The film Friendship comes at a time of peak male mental health crisis. Starring Tim Robinson as Craig, a lovably weird and increasingly unhinged suburban dad, the movie is driven by his obsession with befriending charismatic weatherman neighbor Austin, played by Paul Rudd. Going based off of trailers — or the opening minutes of the film — you could be forgiven for thinking this was just an off-beat peek into the male loneliness epidemic.
Men are less likely than they ever have been to form close friendships, with many men reporting having none at all. Craig certainly fits the bill, with a well-paying job and a family, but no social life, no hobbies, and sub-zero emotional intelligence. He is a nice, well-meaning, earnest man, but lacks any charm, grace, or sensitivity to the feelings of others. Though obviously not an incel, there’s much commonality there, with Craig’s marriage on the rocks as he struggles to communicate with his florist wife Tami, played by Kate Mara.
The male mental health crisis periodically erupts into public discourse. Whilst more historically vulnerable groups like ethnic minorities, women or gay people have their problems discussed as something that society has an obligation to address, male, especially white male, suffering is almost unique in being regarded as something that can be blamed on the victim. The discourse around men is always a curious blend of feminine condescension, macho bootstrapism and societal fearmongering. In short, men are both useless and scary, and consequently need to toughen up, and also get in touch with their feelings. Men are either urged to “get therapy” by fingerwagging schoolmarms, or commanded to “get ripped” by half-naked sex traffickers.
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A typical example of the hysteria projected onto men is the TV show Adolescence. Whatever its artistic merits, it revolved around a profoundly absurd and unrealistic plot in which a young boy’s burgeoning masculinity is interrogated as the cause of murder. Worse than the silly conceit was the rave reception it got by a British establishment petrified by the bogeyman of the “manosphere”, with Keir Starmer ordering it to be screened in British schools.
(spoilers follow)
Friendship is a very different sort of story, although subtle enough that it’s open to a wide range of interpretations. Guardian reviewers had little trouble seeing it as ripping into “male inadequacy” — a phrase that is itself a sharp reminder that men sit alone in a sea of untouchables; can you imagine black, female or gay “inadequacy” being described as such? There are certain parallels between the Friendship and Adolescence — neither Craig nor Jamie (the 13 year old killer in Adolescence) fit in, both are “angry men” with Craig regularly shouting uncontrollably, and indeed, Craig ends up being hauled off to prison at the end of the film. Yet there is one fundamental difference: Craig is unambiguously the hero of his story, Jamie the villain of his. In its magnificently eccentric way, Friendship is a love letter to men, masculinity and male bonding.
Whilst Jamie is a British liberal fantasy of adolescent misogynistic masculinity, seething with hidden inadequacies and gendered resentments to be forensically uncovered, Craig is a much more psychologically realistic and recognisable man. He doesn’t hate women, he just fails to understand them, cack-handedly trying to keep his increasingly frustrated wife happy. Far from being emotionally repressed, Craig’s feelings play out in technicolor all over his big, dumb wide open face, when they’re not being blurted out of his mouth at precisely the wrong moment. We’re first introduced to Craig as he’s sitting in a circle at a therapy session for survivors of cancer and their spouses. Tami is worried about the cancer coming back — Craig cheerfully reassures her that it won’t, and declares that he’s very happy and his life is going great. Socially awkward and unastute, he inadvertently tramples on the therapeutic script, and is duly shunned by the group.
Craig does everything that he is “supposed to” according to the male mental health crisis consensus. He goes to therapy, he works a decent job, he shares his feelings, and he pursues an emotionally-open, sensitive friendship. He and mustachioed weatherman Austin have a blissful couple of days picking wild mushrooms, sneaking through a sewer pipe and going to bars, all culminating in a group hang out with Austin’s buddies. The friends are a parody of the feminised ideal of male friendship. The friends sit in a circle tearfully discussing their feelings, with one man talking about buying a bra for his teenaged daughter, and his fears of how men will treat her as she grows up. To reassure him, they have a group sing along. Craig feels loved and accepted. But after a friendly boxing match in which Craig gets carried away, the emotionally available besties turn on him, and he is ousted from the group and Austin’s friendship.
Craig, like men in general, is guilty of having the wrong feelings and the wrong desires. He is a brilliant comic creation — a man let loose in the modern world without malice but with a complete inability to “read the room”. Yet underlying the laughter is a bitter truth; society doesn’t really want what it claims to ask of men. Men in general are worse at reading subtext, but this is raised to the level of social cruelty when it comes to the discourse around masculinity. Craig doesn’t know that when you’re sat in a circle and told to share your feelings, that this means feelings of vulnerability or sadness, not contentment or optimism. He doesn’t get that in the pseudo-masculine sensitive men hangout that you can put on a pair of boxing gloves but you can never lose your temper, even when you’re getting punched in the face. And just like the progressive culture we all live in, there’s no forgiveness or path to redemption. You’ve made us all feel very uncomfortable Craig, and we don’t want to see you again.
The genius of Friendship is that the absurdity of the protagonist serves to expose the absurdity of the people around him, and the human folly that suffuses “normality”. Social convention is arbitrary, and frequently cruel. Craig is no more ridiculous than everyone else, but makes those around him nervous by not hiding this fact.
Craig’s fantasies, which include playing drums in a band and chopping wood for his best friend in a post-apocalyptic society, are not delusions of power, but of purpose. It’s this basic reality that so much man-discourse misses. Masculinity is in crisis not because of a deficit of power and influence, but because society neither values nor has a use for men as men. The physical strength or honest nature of the average guy were once vital to everything from building roads to planting crops. The virtues of masculinity — stoicism, confidence, humour, courage — were considered essential elements for maintaining public and family life. Craig only really wants a job that isn’t making people addicted to smartphone apps, and a best buddy to hang out with, not a Tate-style life of fame, fortune and female attention.
Friendship is a lot like Joker in inadvertently lionising a protagonist who was probably intended to be a satire of masculinity. In painting such a sympathetic, witty and outsized portrait of a hapless modern man, its creators have rendered him lovable and even heroic, and shone a light on the degree of unkindness that many men face from modern liberal society.
Ordinary leading men are thin on the ground, as male protagonists are subverted, therapised, deconstructed or villainised
It’s a pity, however, that the only masculine heroes we tend to get are absurd anti-heroes created in a fit of absence of mind. Outside of the robotic and unrealistic protagonists of superhero movies and thrillers, ordinary leading men are thin on the ground, as male protagonists are subverted, therapised, deconstructed or villainised.
A classic example of a comic leading man who was masculine without being macho is Tom Good of the Good Life. Tom is frequently ridiculous as he embarks on his mid-life crisis-fuelled quest for self-sufficiency in Surbiton, but he is never less than heroic, brave and witty. Watching it over the gulf of decades, it’s impossible not to be struck by his unfussy, unasserted English masculinity, and the mutual respect between him and his wife Barbara. The antithesis of the hopeless sitcom dad, Tom is often a figure of fun, yet earns the admiration of audiences with his perseverance and non-conformity. The ideas of standing up to unjust authority and the absurdity of modern life that run through the series are deeply attractive, yet are often strangely lacking in modern dramas, with the growing dominance of flawed protagonists and convoluted, navel-gazing plotlines.
Craig is a sort of failed Tom Good, desperate to break out of his stale life, yearning for purpose, but lacking the support and admiration of friends and family. It’s a fitting and brilliantly executed tragicomedy of masculinity in crisis. It left me in floods of laughter — but longing for a more optimistic vision for men today.
