Preacher and '90s Toxic Masculinity
Jun. 12th, 2022 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mancalledtrue
Preacher was a series of comic books written by Garth Ennis between 1995 and 2000. It follows the life of Reverend Jesse Custer (denomination not listed, as usual for fictional clergymen), who becomes the host of the entity known as Genesis, the result of an angel’s affair with a demon. Shortly afterwards, he learns that God has abandoned His creation, and takes it on himself to hunt the Lord down and make Him account for what He has done. The plot, as typical for Ennis, meanders drunkenly from there.
One of the most interesting and, for our purposes, most important characters in Preacher is Arseface. He has no other name – just Arseface. Early in the story, main character Cassidy says of him, “That kid’s got a face like an arse” (Cassidy is Irish). The target of his insult takes the name for his own. At no other point do we ever get any other name to refer to him by. It would take the AMC television adaptation of the series to give him the dignity of an actual name: Eugene Root. (His last name could be worked out from his father’s name, Hugo Root, but his given name was never so much as hinted at.)
Eugene (to give him more dignity than his creator ever did) was the product of a rough growing environment. He had the typical teenage rebellion, lashing out against the neglect of his mother and the impossibly-strict discipline of his father. Sheriff Hugo Root was openly, blatantly physically abusive, beating his son for the smallest infraction, at one point putting a cigarette out on his arm for being caught with marijuana seeds on his shirt. Eugene sought solace in his closest friend, known locally as “Pube”, and (since this was the tail end of the ‘90s) the music of Nirvana. Shortly after a failed attempt to run away from home, he learned, to his horror, that Kurt Cobain had killed himself.
Sneaking out of his house, Eugene met Pube at his home. Pube had acquired a shotgun, and suggested that they kill themselves in honor of Kurt Cobain. (When Cobain killed himself in real life, there was fear of a wave of copycat suicides, but as far as statistics can be trusted, this did not occur. In fact, the suicide rate in Seattle actually declined temporarily following the incident.) Pube proceeded to commit suicide with the shotgun. Eugene attempted to follow suit, but, not being familiar with guns, placed the barrel under his chin instead of in his mouth. When he pulled the trigger, he proceeded to brutally maim his face, but survived.
On awakening in the hospital, he was greeted by his father telling him, “Should’ve put it in your mouth, you dumb fuck.” Pube’s sister, Catherine, was next to visit him. (Eugene’s mother had, shortly after his suicide attempt, written a hateful note to his father and left the house for good.) She asked him why he had done it, and, not being able to speak, he wrote a note saying, “No one cared.”
She says this in response:
"What do you mean, nobody cared? You mean nobody coddled you and wiped your asses for you? Your lives didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to? Well, FUCK YOU, you and my asshole brother both! You self-obsessed whining little shits, I bet you never gave a good goddamn about the pain you’d cause! You say nobody cared about you, but I’ll tell you one thing: If you´re enough of a prick to take a gun and try to blow your own head off… YOU DIDN´T FUCKING CARE EITHER!"
Read that speech again if you have to. Notice what it says. It says that Eugene was weak for attempting suicide. That he was spoiled and selfish. That he didn’t care for anyone else, because he didn’t think of the pain he would cause others. That he was “self-obsessed” and “whining”.
We, the reader, are meant to side with Catherine in this speech. Certainly, Eugene does. This speech is shown as the catalyst for him to turn his life around. He ceases to be the typical angsty, rebellious teenager and becomes as much of a model son as he can.
Looking at this speech now, from a perspective some twenty-plus years down the line, it rings very differently. We see what isn’t said – any degree of understanding, of attempting to figure out why Eugene would say such a thing. There is, simply put, no sympathy.
It isn’t like Catherine is unaware of the circumstances that led to Eugene’s suicide attempt, either. When she first met him, he had a black eye, which he immediately revealed was inflicted by his father. Said father arrived minutes later to literally drag Eugene home by the hair, and she was clearly shown to be horrified by the idea that her town’s sheriff was an abusive father.
But here, she seems to forget all of that. Some have suggested that the motivation for the hate in her speech is that her brother has just died, and since he is no longer around for her to unleash her inner turmoil, she’s taking it out on the next closest target, the person who could have conceivably stopped him but didn’t.
But I don’t agree with that. Eugene’s suicide attempt, and the haranguing he receives for it, fits a central theme of the story: the idea of a true “man’s man”.(1)
Throughout the story, a very specific perspective of ideal masculinity is portrayed and held up. Men are, according to the story, supposed to be tough, to be strong, to have “iron in the blood” (this is literally the title of an issue). While they are allowed to feel emotion, they must do so only when the situation calls for it – to show tears at anything but a grievous personal loss is seen as childish, as unmasculine. They must not rely on others for anything, especially not emotional support. If forced to withstand pain, they must do so without buckling or breaking. They must never, for an instant, let themselves slip.
The main character, Jesse Custer, is repeatedly tested on his masculinity. He was raised in an abusive home, where – among other things – one of his first memories was seeing his father murdered in front of him. When he started crying, his father’s murderer, Jody, mocked him for it. This scenario would be repeated again not long after, when his ex-girlfriend Tulip is murdered while he is unable to intervene. When he breaks under this emotional pressure, Jody again mocks him, and the spirit of John Wayne (more on this later) supports this view, stating, “The basterd's sorta got hisself a point."
Jody is one of the villains of the story, but is presented without deviation as the ideal “man’s man”. He’s extremely physically strong (able to kill a gorilla with a baseball bat) and tough (when he finally dies, it’s after a prolonged beating that includes repeated strikes from a nailbat and being set on fire, and he only goes down for good when his spine is broken). He does not show excess emotion. He carries out his work without question or hesitation. He is sexually capable (as shown in the “Good Ol’ Boys” one-shot). He is, without question, the “ideal male” by the story’s standards. And indeed, Jesse proves his masculinity after the “failure” of being heartbroken by a loved one’s death by inflicting gross physical violence on Jody, ending by crushing his spine with a stomp and strangling him to death. One man claims the title of “man’s man” from another man.
It is not without reason that Jesse is encouraged and guided by “the Duke”, a non-physical figure who is never fully shown but is clearly John Wayne. Throughout visions of Jesse’s childhood, he is seen to be enamored by John Wayne movies on television. Not long after his father’s death, he began to have visions of John Wayne encouraging him to deal with the troubles in his life. Elsewhere in the story, Wayne is shown as a paragon of manhood; he personally visits John Custer’s (Jesse’s father) unit in Vietnam and gives them lighters emblazoned “FUCK COMMUNISM”, and after he departs, John and his friends discuss which of his movies they like most (and physically assault a man who insults Wayne). The lighter becomes a key memento of Jesse’s.
Garth Ennis was born in 1970. His formative years were some of the last in which Wayne’s almost-ludicrously high standards of machismo were considered an unalloyed positive. While Wayne’s films are still popular today, they’re almost in spite of Wayne himself rather than because of him. The ideal of manhood presented by Wayne – resolute, stoic, speaking only when necessary – would be rejected by later generations as denying much of what makes one human, while Wayne’s later work would be seen as jingoistic and naive. (Ennis was born two years after the release of The Green Berets, widely considered one of Wayne’s worst decisions – a blindly-patriotic war film set in Vietnam released in the same year as the Tet Offensive, right as public backlash against the war was truly solidifying.)
To be perfectly fair to Ennis, it is never actually said that the figure that guides Jesse Custer is the actual John Wayne. In fact, it is made clear early on that it can’t be. Jesse first sees visions of “the Duke” four years before Wayne’s death (seeing him personally address him and step out of the screen while Jesse is watching one of his movies). As Jesse starts seeing “the Duke” immediately after his father’s death, some fans believe that this is the spirit of John Custer taking a form that will motivate his son. Others believe that, whatever “the Duke” was in Jesse’s childhood, the version seen in his adult years is a manifestation of Genesis in a form he would be comfortable with. Others believe it is simply a hallucination brought on by years of abuse. Ultimately, the story never says for certain.
“The Duke” holds a very specific view of manhood. As mentioned, he agrees with Jody that Jesse breaking down on seeing Tulip’s death is undignified and disgusting. “The Duke” typically shows up to chide Jesse when he is about to let the stance of machismo slip, or to direct him towards the path of most resistance. His interactions with Jesse are usually portrayed as “tough love”, a concept that is all too often an excuse to justify bullying behavior.
It is noted at the beginning of the story, when “the Duke” first appears, that Jesse stopped seeing him for a several-year period. We are later shown that their last interaction was when Jesse, broken from years of mental and physical torture, agreed to become a preacher. “The Duke” showed up one last time to reject Jesse. The only word spoken in that exchange is a homophobic slur.
The symbolism is inescapable. Even if you have no other options, all the other ways are closed to you, and the alternative is death or unavoidable suffering, a “man’s man” never concedes, never compromises. To do so is to make you less of a man. And in this scenario, to be less of a man is to be homosexual.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SECTION DISCUSSES SEXUAL ASSAULT. SKIP TO THE NEXT BOLDED SEGMENT IF YOU WISH TO AVOID THIS DISCUSSION.
This ties in turn into the portrayal of homosexual rape, which is frequently and almost invariably used as a punchline. Early in the series, major villain Herr Starr has one of his assistants, Hoover, arrange for him to have a session with a prostitute. Hoover makes a mistake, and Herr Starr is set up with a large, bulky man who anally rapes Starr.
On returning from the sexual assault, Starr attempts to strangle Hoover to death, screaming, “You made me a homosexual, you prick!” While Hoover points out that it doesn’t work like that, subsequently, Starr realizes he no longer experiences satisfaction from regular sex. After some consideration, he has a strap-on fashioned and used on him by prostitutes, which he takes pleasure from. The implication is that, by being violated, Starr has lost his manliness and now must take the “woman’s role”.
Taking a step back in Garth Ennis’s career, we can see a manifestation of this in his 1993 comic book series Hitman (no relation to the long-running video game franchise starring Agent 47). A minor character in the book (set in the DC Universe) is Bueno Excellente. Literally the only jokes involving Bueno Excellente is that he rapes men. Two of his (not openly stated but heavily implied) victims are Lobo and Kyle Raynor. Man-on-man rape is seen not as a horrendous crime but as black comedy. This appears again, later in the Ennis timeline, in several issues of Punisher MAX with the character of Barracuda.
No other form of sexual assault is ever portrayed as comedic in Preacher. Any attempt to assault a woman is responded to with violent (and justified) force. In the same arc that invites the reader to laugh at Herr Starr’s violation, Jesse brutally beats a man beyond recognition when he discovers the man is a pedophile. (The character who experiences Jesse’s wrath, Jesus De Sade, is previously shown preparing to sodomize an armadillo. He is also, “coincidentally”, drawn as willowy and feminine.) Only adult men being violated is considered worthy of laughter.
DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT ENDS HERE.
A moment worthy of note is the “Reaver Cleaver” storyline at the end of the first collected volume. One of Cassidy’s old friends is revealed to be a serial killer. He is first seen purchasing gay pornography from a newsstand. The two are never explicitly linked, but it may be interesting to observe that Cassidy finds the man’s gay porn magazines seconds before coming across one of his victims.
What conclusions can we draw? We can determine that, in the world of Preacher, manliness is directly tied to your ability to deliver and withstand abuse. We can determine that suicide is an act of selfishness and disrespect, no matter what your circumstances. We can determine that homosexuality is a sign of weakness. And we can determine that Garth Ennis finds sexual assault against men hilarious.
While there is much else to criticize in Preacher (the ham-handed deployment of Nazi imagery in the “Salvation” arc, the frequent digressions by characters to promote pop culture that Ennis personally enjoys, the repeated use of ethnic stereotypes), these are outside the discussion of this essay. To sum up, Preacher’s treatment of masculinity is simple: if you are not a true “man’s man”, as Ennis defines it, you are less than nothing.
(1) The television series handles Eugene Root’s suicide considerably differently. In this version, Eugene attempts to talk down a girl named Tracy Loach when she considered suicide on discovering her boyfriend had cheated on her. He burns her suicide note and, misreading her intentions, kisses her – at which point, disgusted at the idea of being with him, she shoots herself in the head, leaving her permanently vegetative. Her mother began knocking on the door, and Eugene, unable to escape and (with the suicide note destroyed) knowing he would be accused of attempted murder, attempts to follow suit. While still iffy in many ways, this version goes out of its way to establish that there was no selfishness or disrespect involved; Eugene’s suicide attempt was out of desperation, a tragedy rather than an insult.
