Masculinities in Interstellar

The person I’ll be referencing is Tom, who is the son of Cooper in the widely watched and appreciated movie, Interstellar. Tom grew up with his father and grandfather in a hard and destroyed world only for his father to leave when he was only a teenager, only to never see his son again. The hard times and struggles he endured pushed him to be a very assertive and overpowering man. In a specific instance in the movie, Tom is receiving his sister over for dinner when she was intrigued by her nephews’ coughs which seemed to get worse and worse after each visit, as time passed Tom’s sister pushed him to take his family and leave the heavily dusted rural area and settle somewhere else, but Tom hanging on to his father’s house could not leave and used his power and force to keep his wife in order. He used some very toxic tools to help preserve his say so, even though his wife wanted to leave as well, he shouted and used physical force to assert himself in front of his son. His wife was scared and immediately backed down, but the doctor his sister brought over to his house ignored Tom’s wrath and seemingly pleaded with Tom’s wife to follow him, which led to Tom physically assaulting the doctor. I believe Tom displayed the most toxic and unusual ways of masculinity, which is by using force and being the alpha to the extent of not listening to others around him. There are better ways to get a point across than to use violence and silencing others. The relationship shared between Tom and his wife is an uneven and distasteful way to preserve and help grow a long-lasting relationship, and Tom perfectly fits into the stereotype of the macho man who drinks a lot and is violent towards his family. A relationship should be built based on communication and respect, but in this case Tom’s relationship is based the old values and norms, and further depict the old social norms of the woman who stays silent and only obeys her husband when he speaks to her. All the things Tom portrayed are toxic masculinity traits that need to be eliminated to build better masculinity standards.