Do men cry?

[Kitten]

Do you think men cry? Well I think they do put some of them try and not let you seem them cry.

[Kitten]

Well this article does confirm that men can be brought to tears. :)

Big boys do cry

Men won't blub in real life but put them in a dark cinema... As Americans exit puffy-eyed from the new male weepie Antwone Fisher, Stuart Husband asks what taps the male tear

Sunday April 20, 2003
The Observer

It starts with a hard, walnut-sized lump in the back of the throat. You suddenly hear your blood pounding in your ears. You swallow hard, only to provoke a welling in the corners of your eyes. You're starting to overheat. You fight the urge with frantic lip-chewing accompanied by a variety of hem-hem noises and manic seat-shifting. But eventually you have to give way. You're a man. In a cinema. Bawling like a baby. You've been Antwone Fishered.
Antwone Fisher is the apotheosis of that unheralded but significant movie sub-genre: the male weepie. It tells the (true) story of Antwone (a dazed-looking Derek Luke), a naval rating and serial scrapper who reluctantly consults naval psychiatrist Denzel Washington (who also directed) in order to seek closure on his issues of anger mismanagement. These latter stem from his abandonment by his parents and his rage at the comprehensive abuse meted out to him by his foster family. Eventually, under Washington's gentle Tuesdays with Morrie-style guidance, he's encouraged to reconnect with his kin, exorcise the hurt and make himself 'whole'. 'The story of a man who digs inside himself,' trumpets the movie's blurb, 'to discover therein lies a king!'

So far, so mawkish. But Antwone Fisher bypasses the rational left brain completely, subjecting the timorous right lobe to a ferocious emotional pounding. Men have been staggering from cinemas across America, where the film opened last year, blinded and benumbed. There's the scene at a Thanksgiving dinner where the seaman recites a self-penned poem beginning 'Who will cry for the little boy, lost and all alone?'. There's the scene where the (childless) doctor embraces Antwone (in a men's room, fittingly), declaring 'I love you, son.' And the movie's climax, sure to turn the doughtiest of hearts to mush, features a grandmother beckoning Antwone into the bosom of his new-found family with a wobbly, 'Welcome.'

'That's the scene that really got to me,' says Professor Randolph Cornelius. 'I saw her gnarly old hands reaching out for him, and I just lost it.' Cornelius is more than an Everyman in this field; he's a professor of psychology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he's been developing 'an evolutionary theory of weeping', and has studied the subject under laboratory conditions, wiring women up to the death scene from Steel Magnolias, and men to what he considered the previous exemplar of the male weepie - Brian's Song, a 1971 TV movie about an interracial friendship between two US football players, one of whom croaks. His conclusions: men and women cry for very different reasons.

'My general theory of crying is, it's about attachment,' he says. 'With women, it's about relationship conflicts, anger or frustration. With men, it's about loss, some kind of broken emotional bond, particularly that between fathers and sons. It speaks to the whole generation of men like myself whose fathers were deeply affected by World War II and who matured in the Fifties, when father/son relations were at their most distant. The ultimate male weepie would set up this father/son barrier and breach it after much struggle, only to have death or disaster intervene and slam it shut again. It's about troubled guys finding the primal father. Most of the men watching know they'll never have the chance to reconnect with their fathers, so it's full of pathos. The reason Antwone Fisher works despite the manipulation, is that you see him grappling with these overwhelming emotions and emerging triumphant.'


Of course, it's not just that men and women cry for different reasons; it's also that women, in Shakespeare's words, have 'taught their eyes to weep', while it's still a societal trope that big boys don't vent. However, the tsunami unleashed by Antwone Fisher has been building in the cinema for some time. There have been male sports weepies ( Field of Dreams), male war weepies ( Saving Private Ryan), and male kilt weepies ( Braveheart ).

Just recently, Road to Perdition and Catch Me If You Can have explored fraught father/son relationships. And Kevin Kline's movie Life as a House - in which a father makes peace with his errant son, only to succumb to, yes, a terminal disease - might just be the Bambi's Mum of the genre.

In fact, says Professor Cornelius, men are much more likely to cry in a movie theatre, or even in front of the TV, than over any shattering real-life event. 'You're in the dark, or in private, so you feel safe,' he says. 'They're almost officially sanctioned crying places where we place ourselves at the mercy of the emotions on screen, which are always freer and less complex than the ones we have to deal with.'

The clandestine nature of manly sobbing is a modern phenomenon, as Tom Lutz, author of Crying: the Natural & Cultural History of Tears , notes. 'Odysseus is hailed as a great warrior when he cries in almost every chapter of Homer's Iliad ,' he points out. 'And in the sixteenth century, sobbing openly at a play, opera or symphony was considered appropriately sensitive for men and women alike.' It was the Industrial Revolution that blocked the tear ducts; suddenly an efficient, machine-like demeanour was de rigueur.

'Weeping itself became the problem rather than a reaction to a problem,' says Lutz. 'Anger and stress became the substitute for tears - an attitude that persists to this day. Hard-headedness, what psychologists call "restricted emotionality", is still the paradigm for businessmen. If you cry you're weak, a bit of a jessie.'

'Men can't connect like women can,' says Cornelius. 'That's why movies like Antwone Fisher are important. If real men like Denzel can show their feelings openly, then maybe Joe Six-Pack will realise he can too.' He chuckles at my incredulous silence. 'There's still some way to go, admittedly.'

Screenplay seminarian Robert McKee also believes in the redemptive power of Antwone and his ilk. Well, perhaps not Antwone himself. 'It was a turgid display of sentimentality,' he says of the movie. 'If you want to break the male heart, you have to lean more toward tragedy, or sentiment - as distinct from sentimentality, which is what passes for tragedy in the twenty-first century. Think of the Buddy Salvation genre, where you've got two guys, and one's not going to make it, and the latter vainly tries to save the former.

Remember that scene in Midnight Cowboy where Ratso dies in Joe Buck's arms, and the busdriver looks back, and Joe Buck gives that helpless, embarrassed smile? I was in pieces. It was moving because it was underplayed and it was earned. Buddy Salvation is easier to pull off than the father/son relationship which is incredibly complex. Sons compete with their fathers, and go to great lengths to create a separate identity from them, but don't want to leave their fathers humiliated.

Certain movies, like Padre Padrone, The Bicycle Thief, and I Never Sang for My Father, have explored these issues, and they always get me. Hell, even the title of the latter makes me well up. But they do it subtly. To get real tears from an audience, particularly a male audience, means no tears from your characters.'

Cornelius believes that, however schmaltzy the means used to get men blubbing, the end more than justifies them. 'Tears are a powerful message to others that we're vulnerable,' he asserts. 'If men feel freer to seek aid and comfort, that's a good thing. I'd hate to live in a society where men coudn't do that.'

So Antwone is redeemed. He's still standing, he's still strong. And I'm cleansed, spent, and just a little moist. I love you, Denzel; I love you, dad. I'm ready to face the world like a mighty lion who's touchy-feely in all the unimpeachably manly ways. But I think I'll stay till the very end credits. If I bite my lip a bit harder, and Kleenex myself up a bit, I might just be able to dismiss the runny nose as a touch of hay fever.

· Antwone Fisher opens on 16 May

The crying game: What men say

Philip French, film critic
'I shed tears when King Richard casts off his monk's disguise in the 1938 Robin Hood; when the grieving Bambi meets his father; when Rick's clients challenge the Nazis with 'La Marseillaise' in Casablanca; when the revived community sing Auld Lang Syne in It's A Wonderful Life.'

Stewart Lee, writer & comic
'I cry at pretty much any moving shapes on the screen. My ex-fiancée used to get very annoyed that I showed no emotion in life but would cry at all films.'

Barry Norman, film critic
'I'm not really a cryer. I tend to get desensitised by seeing so many films but the ones that move me are those of serious intent like Schindler's List and more recently The Pianist .'

Tony Benn, diarist
'I'm a great weeper. The Railway Children when the Dad comes out of the smoke always makes me cry. My emotional moments are known to my family as "Railway Children events".'

Hanif Kureishi, writer
'A Swedish film My Life as a Dog is a terribly moving film about a young man living alone and coming to terms with his isolation."

Oliver James, psychologist
'Years after the breakup of a relationship I watched Casablanca and was startled to find tears welling up at the end. I realised I had been unable to cry when my real love affair went down the tubes, but could identify with fictional characters and have the experience that way. Pathetic in every way.'

Jean-Christophe Novelli, chef
'I think there are two different kinds of crying - crying with tears and crying on the inside. Once Upon a Time in America and The Green Mile made me cry on the inside.'

[Drew]

oh yea. its just that most of us try to hide it. take me for example, i don't hide it. i ain't afraid to show emotions whatsoever.

[BlackCryptoKnight]

Bwoy, every month when I see how much money the govt. has taken from my paycheque, I want to cry :(

[Cocoa]

Bwoy, every month when I see how much money the govt. has taken from my paycheque, I want to cry :(
:icon_lol: funny but true statement.

Degrade a man's ego can make him cry.
Death of his mother

I believe real men should cry and be not afraid to show emotions. :icon_mrgr :icon_neut

[Arch_Angel]

Listen, I take from the example of the greatest man that ever lived, Jesus. And guess what? He Wept!
So I do cry. Especially when I come before God in quiet times.

[AngelsKiss]

Listen, I take from the example of the greatest man that ever lived, Jesus. And guess what? He Wept!
So I do cry. Especially when I come before God in quiet times.

AA...that's a perfect example:)

[Lisa20]

So don't y'all cry when y'all lose the best thing that God gave you different from life?

[Arch_Angel]

What's that? :eusa_thin

[Drew]

that will be my next question.

[Cocoa]

So don't y'all cry when y'all lose the best thing that God gave you different from life? :eusa_thin :eusa_thin ......

[BlackCryptoKnight]

Why are so many women caught up with the fantasy of a crying man?

:eusa_thin

[Cocoa]

All these questions bouncing around the forum with no answers. Hmmm...

[Drew]

so cocoa answer bck then nuh.

[Greatis]

hmmm I haven't cried for the last 10 yrs.

[Drew]

oooooo, tuff guy huh.

[Greatis]

oooooo, tuff guy huh.

hmmm yup pretty much

[Yatta]

I must admit.. as i've gotten older some movies do make my eyes water. They don't actauly run but it's there. Hey it's alright for a man to cry BUT not over every little simple thing.

[Gillion]

Why are so many women caught up with the fantasy of a crying man?

:eusa_thin
It have something to do with romantic ideals of showing tenderness or some such freudian needs. Bbut the funny thing is when they see a man crying they freak out !

--wanty wanty gety gety nuh want i

gillion

[Cocoa]

Bbut the funny thing is when they see a man crying they freak out !
Once in a blue moon crying thing so 'freaky' out sometimes is bound to happen. It's just like getting a new toy and you don't know how to work it until you get use to is...same thing with a woman seeing a man cry.....however you are correct gillon.