Shane

I knew I wasn't making it up!  Way back at the beginning of this blog, when I was still teaching public high school, I made this comment, to the effect that there was an awful lot of sexual tension in a book intended for young adults.  What was subtext in the book became quite textual in the movie, to the credit of the director.  It was a solidly constructed movie, with nice cinematography and performances, though the lighting director should have been sacked.

But that which captures the notice of a modern viewer most about this movie is not the quality, by which measure it could fairly be described as "serviceable".  Rather, it is a depiction of masculinity that it at once toxic and frighteningly accurate.  The two men at the center of the movie seem, on the surface, to be motivated by what some might call "honor", the desire to do the right thing.  But while they have some tendencies in that direction, their honors are constantly undercut by an even more powerful motivator: concern over how they are perceived.  And it is pointedly not only in the eyes of the woman they both have feelings for that they struggle to be perceived as "men".  They struggle even harder for honor in the eyes of the young boy through whose eyes we witness the story.  They can bear any manner of indignity and insult, but the one thing they cannot endure--and that which leads them into foolish, performative masculinity--is for little Joey to think of them as cowards.

The film treats this as a virtue, rather than what it really is: a fatal flaw that nearly gets everyone killed.  But I don't think of this as detracting from the film.  It is, in fact, a perfectly accurate description of the way males are raised to view themselves, and the forces against which even such noble men as Shane and Joe continue to struggle.