“The Skin We’re In”

“The skin we’re in”

By: Francesco Cappellano

In this segment of our class we are discussing racism and how black people are poorly treated and penalized just for having a different appearance. Nowadays we know what is right from wrong when we are in these situations, but if we rewind a few years people still thought it was normal to treat black people this way. We have been shown many different examples of what racism is and how extreme it can get. Throughout this essay we will be discussing two examples of how these are represented and how they affect us.

In the movie “get out” represents how to the characters in the movie, black people are seen as just a shell and nothing more. They are seen as people with incredible physical strengths and advantages but the line is drawn there. These older rich white people go to auctions to pick out the person they want their brain put into. They are looking for some sort of immortality. They want to have their own brain while having the physical advantages of these black people. When the son in the movie starts talking to Chris about how lucky he is to be a black person because of his incredible physical advantages, it almost sounds like he is praising them but is doing so in such a way that he is saying they are just good for their bodies. We can see this in the movie when they are having the auction and the rich old white people are picking who they want their brain placed into in order to have a better physique and live forever. This can almost be led back to the 17/18 hundreds when rich white people would auction off black slaves to do all of their physical work because they have the physical advantages, being seen as just a strong body rather than a human being. They don’t see black people as actual people but more as the next shell for them to place their minds into it and have a new physique. Watching this movie I found it quite difficult to understand what was going on because I couldn’t understand why they were auctioning off people until I realized that they were using them for their bodies like they would do back in the day to auction off slaves (Peele).

In Desmond Cole’s “the skin were in” he discusses how racism has no borders, what does that mean to you? To me, this deals with the fact how racism is everywhere in our world. In this portion of his book he talks about how a lot of people think that there is only racism in America stating “why do you have to bring american problems into canada ” as if we don’t have racism here. The problem is that in the states it is at a different level than us but it doesn’t mean we don’t have it too. I have witnessed here on several occasions where people are treated differently just because of the color of their skin and it’s absolutely awful. Hearing about it is one thing but to actually see it with your own eyes is something completely different. In America this has been an ongoing problem and they need to change something soon. To think like this in this day and age is awful and people shouldn’t have to deal with this nowadays. Another problem that Cole talks about is police brutality in America. Black people are targeted by cops most of the time for no good reason. They are treated differently just because of the color of their skin. They have this old mentality that they can just treat them differently but its not right, at all. A few years ago there was a large movement called “black lives matter” and was started when a black man by the name of George Floyd was killed by a cop and this shook the world. Protests were going crazy and they were trying to make a change in the world. Slowly slowly we are getting there but we still have a lot of work to do (cole).

Comparing these two, we can see how racism still plays a huge role in society today. People think that racism has boundaries when it obviously does not. Also, when seeing a black person most people see them as just a form and not as an actual human. These people only see them as something with amazing capabilities that they can use for themselves. That being said, we must find a way to stop racism. It has gotten much better within the last few years but we still have lots of work to do. What can you do to stop racism?

Cole, Desmond. “‘negro frolicks (January).’” The Skin We’re In, Doubleday Canada, 2020, pp. 1–17

Peele, Jordan, et al. Get Out. Universal Pictures, 2017.

”the working man is a sucker”

Masculinity can be portrayed in many different ways especially when we are discussing movie characters. The character I chose to portray the masculinity most common to our lives is Lorenzo anello (robert de niro) in the movie. He plays the main characterès (cologero) father. Cologero is stuck in the middle between his father telling him to go to school and get an education while he hangs out with his gangster friend (sunny). Sunny is telling cologero the same thing but cologero sees the life of a gangster and worships sunny because of it seeing him almost as a mentor. 

Lorenzo wants his son to stay away from these people because he does not want his son to hang around these gangsters or worse become one. Cologero sees sunny as the alpha figure of the neighborhood being the boss of the city and sees him as a mentor. What he is unaware of is that people fear sunny and don’t respect him. He wants to be sunny which is the complete opposite of what his father wants for him.

The scene that stands out to me the most was when the bikers go into sunny’s bar thinking they can take it over. But when sunny and his tough guy friends came in showed them who the real tough guys were when cologero really idolized sunny and wanted him to be his mentor.

The masculinity portrayed in this movie stands out to me the most when Lorenzo gives his son a speech about how Sunny thinks he is a tough guy when the real tough guy is him. “ It doesn’t take much to shoot a gun but it takes a real man to get up early in the morning and go to work everyday”. 

“The saddest thing in life is wasted talent” told to cologero everyday by his father. He wants his son to succeed in life without having to become a gangster to have lots of money. The masculinity portrayed here is a father figure trying to protect his son from a tough world of violence and crime. 

Lorenzo wants his son to understand that the life he glorifies of guns, drugs and money is not a life he wants. He wants him to have a good education and get a well paying job like a real man would do. He explains how a gangster life seems very cool and masculine until it comes down to when someone has a gun to your head and now you’re powerless. 

I decided to choose this character because it symbolizes how a father trying to protect his son is the most masculine thing any man can do in my opinion. A family man who goes to work to provide for his family is the most alpha type of masculinity a man can have. Sacrificing his life to protect the ones he loves.

Rethinking Masculinity

In this portion of our class we were given 2 videos, a text and a talk on different points of view on masculinity and what different people think masculinity is. Some think that because they are a white man that they are superior to others while some think that masculinity is an idea given to people and it depends on them how they interpret it. In this blog we discuss how masculinity can be shown, expressed and interpreted by many people. We also see how they are viewed when they show themselves on the internet or in public. 

In the video “charlottesville: Race and Terror” we were shown how a bunch of white nationalists come together and protest to protect their rights as whites. Chris Cantwell being amongst these people is one of the most persistent on the idea that the whites need their rights protected and defended from anyone else but them. These people have the ideology that they are the superior race which in my opinion is an absolutely horrible way to think and seems pretty unreal when we listen to what they have to say about others that are not white. Chris Cantwell states that anyone who isn’t them shouldn’t be given rights as anyone else would. Watching this video, it felt almost as if I was on candid camera because the stuff that was coming out of these white nationalists mouths was quite jaw dropping.  These people would call African Americans by racial slurs (to their face as well) and did not have a care in the world about what they were saying or what the consequences would be. It is crazy to think how people in this day and age have the audacity to think like this and express themselves and think that it’s normal (which it obviously isn’t). In relation to kimmel’s text, we learn how from a young age are afraid of other men to the fact that they do not want to seem weak in front of them. The same way Cantwell acts all tough and tries to seem superior to everyone else because he thinks he is tougher. 

The second video we got to experience was “the fifth estate” was a story on CBC that showed us groups of young men and how they lash out on women because they were rejected by them. From shootings to making songs about how they hate them, these guys became very creative in showing their hatred for women. Again seeing this is quite mind boggling because it shouldnt make sense for a person to take their anger out on females just for being rejected. They don’t realize that going on the internet and speaking horribly about women will not accomplish anything besides embarrassing themselves. The only oyster people that agree with this ideology are the people who believe that “all girls should die” and who hate women too. James Will expressed this in his speech because the internet gives us a false idea especially when its= comes to masculinity and the idea we have on women. These men killing girls had a false idea of women and went on the internet and this idea became bigger and bigger and bigger. Other men on the internet were doing the same and now a large group of men have this completely wrong idea of what masculinity is and their new perspective on women. 

Many people have many different ideas of what masculinity is and we were exposed to it from completely different ideologies. From Chris Cantwell being a white supremacist and a racist to groups of men being rejected by women and lashing out on the internet, or worse killing them, we have seen that a large portion of these ideas of masculinity are related to asserting dominance. They are trying to show that they are stronger and better than who they are opposing. Chris was doing it by starting riots and causing mass destruction on the streets and these rejected men were doing it by lashing out on the internet and doing worse by killing them. 

We have discussed how different people try to show their version of what masculinity is. From proving to be the alpha or trying to express your emotions on the internet, these examples of masculinity that we have discovered clearly show that some people seem to be out of touch with reality and don’t understand the social norms of today’s society. These people need to have their ideology changed before it is too late.

male masculinity

Masculinity can be described in many different ways depending on who you ask. It is based on upbringing and beliefs that determines what you see as the definition of what masculinity is. In this class we were shown two different outlooks on masculinity, one gives us a look of masculinity from an angle where a man can have a feminine side and the other shows us how a man can lash out because of the position he is being put in. In this essay I will be determining what different aspects of masculinity we have discovered, how they differ, and how they are the same. 

The short film “invincible” shows that Marc is placed in a detention center and he wants to get out of there. He lashes out because he cannot stand being in there. He is in his room/cell and it is too hot to stay in there. So instead of talking to someone, he decides to light a fire under the sprinkler system for fires, which causes the entire fire system to start spraying water everywhere. I believe he has a connection to water because we were also shown that at the beginning of the short film he was with his sister trying to see how long he can hold his breath in the water. We also believe that he has a relationship with water because that is the only place he feels free. Marc tries to show his masculinity by acting up and not following the orders which are given to him by the center. He feels trapped in this place and cannot express who he really is. His ideology might be that as a man he should be able to express himself and he can not do that while being in this detention center and being forced to follow a bunch of rules. At the beginning of the story we also see how he smokes cigarettes. To him he might feel tough because he is smoking. This film shows a young man who tries to prove his masculinity in a world where that is trying to take that away from him. 

The short story “guys club: no faggots, bitches, or pussies allowed” demonstrates how a boy with a feminine side is being forced to hide it and live a life that is obviously not for him. Carlos decides to go to a club on a night where it is a “different night”. He knew what he was going to but he decided to hide it from his parents because he knew how they would react. He wanted to go because he felt comfortable being in that type of environment. His parents ended up finding out what really happened at the club that night and they called him all kinds of names and made fun of him for it. Faggot and pussy were just a few of the words that members of his own family called him. The type of masculinity he displays is more delicate and “feminine” than that of what his family expects of him. It is unfortunate that in the world we live in, you can still be made fun of for being gay even by your own family members, which are the people you are supposed to be the most comfortable around. He just wants to live his life where he can do his own thing without being made fun of and teased for it. 

We have two very different examples of what masculinity is which are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum. One displays masculinity by lashing out and trying to see how much of a “man” you can really be while the other shows that masculinity can be represented in a different way which is more delicate and calm than what we are used to. Both answers are absolutely right, it just depends on who you talk to. My definition of masculinity is represented more by labor, being able to care for, and to support whoever needs it. This is due to the fact of my upbringing and my beliefs. For someone else this can be completely different and can be completely on the opposite end of the spectrum. 

We have discussed how different these types of masculinity are different but they are also similar in many ways. The biggest similarity for me is how they are both just trying to express how they feel but they can’t because the world around them is making them suppress who they are in terms of masculinity. Marc expresses himself by lashing out and acting mischievous while Carlos goes to gay night at the club and wants to experience what it’s like to be around others that might be like him. They both just wanna be able to express who they are. 

In this essay we discussed the similarities and differences between Carlos and Marc in how they represent what masculinity is. Marc’s way of representing his masculinity is by lashing out and acting up because he is not able to show who he really is because he is stuck in this detention center. Carlos on the other hand is on the opposite end of the spectrum in my opinion. He has a more delicate and calm side to his masculinity and just wants to be left alone and do as he wishes. We represent masculinity in our everyday lives based on what we know and our beliefs. In my opinion, this does not define a good person and people shouldn’t be judged for it. 

Bibliography: 

Gómez, Carlos Andrés “Guys Club: No Faggots, Bitches, or Pussies Allowed.” Man up: Cracking the Code of Modern Manhood, Gotham Books, 2012, pp. 65–83.

 René-Lortie, Vincent, director. Invincible, TV5 Unis, 2022, https://www.tv5unis.ca/invincible.