In the olden days, before my hermitage, I’ve worked as a glazier, a farmer and a builder. Proper working men’s jobs where you work with your hands and get dirty. Manipulating physical matter, like a real man, bending the fruits of the earth to my will. Not just typing into a computer like a woman.
Dealing with middle class suburban and metropolitan men while undertaking those jobs was always an experience. They were so awkward. Such men really don’t know how to relate to working men. Some, the smartest probably, would just take on a commanding tone like we were servants. Most would awkwardly try to interact on what they saw as our terms, clumsily code switching into real man talk, commenting on the footy (becoming flustered when it was clear I couldn’t give a fuck about the footy) and awkwardly swearing, stuff like that. All the grace of an insecure substitute teacher.
I also encountered such men while working as a web designer, in the early days of that being a thing, and as a retail worker, both of which went very differently from the above.
Women never had this problem, they’d just talk to us like people regardless. (Which could amplify the awkwardness; my wife’s talking to a real man 😮)
What I’m getting at is that there’s an insecurity that middle class metropolitan and suburban men feel when confronted with what they see as embodiments of archetypal masculinity. They’re men, they know they’re men, but they’re not men like those men are men. Their taming and domestication become uncomfortably apparent, they’ve been civilised and are no longer comfortable in the wild places. They have lost access to an aspect of what they believe to be their fundamental being.
The film opens with a montage of the protagonist, David Mann (yep!), leaving his suburban American home and driving through the city, shot from the front of the car, we pass through the outskirts of the city and into the Californian scrub or desert or whatever it is. All arid-like, the preserve of cowboys and truckers. It’s not until we’re in these wilds that we see the car and then our protagonist. He’s not personified until he’s in the wilds.
He’s driving a sensible family car. Not some beefy American muscle-car or truck, more the sort of car the wife might be happy with. Our protagonist is well-groomed, coiffured hair, shirt and tie, gold glasses, looks like a real soft fuck.
We hear his car radio, what seems to be a prank call to the census office. A man who has been married for 25 years and keeps the house and cares for the children as his wife makes the money is unsure as to who he should enter as the head of the household on the census form. The woman at the census office, amused, says that if he feels that his wife is the head of the household then he should just put that. “How embarrassing, what will you people think?”, the man replies, and the woman reassures him that no one will see.
We meet our Goliath. He’s a truck! A big, dirty, manly truck. It clearly doesn’t care about its appearance, it hasn’t washed its hair in forever, it’s covered in grease and dirt such that you can’t even tell what colour it is nor read its maker’s badge. Its a bestial thing in its natural habitat, wild and confident.
The truck does have a driver - we see his lower legs in one scene and catch glimpses of an indistinct face through murky windows - but we never really meet him. Truck and driver are one and the same, a hypostasis of untamed masculinity.
On the front of the truck are a number of license plates for the states the truck is registered in: Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico; the big, empty, wild, western states. The cowboy states. An indication of character and a territorial claim.
The truck harasses David, acting aggressively and competitively, as a bear or a bison might when disturbed or encroached upon in its natural habitat. David is bemused by this behaviour, shaking his head and laughing ruefully. How strange! This isn’t how normal, well-mannered people behave, he clearly thinks.
Our lad David pulls into the next gas station to call his Wife.
D: Honey, it’s me.
W: What’s the matter? Did you have an accident?
D: No, no, no, it’s nothing like that.
W: Well what happened?
D: Nothing happened, I just uh, well, I just, I just wanted to, uh, to apologise.
W: You don’t have to apologise.
D: I know I don’t have to, I wanted to. When I left the house this morning, you were asleep, so I just wanted to call you up and tell you that, uh, I, uh, I’m sorry about last night.
W: Ohhh, I really don’t even want to talk about it.
D: Well… [sigh] don’t you think maybe we ought to?
W: No. Because if we talk about it we’ll just get into a fight and you wouldn’t want that, would you? Of course not.
D: What is… what is that supposed to mean?
W: Oh, never mind.
D: No, I know… I know what it’s supposed to mean. It m… It means that you think I sh-should go out a-and call Steve Hanson up and and challenge him to a fist fight or something.
W: No, of course not, but, honey, I think you could’ve at least said something to the man last night. I mean, after all, he was… practically trying to rape me in front of the whole party.
D: Oh come on honey!
W: Just forget it. You going to be home by six thirty?
D: If Forbes lets me go in time.
W: Well is it that important that you see him?
D: Heh, well he’s leaving for Hawaii in the morning and the way he’s been griping to the front office, if I don’t reach him today I… I could lose the account.
W: You said there’d be no problem about getting home on time.
D: There probably won’t be.
W: It’s your mother, God knows she’s not coming to see me.
D: Honey, I said there probably won’t be a problem.
W: Well just… be on time, okay?
D: All right. Okay. I’ll be there.
W: [hangs up]
While his wife is doing the real and important labour of maintaining the household and raising their children, David is off gallivanting around the wilderness at the whim of other, stronger men, such as Forbes and Front Office.
Throughout the conversation, David has a whiny, servile tone, struggling to communicate his thoughts and feelings coherently, while his wife, obviously the smarter and stronger of the two, communicates clearly and directly, while gently mocking her husband for not even wanting the fight.
We learn that, as well as being at the behest of stronger men, David is unwilling to defend his wife from an attempted rape, even insofar as verbally reprimanding the culprit. And is also unwilling to honour commitments made to his wife and mother, if Forbes won’t “let him”.
During this conversation, David is framed through the door of a washing machine. Literally contained within the symbol of domesticity.
David sets off again and before long the harassment continues. David eventually pulls into a roadside café at high speed, in an attempt to escape the truck, and loses control of his car, skidding to a stop and destroying a section of wooden fence.
Some local older men come over to enquire as to David’s well-being. At no point does David really thank those who offered him assistance, apologise for destroying a fence or offer to pay for the damage. He doesn’t even mention the fence, clearly unconcerned that livestock may escape on to the road and endanger others. He seems to take no responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
Our lad enters the café and the proprietor asks him what happened out there. David completely ignores the question, seeing this working man as unworthy of his attention, and asks where the men’s room is.
After leaving the bathroom he, again, refuses to engage with the proprietor’s polite question and fends him off, dismissively.
David walks towards the door, preparing to leave, but as he gets there, he sees the truck parked outside. An ominous musical sting plays.
He sits down at a table, looking back into the café from behind a half-wall, cut off from his fellow patrons both physically and emotionally, and wonders which one of this collection of interchangeable beasts - farmers and truckers - is his tormentor.
He eyes the rugged men sitting at the bar one by one, sees them enjoying their food and drinks communally, chatting and laughing, as he sits secluded and distant. Of course he never interrogates this distance, never thinks of sitting at the bar and engaging with these people on a human level, probably never has before, even under normal circumstances. He’s looking at another species, their interactions are beneath his notice. He’s just looking for clues in their markings and demeanour as to who could be the source of his immediate misery.
An ageing waitress comes over, disturbing his inspection and making him jump. He engages with her in the same supercilious manner he did the proprietor, not a glimmer of warmth or humanity, and asks her for a cheese sandwich on rye. In an odd detail, he spells out “rye” for her - “ar-why-ee” - like he’s concerned this fuckwit might bring him a wry sandwich.
David continues his inspection and works himself into quite the lather, ultimately settling on one of these interchangeable working men completely arbitrarily. He walks over to the chosen man and, after timidly asking the man to “cut it out”, with the inappropriate, unconvincing bluster of a man unused to dealing with aggression, escalates the situation beyond what’s reasonable, talking angrily to the man and slapping his hand. The man responds in kind, eventually punching David and sending him to the floor. The proprietor steps in and pacifies the man, who then leaves the café, revealing that he was, of course, not the driver of the truck.
The journey continues and, before long, David encounters a stranded school bus, kids milling around on the sandy roadside. The driver waves David down and explains that the bus overheated and, after cooling down, won’t restart, and asks David for a push. David responds with impatience and irritation, admonishing the kids who are sitting on the car’s bonnet, clearly as uncomfortable around the chaos and wildness of children as he is around that of working men, though absent the fear he feels towards the latter, he reacts to the kids with high-handed annoyance.
David reluctantly agrees to try to push the bus with his car, whittering on the whole time about damaging his car while aiding these children who are stranded in the literal desert.
He manoeuvres his car into position behind the bus and starts pushing, as the kids, giggling, derisorily chant “push, push!” from the back window. But his back wheels just dig into the desert sand and his bumper gets tangled with that of the bus.
At some point he notices the truck parked menacingly up the road and panics. He asks the bus driver to help free him and ends up jumping on the bonnet of his car in an attempt to free it, unconcerned about damaging it now that his safety is at risk rather than the childrens’. Eventually he works free and takes off apace down the road.
The truck, of course, comes and gives the bus a push, saving the kids.
David’s battle with the truck continues for the rest of the film, the truck’s aggression escalating until David finally tricks the truck into driving off a cliff, taking David’s car with it as David exalts in triumph and then falls to his knees and sits in teary relief, as the film crossfades into him silhouetted against the setting sun and the credits roll.
What I think we’re supposed to take from this is that David has learned to be a man. He’s taken responsibility for himself and stood up to, and bested, Goliath. Maybe he’ll go home, buy a proper man’s car, put his wife in her place and defend her from future rape attempts. The henpecked suburbanite’s dream.
But the only aspect of “traditional” masculinity he learned, really, was violence. We don’t see him learning that working men are just people like him, and to connect with them as equals on a human, emotional level. We don’t see him taking responsibility for the impact his actions have on others, looking beyond his own narrow self-interest. We don’t see him helping or protecting anyone but himself. Because those aren’t the aspects of traditional masculinity that the middle class man is interested in, or even sees. They can’t be instrumentalised for personal gain.
David’s manliness at the end reads like the flaccid, parodic masculinity of tourist big game hunters posing with the carcass of an elephant.
Why did we take a lesson from the truck? Why not the bus driver, caring for and helping educate children? Or the old men at the café taking time out of their day to assist someone in distress? Or the truckers and farmers at the café, enjoying camaraderie and a communal meal with their fellow workers?
The film reveals the bourgeois man’s disdain for and inability to relate to, or even understand the real nature of, those they perceive as embodying archetypal “traditional” masculinity, while, at the same time, his desire for the aspects of that archetype he sees as personally empowering. Which are, inevitably, the worst aspects of the archetype, those that should be dumped and, honestly, those which have more valence in the mythology than the reality anyway.
When I worked on those building sites, lunchtime conversations were raucous and vociferous but they were mostly about domestic, personal stuff. Emotional issues with kids and spouses. Plans to cook a nice meal for the family and advice about what to make and what drinks would go with that. Nice places to buy a scarf for a wife. Difficulties relating to an adolescent son and advice as to how to proceed. We talked about current affairs and politics a lot in a manner that welcomed new information and perspectives. We also talked about art a lot (I was an art student working summers and my fellow builders had so many questions about art). Conversations were open, emotionally honest and vulnerable and, while definitely boisterous, always collaborative.
All the toxic hypermasculine shit I’ve encountered was in offices with respectable white collar men.
Yeah it’s great.
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