The crustiest U.S. Marshall ever to step foot in the Indian Nations is rounded up to aid a willful 14-year-old girl seeking to hunt down and punish her father’s killer. A repressed and stammering soon-to-be king is rescued by an eccentric speech therapist who refuses to bow down to the royal and becomes his BFF. And in the virtual wild west of social networking, a Harvard misfit and his geek cohorts execute an online scheme for profiling and hooking up with cool chicks – an idea “borrowed” from hulking twin brothers on the Crimson’s crew team.

The bonding, wrangling and retribution underlying this year’s Oscar contenders – The King’s Speech, True Grit and The Social Network – all strike a familial chord with male film goers who grow tired of a bucket of popcorn with compassionate mothers, wedding tales and child loss grief – common fodder of book club faves spun into celluloid. While I shudder to use the phrase dick flick – which is arguably as sexist and minimizing as chick flick – it just might fit the bill, especially when you toss in an Irish American fighter saga with a Rocky-rise and feckless half brother in need of extreme rehab.

Christian Bale already took the Golden Globe for his stunning performance as the weaker half of the Mickey Ward story, while bets are on Colin Firth over the ripped Wahlberg in the best actor title. As George VI, Firth also displayed how containing one’s temper yields tremendous results, and was crowned with the gold for his role.

Manly, yes, these yarns, but I like them too, and with the exception of violence, torture, rattlesnakes lurking in caves, severed limbs and blatant child neglect, the testosterone pulsating through the veins of these films doesn’t make them any less entertaining, or even enjoyable, for most women. It is the vulnerability revealed in the exceptional performances that strikes a chord.

We want our men to open up and get it out, as Firth’s “Bertie” eventually does with the gentle nudging of his loving wife and the tactical prodding of Geoffrey Rush’s Lionel Logue. We fantasize about our daughters having the uncanny resources exhibited by Hailee Steinfeld’s Mattie Ross when confronted with the worse elements roaming the planet – those that threaten to bring physical harm to the innocent. She isn’t dependent on males but finds it works better to interact and do business with them on her rough and tumble journey.

And while the domain of billionaire achievers in the entrepreneurial tech field has largely existed as an exclusive man’s club, we look for inroads while tapping the benefits of social networks to further our professional and personal lives. We may not come to love the founder of Facebook but we are grateful to have reconnected with our friends from junior high.

What allows these films to cross the genders in appeal is they don’t smack of the usual gratuitous violence that makes past Coen brother films too gross for comfort, the Fargo credo of a mucked kidnapping and slaughter of a North Dakota housewife – senseless murder deconstructed as black humor deemed as genius. In 1991, when Silence of the Lambs was crowned best picture, many of my women friends threw their hands up in total disgust. Sure, the suspense in the psychological thriller mounted to an edge-of-your-seat crescendo, but it didn’t negate the fact the basic plot surrounded the serial torture and killing of women.

In the Coens’ remake of True Grit, the female protagonist is empowered on cartoonist proportions, yet empowered nonetheless, and like Clarice Starling, she perseveres when finally confronted with the devil in the flesh. We are able to root for her throughout the film without being exposed to horrific scenes that haunt us when we are alone and hear things going bump in the night. This is what separates Grit from the maiming scenes of Quentin Terantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction or the gut wrenching bloodshed in Oliver Stone’s Platoon or Natural Born Killers.

In terms of The King’s Speech, it is the tender, feminine side of these men that eventually comes to define their lifelong friendship, the stripping of the egos and the trust that allows us to be vulnerable enough to grow and to be loved. While the performances of the British cast are perhaps the most Oscar worthy of any of the contenders, I wonder if the subtleties of the film’s message are powerful enough to win over the academy – one that has embraced past winners: The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, The Departed, Unforgiven, Bravehart, The Departed and Gladiator in recent years.

If Speech walks away empty handed (Firth was the only winner at the Globes), I for one will be left asking if the film could have benefited by a riveting dueling scene among the princes, a raping or beating of a chambermaid or visuals depicting the starvation the prince claimed to have suffered under the watch of a sadistic nanny.

Should Grit or Social Network, other good films, take the big prize, it will validate something I have felt for years, that vulnerability in men is a much harder thing to reward than corruption and violence, at least in Hollywood. It’s a shame because in the end, discipline and diplomacy over cheating, scheming and brawn will reign supreme in ensuring the survival of the species.

Images: True Grit; KingSpeech; The Social Network; The fighter

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And so it goes for women determined to prove that in the historic struggle for equality and a lighter laundry load, the second sex has come out on top, resulting in unprecedented role reversals – giving women an edge in educating, managing and thriving. Are females simply better designed to rule a postindustrial society?

That’s the question posed in a recent article in The Atlantic called “The End of Men”, which maps out the makings of a powerful society of fierce, hard hat toting Amazons taking over as the dominant sex “with shocking speed.” It’s no wonder, we are told, that the ratio of couples requesting girl babies at sperm banks is 2 to 1, a sign that we are looking to daughters as the future. Is China listening?

The piece tells us to look at the job numbers: In early 2010, women were the majority of the workforce for the first time in US history; there will be three women for every two men earning a college degree this year; and most managers are now women. In studying various entities like corporations, governments and professions such as medicine and the law, it seems to follow that those promoting women are the savvy, progressive and prolific. They are investing in the future and the future is brains, creativity and empathy over good old boy networking and brawn.

As Atlantic author, Hanna Rosin, puts it: “Feminism has pushed women to do things once considered against their nature – first enter the workforce as singles, then continue to work while married, then work even with small children at home. Many professions that started out as the province of men are now filled mostly with women – secretary and teacher come to mind. Yet, I’m not aware of any that have gone the opposite way. Nursing schools have tried hard to recruit men in the past few years with minimal success. Teaching schools, eager to recruit male role models, are having a similarly hard time. The range of acceptable masculine roles has changed comparatively little, and has perhaps even narrowed as men shied away from some careers women have entered.”

In probing the trend of a generation of males who lag behind, especially during a recession that is leaving them unemployed and in failed marriages, Rosin points to the observations of Jessica Grose, who wrote in Slate about Omega Males and the Women Who Hate Them: “Men are still tragically unable to retool. The image of the American woman has gone through several upheavals since the 1950s, but the masculine ideal seems fixed in cultural aspic.”

While the numbers might prove women have a greater propensity for reinvention and growth of all kinds, they don’t signal that men are becoming obsolete, which is yet another damning myth that goes further to divide rather than unite the species. Sure, the ones from Mars still rule countries and make decisions to go to war, to pad the pockets of corporations, to rape both sexes, and to make weapons widely available to the wrong people.

But it doesn’t mean there aren’t good men out there. It doesn’t mean we don’t love our husbands and our sons, our brothers and first cousins. Meantime, it is widely argued that there are plenty of women who emulate bad male behavior, and they are just as damaging as the macho, gun slinging hunters. Perhaps the point isn’t that we don’t need men, but that we don’t need men who have the wrong image of what it means to be a dude, nor women who take on the same stereotypes (i.e power brokers in DC or brutal p.e. teachers).

Whether omega or alpha, the key seems to be balance and sensitivity when it comes to advancing in postindustrial society, knowing when to let down your guard in order to grow. Anyone who has experienced couples therapy knows that a spouse who opens up and shares is a good communicator; that the spouse or partner who listens well is a good student; that the spouse or partner who lets down defenses and explores new approaches is the one most likely to evolve.

The same analogy applies to work and relationships. Stagnant, uptight, defensive, vague, competitive, suspicious are traits clung to by those needing to play it safe. Men have been taught that playing it safe is the best way to go to come out of any situation unscathed. But that seems to be the rub, the so-called aspic that binds them. If anything, men need to emulate good female behavior which seems to come instinctively. Is a good man hard to find? Not if he is under the influence of a good man and a good woman.

Images: Alex E. Proimos; Zazzle; NYU Local

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If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, than who takes better care of planet Earth? This squabble of the sexes has surfaced on the internet in recent months, with commentators pointing to the fairer sex as the keeper of the environment. But do gendered discussions about the environment miss the forest for the trees?

In an article this week on The Huffington Post, Jennifer Grayson, founding editor of The Red, White, and Green, discusses the notion that women must be greener than men because men have been responsible for two recent environmental catastrophes: the BP oil spill and the Massey coal mine explosion in West Virginia.

“…I don’t believe that either of these examples proves that men are somehow less likely environmentalists than women,” Grayson writes. “In my mind, they only demonstrate two inconvenient truths: 1) Women are still poorly represented in leadership roles in large corporations (to wit: 29 female CEOs in the Fortune 1000); and 2) A lot of large corporations are too greedy to put environmental concerns before their bottom line.

While Grayson checks off male and female contributions to the environment (like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring), she concedes that men and women might handle their environmental concerns differently, with men focusing on big picture eco concerns and women taking small steps to green their lives.

“I’ve witnessed this in my own life: My mother-in-law, to her credit, willingly jumps on almost any eco-improvement I’ve written about, especially when it comes to household purchasing. No change is too small – organic milk, BPA-free cans, biodegradable doggie doo bags – you name it,” Grayson writes. “My father-in-law, on the other hand, isn’t as excited by recycled wine totes (although I’m sure he uses them), but he does boast a fabulous career in the green energy sector.”

A January article in the New York Times hammers the point home: women want to green their lives, while men want to green the world. Marital strife ensues.

“Christienne deTournay Birkhahn, executive director of the EcoMom Alliance, an organization based in Marin County that provides education to women who want to have their families live more sustainably, finds that disputes over how green is green enough often divide along predictable lines by sex,” reads the article, “Women often see men as not paying sufficient attention to the home. Men, for their part, really want to make a large impact and aren’t interested in a small impact,” she says.

This eco discord plays out in predictable ways – woman wants to save water, man likes to take long showers, woman complains, man refers to her environmental awakening as a “high-priestess phase.” Or, woman wants to recycle yogurt cups, man tosses them in the trash to “bait” her, woman complains, man tells her that her efforts won’t make a difference for the environment.

While believable, these tiffs should be taken for what they are – ho-hum marital disputes – rather than indications of broader interactions between men and women regarding their relationships to the environment. The notion that women zero in on small ways to change the environment fits nicely into the “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” theory that women keep track of their relationships through an elaborate subconscious point system, one in which emotional bonds are strengthened by a series of tiny gestures from their male mates: flowers, compliments, chivalry. Women, it follows, are quibbling, nitpicky nesters, ladies who want things just so in their relationships and homes. Greening the home? Just another way for women to get their control freak on.

In this template, men are the big-picture thinkers, cultivating closeness with their partners through lavish love displays: trips to the Bahamas, diamond rings. They express their concern for the environment in parallel strokes: Recycling? How about engineering a new recycling system?! Men are the visionaries, the ones who cultivate renewable energy sources while their wives tend to the backyard chickens. 

While these stereotypes about men and women boil down complex interactions into a set of simple gender rules – creating expectations for men and women that dog them throughout their relationships and careers – they also do a disservice to the environment. With all this hype about who cares about what, we forget why we should care at all.

Image: Ed Yourdon

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