We saw the play Allegiance this spring. The play is set in one of the prison camps the United States set up to incarcerate Japanese-Americans during World War Two on the basis of race. During the first few minutes of the play, I had to tamp down my anger at this example of unfairness rooted in baseless fear.
At about midpoint of the first act, the lead character, Sam, reflects, in song (because Allegiance is a musical) on what it means to be a man. Toward the end of the second act, he returns with a reprise of the song with an understanding that comes from the events of the play in between.
We people of a certain chromosomal makeup have, over time, heard varying answers to the singer’s question presented to us. Just in my lifetime, philosophers and pundits have been opining regularly about what it means to be a man without any particular success at finding an answer. Not being a woman, I don’t know if that segment of the human race has engaged in the parallel question as much—what does it mean to be a woman—perhaps because they have been so busy multi-tasking., at which, I understand, they excel over men
Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, might be the most well-known attempt to provide a definition. I was raised on If by a father who subscribed to the validity of many of Kipling’s descriptors: keeping your head, picking yourself up after setbacks, living each moment to its fullest, being courageous.
Sam, the singer in Allegiance, first sang the song in the spirit of Kipling—show you are a man by doing your duty to your country, your country’s unfairness toward you notwithstanding. Only as events unfold does Sam come to realize that another man who suffered the consequences of standing up for what he believed and a third who stood up to authority and was beaten down for it might be fine examples of a man as well.
Here’s a rub: Most every definition of what it means to me a man uses descriptors that would be seen as virtues of a woman as well (absent the Warrior Myth for men and the Weaker-sex nonsense for women).
So, gentlemen, aside from musculature and plumbing, what makes us so special? Aside, of course, from the fact that most of the written history of humankind has been penned by men, mostly about the doings of other men, and that a lion’s share of the advantages in a large number of societies have accrued to men.
Shakespeare gave Hamlet some great lines about men (and women, too) in Act II, Scene II: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.”
Of course, he follows with “And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust. Man delights me not nor woman either…”
Now Hamlet was a troubled guy. That gives the play its dramatic tension. But he was clever enough to be brutally ironic, it seems, seeing the potential of man consistently unachieved. They might be able to think and act nobly, but more often than not, they are dust. The paragon of animals has more often been animal than paragon of anything.
It’s not so hard to substitute “woman” in these lines, although it disturbs the rhythm of the poetry, and Hamlet/Shakespeare was not intending to comment on women at this point in the play.
So, if Kipling’s If and Hamlet’s “piece of work” can apply to woman as well, what distinguishes men?
Gender issues are discussed more openly in popular culture these days than when we People of a Certain Age were growing up. About all we had was Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in 1963 imploring guys to “walk like a man” even as someone else (in this instance, a girl) was spreading rumors about you. (Not bad advice for girls either; would it be “walk like a woman?”)
Gender issues are hard to escape in the media: gender identification, gender-free language, gender-neutral bathrooms. Even the #MeToo movement is, at some level, a clash of gender understandings within our culture.
I am happy to be a Person of a Certain Age when it comes to such matters. I daresay the youth of today are bombarded with myriad conflicting models of what they are supposed to be in order to live up to the ideal of what a man or woman should be.
Should be. Maybe it is time to drop the “should be.” Why not become aspirational and focus on striving to live up to Hamlet’s ideal or understanding that Kipling’s male-centric poem can apply to all people, male or female?
Many schools post their school values in prominent places on campus, things like justice, kindness, generosity of spirit, concern for others. On a recent visit to our collegiate alma mater, UC Riverside, we saw such banners attached to the light poles leading away from the student union.
Many Hawaii schools do the same, only the words are in Hawaiian: pono, malamalama, ha’aheo—acting justly, caring for others, humble pride. These values have no gender.
Daniel E. White
July 22, 2019
Daniel E. White
July 22, 2019