near literally) like Lee - rather than puffed up by it, well, I don’t hate him, as much as I may be furious at the means of getting him there.
And it’s different for a character to have Man Pain than to be based in Man Pain. I’m not sure I agree Jack Harkness is based in Man Pain, as some commenters on the post do. Granted, I still haven’t seen CoE, the Man Pain may overwhelm him for me, but if he’s a strong enough character to carry the show for two seasons when his characterization is not about it, I don’t think the Man Pain is fundamental to his story. And it’s fine to be annoyed with it and say that that element is too much to like a character, and for that matter it’s fine just not to like him, but I kind of think that to presumptively define a story and character by the Man Pain without acknowledging it ends up reinforcing the prioritization of the Man Pain.
And there is something a little hinky about the prevalence of Man Pain for those characters both in the narrative and in discussion of it, because all four of those characters do at least play with masculinity in different ways. Most of them have Man Pain about love and babiez, NO, REALLY. It’s a three-tiered issue, at least. Their respective narratives feel the need to give them lots of Man Pain to keep them sympathetic. Then the issues they angst over are trivialized because they’re associated with women, and aren’t considered so sympathetic in female characters. And then that angst seems to stand out negatively for viewers, because it’s discordant. I wonder if the use of and conversation about Man Pain doesn’t have some small element of policing masculinity to it.
WHICH BRINGS ME TO: MAN PAIN THAT DOES BOTHER ME.
For all my cantankerousness, I can only think of three characters that I have a visceral negative reaction to - Bill Adama, Don Draper, and Angel - and they share a very specific type of Man Pain. It's not just the moping that annoys me, or even that other people have to suffer for their Man Pain. It’s characters who cause legitimate pain to others for the sake of their own Man Pain, which is still portrayed sympathetically.
It’s not characters who are privileged by the narrative or the viewers, but ones who take power and use it against others, and then we're supposed to feel sympathy for them because of their bad acts, not in spite of them. The regret itself becomes yet another expression of dominance, a gratuitous self-indulgent masochism. When they clearly relish having done the bad things, and keep right the hell on doing them, but for some reason or another we’re supposed to support them. When we’re supposed to take the abuse of some power or other as laudable masculine prowess, and therefore hold them above the other characters. It’s a step past might makes right, where a pattern of misuse of might is good, just because it shows the might is there to misuse.
I absolutely don’t think it’s the actors - it’s a compliment to them for me to have such a strong reaction, I think. When someone as handsome as the Hamm makes me NOT WANT TO LOOK AT HIS STUPID FACE EVER, to the point where I did not recognize him when he showed up on 30 Rock, that is actually pretty impressive. Their job isn’t to make me like them, it’s to make me believe them.
It also does not make them unsuccessful as characters. Don Draper is, by all accounts faithfully, based on a real person. Angel and especially Bill ring achingly true to me. They are all quite interesting, in moderation, though generally not the most interesting characters on their given shows, in large part because they’re reiterations of this overdone archetype.
What I do think is a narrative failure is the prioritization of and over-reliance on this particular type of Man Pain. It’s an easy play for mainstream sympathy, to be sure. Even if those of us who are engaged with the intricacies and politics of serialized storytelling look under the façade and sometimes see a critique there, most viewers are going to want to root for someone and go for the most familiar character. And, the popular culture landscape being what it is, that’s going to be the Man Painiest Dude in town. I realize stories have to have a protagonist, and that this type of protagonist is the easiest to have. (Stories without such a protagonist tend to be better both because they require stronger writing to get across to audiences accustomed to Man Pain and because the limitation forces creativity.) And it’s fine - desirable, even, because it’s such an ugly trait - to see in a villain. But it still makes me hate them.
But. It does not make them or their use in the narrative intellectually or aesthetically appealing, or philosophically acceptable. All these characters are part of phenomenal ensemble casts. When their Man Pain becomes overwhelming to the other characters’ stories, I know what I’m missing. Moreover, it just feeds into the characters’ and audience’s agreement that some people - hypermasculine men, to be specific - not only think they are more important than others, but are actually more important than others. I’m not against Dead Little Sibling, particularly in backstory (though it’s more often sisters and that’s a problem, clearly); I’m not actually necessarily opposed to axing some characters for the sake of others. But to create characters that are equally compelling if not more so and still casually sublimate them to the Man Pain is bad. When excellent characters end up created just to be eaten - sometimes literally - by and for the Man Pain, both in-universe and outside of it, it hurts my opinion of the work as a whole.
The dominance over other men is a key signpost to this kind of Man Pain - Bill and everyone around him but especially his son; Don Draper and everyone around him but especially Pete; Angel and EVERYONE IN LA AND ALSO THE FUCKING WORLD but especially his pseudo-son Spike. It makes sense, even if it adds another layer of ugliness to the whole thing. Part of it’s on me as a viewer, I know - I’m conditioned to expect women to be in that position, but subordinate male characters are, you know, weird. Part of it’s that the narrative and in-universe subjugation of women is too ordinary and easy for a Manly Man of this kind of power. It’s run of the mill for dudes to get a dead girlfriend of their very own to cry over, no matter how much of a priority they generally aren’t, and in any event, caring about love and shit is for Girly Men. Bossing around other men is how one shows, exercises, and increases power. A rotten power-disparate dynamic between two men is not necessarily a reason to hate a character just because it turns into WATM, but it’s a pretty good indication that I will have this issue.
Sometimes it is perfectly good reason to hate a character, as in BSG. I can’t even bring myself to reiterate my Bill Issues, because he makes me unhappy. All his expectations, for Lee specifically and for HUMANITY AT LARGE, OH MY GOD, SHUT UP, aren’t about shit but a desire to watch people dance while he mopes about how hard it is to play the tune. He actually goes looking for ways to make the nuclear holocaust ALL ABOUT HIM. Better to be important and genocidal than just some schlub doing a job no matter how challenging and critical; better to constantly reassure himself he can still crush his son utterly than to strive for the mundane satisfaction of being a father who wouldn’t. And that’d be fine for a villain, but we’re supposed to love him.
Tigh should really fit into this pattern. And don't get me wrong, I have exactly zero sympathy for him after he up and murdered his wife, not that I had much before that, and I was shocked at the show’s play for sympathy for him over it. He bothers me less in a lot of ways, though. Primarily, his most important issue comes from his eventual identity crisis, which was fantastic. Ellen’s death was unnecessary to his greater story. That’s harsher on the writers, because it means the death was solely about manipulation, but it lets the character be about something else for me.
Contrast with: Gaius Baltar. Baltar’s guilt isn’t supposed to make him sympathetic because HAHAHA, HE DOESN’T FEEL ANY, and when he does, it is in a distant fourth to HE, HIMSELF, AND HIM. And the narrative makes this painfully clear. We sympathize with Baltar in spite of his awfulness, not because of it. By portraying his reaction as selfishness, the story acknowledges that there is a world outside of Baltar’s self. Whereas when anything happens to anyone in toothpaste spittle range, we’re supposed to assume it actually is about the woobification of Bill Adama.
Mad Men is a really interesting show in that I don’t think we’re supposed to like most if any of the characters, as well-drawn as they are, particularly not the protagonists. (Obviously everyone should like Rachel Menken and Sal.) It’s one of the most painstakingly realistic shows I’ve ever seen, and these people are warped by a society that hasn’t caught up with its own potential.
But Don is the worst. Don Draper is THE DEVIL. NO, SERIOUSLY. And I think in a lot of ways his Manliest Pain is the most insidious, because it’s a straight drama, but the damage modern advertising does to all of us is huge. Its fundamental purpose is to create dissatisfaction, to deceive the individual mind and distort the market at large. Don’s job is to go around wreaking misery, and we’re meant maybe not to admire him (though outside of our happy little bubble? People really do) but to root for him all the same.
Angel bothers me both more and less in this analysis, though still a lot, because from time to time the shows did acknowledge his genocidal maniac serial killer rape-obsessed dickishness. But that was still the structure of his whole story, that it was SO HARD on him to have done those things. He cherishes the memory of that power, and still indulges in it from time to time (the begging? That comes later) and that is what bothers me. Because he’s taking his victims’ suffering and making it his. He wants to take everything from them emotionally, even what he did to them. It’s not renouncing the control itself, merely swapping one expression of it for another. I wonder sometimes if Dru retains a sense of self in the way she does because she never belonged to herself to begin with. He strokes the regret as lovingly as he did the sport of it.
It’s just not the same as the redemption stories in the ‘verse - from this perspective, no, actually, Angel isn’t a redemption story, because he never gives up his power-grubbing ways. I root for Faith, Willow, and Spike and their efforts to become good and useful rather than dangerous. The power within them is something they need to work to control, and that effort is compelling and sympathetic to me. With Spike, it falls into this common prioritization of men’s journeys (Faith and Willow being women inherently turn that on its head in the way Buffy herself does), but I don’t react to it in the same way. Angel’s story is all about him re-defining who has it coming, and coming to vaguely prefer a definition that is slightly less anti-social. It looks more impressive than it sounds, because the play for sympathy is the anchor weight of his massive, purposely destructive past.
And worst of all, it’s Angel: the Series. As much as I love pretty much everything else about the show? It really is all about him.
It’s one of those wonderfully thought-provoking dark humor/righteous anger pieces, and it crystallized a whole set of my reactions to Man Pain itself, and other peoples’ reactions to Man Pain. STANDARD I-STATEMENT DISCLAIMER. This is me trying to identify a pattern and figure out why it’s so popular generally with writers and viewers, and MOST IMPORTANTLY to my enormous ego, such anathema to ME. I’ve tried to white-text or otherwise mark any specific Big Twists. Also, to clarify, I’m responding to the video and meta, and absolutely not criticizing it or the ideas behind it, because I think the whole project is brilliant. There are just a few issues it’s helped me draw out.
Man Pain that doesn’t bother me: in which I am defensive!
I’m no fonder of the poor me-ing on rooftops than anyone else, don’t get me wrong. But most Man Paining is, for me, a contextual problem with authorial laziness, choosing manipulation over earning our sympathy. But it’s just so common that it doesn’t seem to be a particularly instructive criticism of a character. Not all Man Pain is created equal. It’s partially picking my battles, I know. I don’t want to dislike every character with MAN PAIN. Even I would run out of sanctimonious rage. (Eventually.)
What Man Pain isn’t, or at least when it isn’t bothersome to me, is men who are unhappy. The context grates, that to be a woman worth camera time is to do everything backward in high heels and usually with a smile, or at least bizarrely cosmetic tears, on your face, while male pain is constantly shown as sympathetic. But I do like characters who are fucked up generally, even if it’s unfair that they’re usually men. That should be a little ugly; it should take over their stories from time to time. But it can work, if it’s that it is their damage, it’s about them, and it’s small and selfish and difficult to be around but not half as difficult as it is to live through it. When a character and his pain are deflated - comedically like early Wesley or Baltar, or tragically (and in his case damned near literally) like Lee - rather than puffed up by it, well, I don’t hate him, as much as I may be furious at the means of getting him there.
And it’s different for a character to have Man Pain than to be based in Man Pain. I’m not sure I agree Jack Harkness is based in Man Pain, as some commenters on the post do. Granted, I still haven’t seen CoE, the Man Pain may overwhelm him for me, but if he’s a strong enough character to carry the show for two seasons when his characterization is not about it, I don’t think the Man Pain is fundamental to his story. And it’s fine to be annoyed with it and say that that element is too much to like a character, and for that matter it’s fine just not to like him, but I kind of think that to presumptively define a story and character by the Man Pain without acknowledging it ends up reinforcing the prioritization of the Man Pain.
And there is something a little hinky about the prevalence of Man Pain for those characters both in the narrative and in discussion of it, because all four of those characters do at least play with masculinity in different ways. Most of them have Man Pain about love and babiez, NO, REALLY. It’s a three-tiered issue, at least. Their respective narratives feel the need to give them lots of Man Pain to keep them sympathetic. Then the issues they angst over are trivialized because they’re associated with women, and aren’t considered so sympathetic in female characters. And then that angst seems to stand out negatively for viewers, because it’s discordant. I wonder if the use of and conversation about Man Pain doesn’t have some small element of policing masculinity to it.
WHICH BRINGS ME TO: MAN PAIN THAT DOES BOTHER ME.
For all my cantankerousness, I can only think of three characters that I have a visceral negative reaction to - Bill Adama, Don Draper, and Angel - and they share a very specific type of Man Pain. It's not just the moping that annoys me, or even that other people have to suffer for their Man Pain. It’s characters who cause legitimate pain to others for the sake of their own Man Pain, which is still portrayed sympathetically.
It’s not characters who are privileged by the narrative or the viewers, but ones who take power and use it against others, and then we're supposed to feel sympathy for them because of their bad acts, not in spite of them. The regret itself becomes yet another expression of dominance, a gratuitous self-indulgent masochism. When they clearly relish having done the bad things, and keep right the hell on doing them, but for some reason or another we’re supposed to support them. When we’re supposed to take the abuse of some power or other as laudable masculine prowess, and therefore hold them above the other characters. It’s a step past might makes right, where a pattern of misuse of might is good, just because it shows the might is there to misuse.
I absolutely don’t think it’s the actors - it’s a compliment to them for me to have such a strong reaction, I think. When someone as handsome as the Hamm makes me NOT WANT TO LOOK AT HIS STUPID FACE EVER, to the point where I did not recognize him when he showed up on 30 Rock, that is actually pretty impressive. Their job isn’t to make me like them, it’s to make me believe them.
It also does not make them unsuccessful as characters. Don Draper is, by all accounts faithfully, based on a real person. Angel and especially Bill ring achingly true to me. They are all quite interesting, in moderation, though generally not the most interesting characters on their given shows, in large part because they’re reiterations of this overdone archetype.
What I do think is a narrative failure is the prioritization of and over-reliance on this particular type of Man Pain. It’s an easy play for mainstream sympathy, to be sure. Even if those of us who are engaged with the intricacies and politics of serialized storytelling look under the façade and sometimes see a critique there, most viewers are going to want to root for someone and go for the most familiar character. And, the popular culture landscape being what it is, that’s going to be the Man Painiest Dude in town. I realize stories have to have a protagonist, and that this type of protagonist is the easiest to have. (Stories without such a protagonist tend to be better both because they require stronger writing to get across to audiences accustomed to Man Pain and because the limitation forces creativity.) And it’s fine - desirable, even, because it’s such an ugly trait - to see in a villain. But it still makes me hate them.
But. It does not make them or their use in the narrative intellectually or aesthetically appealing, or philosophically acceptable. All these characters are part of phenomenal ensemble casts. When their Man Pain becomes overwhelming to the other characters’ stories, I know what I’m missing. Moreover, it just feeds into the characters’ and audience’s agreement that some people - hypermasculine men, to be specific - not only think they are more important than others, but are actually more important than others. I’m not against Dead Little Sibling, particularly in backstory (though it’s more often sisters and that’s a problem, clearly); I’m not actually necessarily opposed to axing some characters for the sake of others. But to create characters that are equally compelling if not more so and still casually sublimate them to the Man Pain is bad. When excellent characters end up created just to be eaten - sometimes literally - by and for the Man Pain, both in-universe and outside of it, it hurts my opinion of the work as a whole.
The dominance over other men is a key signpost to this kind of Man Pain - Bill and everyone around him but especially his son; Don Draper and everyone around him but especially Pete; Angel and EVERYONE IN LA AND ALSO THE FUCKING WORLD but especially his pseudo-son Spike. It makes sense, even if it adds another layer of ugliness to the whole thing. Part of it’s on me as a viewer, I know - I’m conditioned to expect women to be in that position, but subordinate male characters are, you know, weird. Part of it’s that the narrative and in-universe subjugation of women is too ordinary and easy for a Manly Man of this kind of power. It’s run of the mill for dudes to get a dead girlfriend of their very own to cry over, no matter how much of a priority they generally aren’t, and in any event, caring about love and shit is for Girly Men. Bossing around other men is how one shows, exercises, and increases power. A rotten power-disparate dynamic between two men is not necessarily a reason to hate a character just because it turns into WATM, but it’s a pretty good indication that I will have this issue.
Sometimes it is perfectly good reason to hate a character, as in BSG. I can’t even bring myself to reiterate my Bill Issues, because he makes me unhappy. All his expectations, for Lee specifically and for HUMANITY AT LARGE, OH MY GOD, SHUT UP, aren’t about shit but a desire to watch people dance while he mopes about how hard it is to play the tune. He actually goes looking for ways to make the nuclear holocaust ALL ABOUT HIM. Better to be important and genocidal than just some schlub doing a job no matter how challenging and critical; better to constantly reassure himself he can still crush his son utterly than to strive for the mundane satisfaction of being a father who wouldn’t. And that’d be fine for a villain, but we’re supposed to love him.
Tigh should really fit into this pattern. And don't get me wrong, I have exactly zero sympathy for him after he up and murdered his wife, not that I had much before that, and I was shocked at the show’s play for sympathy for him over it. He bothers me less in a lot of ways, though. Primarily, his most important issue comes from his eventual identity crisis, which was fantastic. Ellen’s death was unnecessary to his greater story. That’s harsher on the writers, because it means the death was solely about manipulation, but it lets the character be about something else for me.
Contrast with: Gaius Baltar. Baltar’s guilt isn’t supposed to make him sympathetic because HAHAHA, HE DOESN’T FEEL ANY, and when he does, it is in a distant fourth to HE, HIMSELF, AND HIM. And the narrative makes this painfully clear. We sympathize with Baltar in spite of his awfulness, not because of it. By portraying his reaction as selfishness, the story acknowledges that there is a world outside of Baltar’s self. Whereas when anything happens to anyone in toothpaste spittle range, we’re supposed to assume it actually is about the woobification of Bill Adama.
Mad Men is a really interesting show in that I don’t think we’re supposed to like most if any of the characters, as well-drawn as they are, particularly not the protagonists. (Obviously everyone should like Rachel Menken and Sal.) It’s one of the most painstakingly realistic shows I’ve ever seen, and these people are warped by a society that hasn’t caught up with its own potential.
But Don is the worst. Don Draper is THE DEVIL. NO, SERIOUSLY. And I think in a lot of ways his Manliest Pain is the most insidious, because it’s a straight drama, but the damage modern advertising does to all of us is huge. Its fundamental purpose is to create dissatisfaction, to deceive the individual mind and distort the market at large. Don’s job is to go around wreaking misery, and we’re meant maybe not to admire him (though outside of our happy little bubble? People really do) but to root for him all the same.
Angel bothers me both more and less in this analysis, though still a lot, because from time to time the shows did acknowledge his genocidal maniac serial killer rape-obsessed dickishness. But that was still the structure of his whole story, that it was SO HARD on him to have done those things. He cherishes the memory of that power, and still indulges in it from time to time (the begging? That comes later) and that is what bothers me. Because he’s taking his victims’ suffering and making it his. He wants to take everything from them emotionally, even what he did to them. It’s not renouncing the control itself, merely swapping one expression of it for another. I wonder sometimes if Dru retains a sense of self in the way she does because she never belonged to herself to begin with. He strokes the regret as lovingly as he did the sport of it.
It’s just not the same as the redemption stories in the ‘verse - from this perspective, no, actually, Angel isn’t a redemption story, because he never gives up his power-grubbing ways. I root for Faith, Willow, and Spike and their efforts to become good and useful rather than dangerous. The power within them is something they need to work to control, and that effort is compelling and sympathetic to me. With Spike, it falls into this common prioritization of men’s journeys (Faith and Willow being women inherently turn that on its head in the way Buffy herself does), but I don’t react to it in the same way. Angel’s story is all about him re-defining who has it coming, and coming to vaguely prefer a definition that is slightly less anti-social. It looks more impressive than it sounds, because the play for sympathy is the anchor weight of his massive, purposely destructive past.
And worst of all, it’s Angel: the Series. As much as I love pretty much everything else about the show? It really is all about him.