in defense of Bromance

(Ladies, I apologize in advance: I will address men directly in this post, but I neglect to address you directly. So..I decided to give you all this special note at the top of my post. Thanks for reading. I do appreciate it. Let me know what you think about masculinity and bromance.)

I'm editing a new video blog about getting glasses. I want to get it posted before I leave for Europe (on Friday!), but I just finished an article that deserves a blog response. The New York Times did a piece on Paul Rudd and his new movie I Love You, Man. It's a movie about guys being close friends--which popular media has dubbed "bromance" and academics call homosocial intimacy. I am passionate about bromance.

Just a note: I have not seen the movie, but will. So rather than blogging about the movie, I'll be blogging about bromance.

The article praises Paul Rudd--fashioning him as a model of twenty-first century masculinity. That's true, in part. Paul has taken roles where he plays liberal artsy guys trying to figure out life in their twenties and thirties. As a liberal artsy guy in my twenties, I can relate, so he is a representative of my kind of masculinity. But it's a stretch to compare Paul to masculine icons like Marlon Brando or Clint Eastwood.

Paul plays characters who are in touch with their feminine side: they enjoy art, carry on good conversations, and have (at least a few) liberal political leanings. I Love You, Man portends to be a great movie because it examines a major difficulty in the life of the twenty-first century liberal artsy dude: the problem of male-to-male friendship or bromance.

Paul plays a guy who is great with the ladies and has finally pinned down the one that he wants to marry. But as the wedding planning begins, he realizes that he has no close guy friends--no one that he could ask to be his best man. The movie documents his awkward quest to make friends with other guys and to find that one special guy who can be his best man.

I love that this movie addresses the issue of male friendship. It has often been overlooked or ignored, but I believe that guy friendships and guy community are essential to male development. Sadly, many of us don't know how to have close friendships with other men.

A sad bi product of the gay rights movement and the subsequent homophobic backlash has been increased fear among men of close same-sex friendships. We are afraid that if we are in a close friendship with another guy, then it means that we have romantic feelings for him. For the record, this is not true.

I first noticed this fear a few years ago while discussing The Lord of the Rings movies with other guys. More than once guys suggested that Frodo and Sam were homosexual. They were joking, like guys do, but the suggestion frustrated me--in part because these guys did not appreciate Tolkien's art for developing characters and relationships, and in part because I realized that we have no paradigm for close male friendship. We saw Frodo and Sam as Tolkien intended: intimate, loving, and reliant upon each other. But because close male friendship is little represented in modern culture and media (I can't think of many examples, can you?), my friends viewed the relationship through the only lens that worked: homosexuality.

We (American men) do not have a paradigm through which we can understand intimate male relationships. And we need one. The idea of bromance can, in a strange way, made male friendship accessible by making it funny. I hope I Love You, Man can contribute to a cultural shift away from the fear of the male friendship and toward real intimacy and improved male community. Certainly this shift will require more than a Paul Rudd movie, but it seems like a great start.