The forthcoming title Governance Feminism: An Introduction by Janet Halley is due for release in March 2018. The book surveys the reach of feminism into social institutions and government. From the Amazon blurb:

Feminists walk the halls of power. Governance Feminism: An Introduction shows how some feminists and feminist ideas—but by no means all—have entered into state and state-like power in recent years. Being a feminist can qualify you for a job in the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Criminal Court, the local prosecutor’s office, or the child welfare bureaucracy. Feminists have built institutions and participate in governance.

The authors argue that governance feminism is institutionally diverse and globally distributed. It emerges from grassroots activism as well as statutes and treaties, as crime control and as immanent bureaucracy. Conflicts among feminists—global North and South; left, center, and right—emerge as struggles over governance. This volume collects examples from the United States, Israel, India, and from transnational human rights law.

Governance feminism poses new challenges for feminists: How shall we assess our successes and failures? What responsibility do we shoulder for the outcomes of our work? For the compromises and strange bedfellows we took on along the way?

Can feminism foster a critique of its own successes? This volume offers a pathway to critical engagement with these pressing and significant questions.

In her previous book Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (2008) Halley provided this overview of Governance Feminism:

If you look around the United States, Canada, the European Union, the human rights establishment, even the World Bank, you see plenty of places where feminism, far from operating from underground, is running things. Sex harassment, child sexual abuse, pornography, sexual violence, anti prostitution and anti-trafficking regimes, prosecutable marital rape, rape shield rules: these feminist justice projects have moved off the street and into the state. In family law alone, feminism has scored numerous victories that prefer the wife to the husband and the mother to the father: the presumption that young children must spend substantial time with their mothers, the rise of alimony, the shift in common-law-property states to equitable division of property upon divorce, the replacement of “cruelty” with “domestic violence” as a fault grounds for divorce, the revitalization of intimate torts like alienation of affections, criminal conversation, and seduction as women’s lawsuits.

It would be a mistake to think that governance issues only from that combination of courts, legislatures, and police which constitutes the everyday image of “the state.” Employers, schools, health care institutions, and a whole range of entities, often formally “private,” govern too—and feminism has substantial parts of them under its control. Just think of the tremendous effort that U.S. employers and schools must devote to the regulation of sexual conduct at work, through sexual harassment policies that have produced a sexual harassment bureaucracy with its own cadre of professionals and its own legal character. And many feminist policy campaigns take power in the form of ideological shifts within state and nonstate entities that don’t turn explicitly on m/f. Consider, as a possible example, that one result of feminist rape activism is the elevation of child sexual abuse as a serious enforcement priority complete with “zero tolerance” enforcement attitudes; other kinds of child neglect and abuse, other kinds of adult/adult interpersonal violence, lack the charisma of the sexual offenses. They fall into the background. And this is an effect of governance feminism.

Feminists have learned how to participate in what is often called “the new governance.” Ask any group of U.S. Women’s Studies majors what they intend to do with their degree: many

will say that they intend to “work in an NGO.” Global governance and local governance are often done through informal, opaque, ideologically committed “nongovernmental organizations” that strategize hard—sometimes successfully—to become indispensable when major new fluidities in formal power emerge. A classic example is the highly effective feminist activism aimed at the ad hoc criminal courts formed by the United Nations to prosecute war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia: feminist and legal players have written that this effort substantially changed the rules. By positing themselves as experts on women, sexuality, motherhood, and so on, feminists walk the halls of power.

And feminism exerts itself in the culture wars as a real force to be contended with. It has convinced lots of men that the “new man” must defer to feminism on questions relating to women’s welfare in sex and reproduction. In the United States, the only left-of-center locales where male masculinity is worshiped anymore are gay and male. The Vatican has noticed the cultural diffusion of feminist consciousness and is worried: its Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presided over by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (since installed as Pope Benedict XVI), has issued an important dogmatic letter specifically to refute feminism, complete with a concentrated attack on the ideas that biological sex and cultural gender are distinct and independently variable, and that foundational biological difference between m and f should not be a source of social norms. That is to say, the current pope has devoted a substantial portion of his time to refuting feminism. He takes Butler’s Gender Trouble seriously as a political danger. A battle for hearts and minds is under way, and feminism is one of the contenders.

In some important senses, then, feminism rules. Governance feminism.

Not only that, it wants to rule. It has a will to power. And not only that, it has a will to power—and it has actual power—that extends from the White House and the corporate boardroom through to the minute power dynamics that Foucault included in his theory of the governance of the self. Feminism may face powers greater than its own in its constant involvement with its opponents; but it deals with them in the very terms of power.

For readers not yet familiar with feminism’s long march through the institutions of power this book may come as a surprise, especially on the heels of rhetoric declaring feminism’s ‘lack of voice’ and ‘powerlessness’ in the halls of law, education, government and society. For those readers already familiar with feminism’s reach, this volume will bring you some of the finer details of the movement’s power gains.

See also: Feminism: And The Creation of a Female Aristocracy

Article by Raymond Cormier

ABSTRACT: The title, “You Make Me Want to Be a Better Man”, is an unforgettable quotation from As Good As It Gets, the Jack Nicholson–Helen Hunt masterpiece (with Greg Kinnear). It occurs at about the midpoint in the 1997 film and Carol (played by Hunt) responds to Melvin (Nicholson) that it’s the best compliment she’s ever had in her life. As Roger Ebert quips: “It becomes clear that Melvin has been destined by the filmmakers to become a better man: First he accepts dogs, then children, then women, and finally even his gay neighbor.” Nevertheless, Melvin does change his ways and, under the influence of love, completely redirects his behavior. I explore courtly love values in several contemporary movies, for example, Casablanca (1942), Roxanne (1987), Pretty Woman (1990), Beauty and the Beast (Disney 1991), Hercules (Disney 1997) Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and Tangled (2010). The hero or heroine saved through love and/or self-sacrifice constitute a guiding thread of the article; another focus is the “major personality shift” of the hero/heroine under the influence of love; and a third theme is the “quest and rescue” of the beloved. My diverse sources (comparanda) reach back to Marie de France’s courtly lai, Lanval as well as to the ineffable motifs of troubadour love service and the joy and largess/generosity emblematic of St. Francis of Assisi.

In his recent monograph, The Making of Romantic Love, William Reddy observes that the eleventh-century Gregorian Reform brought with it condemnations by the Church—seeking to eliminate “polluting” sexual desire among Christians—and thus proposed severe new constraints on marriage and sexual behavior. It is argued further that in response, European secular poets and romancers—like the troubadours—devised a furtive way around the whole matter, namely, by inaugurating what is called today romantic love. This dualistic new creation, which opposes love and desire and was forged in the context of honor and secrecy, is found by Reddy to have a far-reaching influence (361), though not universal, yet uniquely Western and principally cultural in origin (i.e., not biological or neurological).¹

With regard to romantic love, Reddy’s three case studies (medieval Europe, South Asia and Heian Japan) examine court codes in particular, and for the Europeans, he deduces that spiritualized love incorporated selfless devotion (370) as well as radical dissent (352) from the Church’s “cosmic order.”² Adherents to the new values embraced, it would seem, individual conscience over blind obedience to the Church. Relative to our topic (in a work devoted in fact to women troubadours) one finds these words ‘of new values:’

“In exchange for their prostration, the troubadours expected to be ennobled, enriched, or simply made ‘better’: ‘Each day I am a better man and purer / for I serve the noblest lady in the world […]’”.³

Some of the films considered here belong to the “romantic comedy” genre, analysis of which is exemplified by the 2003 study by Deleyto, “Between Friends.” For such works, a tripartite categorization is proposed⁴: “nervous romance (tension filled),” “new romance (featuring independent women),” and “deceptive narratives” (fashionable and highlighting “constructions of a representation” in spite of soundtracks with old love songs).

Deleyto finds that friendship, in many films, is more important than love (171), and that the greater presence of female friendship signals the malleability of the genre (176). Deleyto writes (168): “[… an] unexpected new tendency has arisen within [the genre] over the last fifteen years or so in a growing number of contemporary romantic comedies, heterosexual love appears to be challenged, and occasionally replaced, by friendship.”

In this article, however, I intend to explore not friendship, not film weddings and not specifically the romantic comedy film in any significant way. Rather, I examine what may be named courtly values—as part of the courtly legacy from the Middle Ages—in over a dozen modern movies, from Casablanca (1942) to Tangled (2010). “Hero/heroine saved through love and/or self-sacrifice” will be one guiding thread of the analysis. Another focus is the “major personality shift” of the hero under the influence of love (as seen to a degree in As Good As It Gets, even more so in Pretty Woman). A third theme is the “quest and rescue” of the beloved (this can even be from a loveless marriage, as found in Excalibur). Films were selected among a number of successful productions, because they illustrate the prevalence of the themes in question.⁵ Limitations of space will prevent examination of other films that may suggest to some readers further links to courtliness, to the courtly legacy or to any number of medieval costume dramas.⁶

My hypothesis should be stated clearly: courtly values were palpable—neither a medieval fantasy nor a Romantic invention. This conjecture still needs to be put to scientific testing, which I will leave to other scholars to prove or refute. A more systematic survey, for which there is no space here, would likely reveal a significant imprint of the same themes on a wide range of contemporary films.

Such values and courtly love (the usual term is fin’amors, “true, fine, refined love”) survive to an extent today, a viewpoint not shared by all scholars.⁷ In his monograph Ennobling Love, Stephen Jaeger, while not using the fraught terms “courtly love” or “courtly legacy,” does assert that medieval “spiritualized” or “charismatic” love did not die out as such (5-6), though in his conclusion (212) he observes that “the paradigm of ideal love”, once established in medieval, early modern and modern narratives, is then destroyed “by revealing its false and destructive side.”

The term itself was invented in the late nineteenth century as a way of characterizing relationships found principally in French romances and poetry popular in the twelfth and thirteenth century, which were produced in and for, and which have been seen to emblemize court settings.⁸ Such love (for me, obviously, much more than a stylized game of flirtation), in the poetic context, is true, joyful and intense; it harmonizes with the commonweal and with divine intentions. Love brings, as we shall see, abundant feelings of liberation, of transformation and self-actualization. Jane Burns concedes the significance of courtly love when she concludes (48):

[…] despite its heteronormative veneer and its tendency to displace and occlude women as subjects, courtly love, when taken as the full range of amorous scenarios staged between elite heterosexual couples in a court setting, offers models for love relations that disrupt the binary and exclusive categories of male and female and masculine and feminine used typically to structure the Western romantic love story.

While the influence of powerful troubadour motifs is undeniable, let us cite here one brief northern French text as a kind of shorthand, for emphasis. It is a brief narrative or lai that illustrates certain courtly values.

Lanval, Marie de France’s eponymous hero, is a sad, forlorn Arthurian knight, abandoned, lonely, and helpless. An otherworldly sequence brings to him a wealthy and supremely stunning noblewoman (a fairy princess) with whom he becomes “well lodged.” His liberation from the bonds of solitary abandonment lead to liberality (he now gives freely to all comers), the medieval ideal of generosity, “the queen of virtues.”⁹ Kindness and love rescue him, as they do several male characters in modern film.¹⁰ Northern French poets emphasized too the “chivalry topos,” that is, that love motivates the knight in love and he becomes a better person through his adventures, thus meriting his beloved all the more. Noble love ennobles; in this better world too (for Auerbach), the apolitical “feudal ethos” encompasses “self-realization” (116-117). Clearly, we cannot accede to the damning proclamation of D. W. Robertson:

The study of courtly love, if it belongs anywhere, should be conducted only as the subject is an aspect of nineteenth and twentieth century cultural history. The subject has nothing to do with the Middle Ages, and its use as a governing concept can only be an impediment to our understanding of medieval texts. (18)

Courtly thinking existed in the Middle Ages and is manifested in the modern era.¹¹ Each of the films we analyze here will of course not yield up every feature of the courtly mode, but still I sense that there is enough medieval residue and resonance in each to justify the argument, that, as some might put it succinctly, “courtly themes continue to generate artistic creation.” Along these lines, one wonders if the strong continuity of the Troubadour ethos—in particular that longing for a “far-away love”—is what underlies the resonances and residues. Love stories, requited or not, remain viable even in today’s hip-hop world.

It has been reasoned that the two principal and most admired modes of courtly behavior were generosity and joy. Aristocratic courtly culture held that “the lady” was lord, and the lover’s role was to serve her, to sing about her merits and qualities, and carry out all imaginable actions to remain or become worthy of her, in a word, to deserve her.¹² The function of love in this context was as dictated by the De amore of Andreas Capellanus (ca. 1185): “Love easily attained is of little value; difficulty in obtaining it makes it precious” and “Everything a lover does ends in the thought of the beloved.”¹³ For Auerbach, the synthetic term corteisie embodied values like the “refinement of the laws of combat, courteous social intercourse, service of women” (117).

In what is dubbed the long European twelfth century (1050-1250), French humanism predominated, a phenomenon already analyzed historiographically at length. As Italianist Ronald Witt recently put it (2012: 317): “The term ‘humanism’ aptly describes French culture in the period […].” In this context, interior monologue and dialogue arose from a new awareness of the interior life (the unique individual is now consciously separate from the court), which was further linked to the chivalric adventure/quest whereby audiences yearned for the unusual and the marvelous—now stimulated especially by wondrous stories brought back from the East by returning Crusaders (in particular the First-ca. 1100, and Second-ca. 1150). In discussing this particular type of medieval love, Aldo Scaglione has written (559):

The radical interiorization of the love experience carried with it the impossibility of communicating with the love object (topos of ineffability). Not only did poets profess themselves incapable of communicating to the beloved the depth of their passion, but the very lack of communication was for them both a sign of its depth and a consequence of it, to the point of entailing the complete physical absence of the lady.

Transformation through kindness and love, the frequent quest motif, the rescue of the hero/heroine—such are the narrative innovations associated with these elements (even the ineffable moment can be noted in at least one film, Roxane). Allied terms include honesty and humility—for perfection of the knight depended on his courtly worth, manifested through continuous bravery and feats of arms, humbly accomplished so to enhance and vouchsafe his honor and his nobility. Such aims for flawlessness were mirrored by the lady’s perfection, inspired too by her knight/liege. Of course, adultery occurs as co-incidental in this context, as does a “religion of love,” whereby mutual suffering and adoration are obligatory¹⁴. Let us see how all this plays out in the series of films selected for analysis.

The romantic comedy As Good As It Gets, the Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt masterpiece (with Greg Kinnear), has provided the main title of this essay. The iconic line, “You Make Me Want to Be A Better Man,” is spoken by the misanthropic Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson), whose obsessive-compulsive behavior and pathological germophobia strangle all of his human interactions. In the penultimate sequence, after he affronts and insults Carol (played by Hunt), his apology, necessary to get back into her good wishes, is a confession that he wants to merit her and deserve her respect (enough so that he can have their relationship return to its prior arrangement). One can say that all his motivations are selfish (arranging to care for Carol’s asthmatic son, putting up with his gay artist neighbor and then the neighbor’s dog), yet he is redeemed in the end, having moderated somewhat his odd manners.¹⁵ If not mere empathy, a kind of love is born in Melvin’s heart—even for his gay neighbor, for the dog, even for his neighbor’s African-American agent, and especially for Carol. For in the end, he is “a better man.”

Perhaps no genuinely touching and dreamlike modern film has captioned courtly features as much as Pretty Woman (1990), in which the Richard Gere character (Edward) undergoes a major personality shift, from ruthless business tycoon to generous shipbuilder, as a result of his experience of love for/with (an apparently) blonde streetwalker named Vivian (played by Julia Roberts).¹⁶ The wig disguises, as it were, her true personality. Over and above the film’s obvious Cinderella theme, it has been argued in fact, in a reversal of traditional gender roles, that it is she, Vivian, who, as the “Fair Unknown” (Scala 35), is transformed from “veiled” Hollywood Boulevard prostitute into a truly “noble character,” a change attributable to soul-sharing (with Edward—neither “wimp nor wild man”¹⁷), catalyzed by the experience of a San Francisco opera performance focused on the heroine Violetta (La Traviatta). Vivian’s real character is revealed too in an early scene when she drives, like a NASCAR expert, Edward’s sports car, then again in the bathtub scene, where she sexually enfolds him in her extra-long legs.

But, after their goodbyes, when Edward unexpectedly returns (in a white stretch limo) to Vivian’s apartment at the very end of the film, he scales the fire escape (in spite of his fear of heights) to “rescue the princess in the tower.” He has undergone a total conversion, from emotionless corporate raider to brave, forgiving and loving human. Tellingly, he asks the now red-haired (and post-feminist) Vivian what happens after the knight rescues the princess, she replies that she saves the hero “right back,” another revelation of a “reversal of gender roles” (Scala 38).¹⁸ And, as Genz recently put the question of the “post-feminist woman” (PFW). The PFW wants to “have it all” as she refuses to dichotomize and choose between her public and private, feminist, and feminine identities. She rearticulates and blurs the binary distinctions between feminism and femininity, between professionalism and domesticity, refuting monolithic and homogeneous definitions of postfeminist subjectivity.¹⁹ Reddy, in his analysis of this film posits it as a mirror of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (380-381), whereby prostitution is permissible and sexual desire is destigmatized, but still stands in opposition to love, since both characters, now mutually devoted to each other, give up their life of “mere appetites.”²⁰ Edward is thus a better man, Vivian a better woman.

Going back now to the World War II era, we will glance briefly at the great 1942 classic, Casablanca, in which, again surprisingly and ironically, the bitter and cynical refugee hero Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is transformed not by passionate love, but in this case through a self-effacing compassion. He just wants his beloved Ilsa (the woman between two men story), played famously by Ingrid Bergman) to be happy, for, as he remarks to her—“We’ll always have Paris.” In the final sequence, Rick, his tough-guy veneer now gone, surrenders two objects, one tangible, the other human—i.e., the vital letters of transit for transport out of Morocco, along with his chance for love with Ilsa. In a meeting with her and her husband Lazlo (the Resistance-fighter) at the Casablanca airport, the now-noble Rick swallows his resentment toward her and yields himself to a new emotion, empathy mixed with admiration for both Ilsa’s devotion and Lazlo’s political cause. And he opines: “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” In a dramatic gesture of magnanimity, Rick turns Ilsa over to the freedom fighter. Generosity and self-sacrifice redeem the hero as it will the other protagonists, even in different ways.

At this point, we will turn to three animated films (one of which is inspired by a live-action archetypal film produced just a few years after Casablanca). I refer to Beauty and the Beast, known today mainly through the 1991 Disney version. The lesser-known account that inspired the modern and magical remake is the Jean Cocteau classic, a contemporary parable based on a seventeenth-century French tale. The flawless Belle—to pay for her father’s transgression and obliged to dwell within the Beast’s castle—finds the beast repulsive, but, eventually, love is the potion that will transform both her and the Beast within; he is saved through Belle’s own generous change of heart as she responds to his kindness and favors. Similarly, Belle’s pity, patience, growing admiration and slowly-receding fear of the Beast, brings her to lower her guard and embrace the creature. Once she does love him (as foretold), the enchantment magically evaporates, the Beast is tamed and everything is joyfully transformed—by their love and new-found respect for each other.²¹

Redemption of a different sort rescues the mythological hero Hercules from the depths of weakened loss and despair. In this 1997 Disney film, the once-powerful and immortal youth attempts to save the life of Megara, his beloved (to provoke the hero, she was slain by Hercules’ nemesis Hades). His awesome powers had been taken from him by the villain but Hercules miraculously regains his strength through mutual love, and is on his way to become a “true hero”— just as (Samson-like) he lifts a huge column that had fallen on Meg. He is wholly and joyfully restored—by love—as a proper and divine hero, and elevated to Mt. Olympus.

In Disney’s 2010 Tangled, the heroine Rapunzel undergoes a major personality shift as a result of her encounter with the hero Eugene. It is in fact he who is responsible for getting her out of the imprisoning tower (using a ruse along with the appeal of the mysterious tiara—it’s hers, it is discovered, and she’s the princess!). In an interesting twist and role-reversal, Eugene tells Rapunzel that she was his new dream and Rapunzel says he was hers. Eugene dies in Rapunzel’s arms. In despair, Rapunzel sings the “Healing Incantation,” and begins to cry. Moved by her love and kindness, the last remnants of a magical flower’s enchantments condense in her tear, which heals Eugene. Later, the two return to the castle to meet her parents and eventually marry, living happily ever after. Rapunzel is redeemed through reciprocal love.

One must expect courtly themes in a medieval film like Excalibur (1981), set presumably in the late fourteenth or fifteenth century, bearing “mythical truth, not historical,” according to its director John Boorman.²² When the charismatic character of Lancelot first appears, he battles with Arthur’s knights, then with Arthur himself. Summoning such superhuman power that the sword Excalibur is cracked in half, Arthur overcomes Lancelot, though the new champion enigmatically but with great nobility bows to the king and offers him fealty. With the twelve-year peace across Britain established, along with the Round Table and its famed fellowship, Arthur proclaims he will marry. The relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere at first encapsulates what Scaglione named (see above) the “impossibility of communicating with the love object (topos of ineffability).”

But then, while escorting the bride Guinevere to the wedding (each, now love struck, having already undergone a coup de foudre), Lancelot is asked by her if he will find a soul mate to love and marry. His reply goes like this: I have found someone. It is you, Guinevere. I will love no other while you live. “I will love you always as queen and wife of my best friend.” Several scenes later, the queen is charged with adultery and Lancelot (now aware of her unhappy marriage) is at once named her champion—to defend her honor.

Such a scenario is familiar to scholars, but surely the millions of non-specialists who have seen the film must relate somehow to this courtly episode. As if enacting a Occitan love lyric, each has been mightily unfaithful: Guinevere in her longing glances, Lancelot in his fixed staring. But finally they must surrender to their passion. Their shameful infidelity, a deep wound, paralleled by Arthur’s own (unwilling) incestuous coupling with his half-sister Morgana, brings on a terre gaste, a horrid, morbid and gross wasting of both Arthur’s body and the land. The courtly and anti-courtly elements here predominate: the lovers’ religion of love easily nullifies any idea of a stylized game of flirtation. No one is improved this time.

In the romantic comedy, Roxanne (1987), brilliantly adapted by Steve Martin from Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, the astronomer heroine (Daryl Hannah) argues with the genuinely courtly hero (C. D. Bates, Martin’s tennis-playing fireman). In the final sequence (to this woman between two men story) the hero reveals himself as the epitome of generosity by interceding for another man and wooing the heroine on his behalf. Bates says in the end that all Roxanne wanted was the perfect man who was both physically beautiful, emotionally mature and verbally adept. Finally, Bates (who loved her from the beginning, but direct communication with her was not possible—once more, the ineffable!) and Roxanne forgive one another as she confesses her love for him, in spite of his extraordinarily characteristic nose: it gives him uniqueness, she thinks, observing that flat-nosed people are boring and featureless. Feelings of compassion, admiration, tenderness and understanding change her point of view. The joyful humor and big-heartedness of the film charm the viewer.

We turn next to a blockbuster, the mysterious 1999 science fiction “cyberpunk-cyber thriller,” The Matrix. Amidst all the computer-generated graphics, amazing action scenes and visual effects, futuristic costumes, the enigmatic significance of The Matrix itself, and the secretive feelings Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss) experiences for the hero, Neo (Keanu Reeves), the story really embodies a simple and beautiful fairy-tale component. Trinity’s destiny was to fall in love with “the One” (prophesied as a savior-healer and super manipulator of The Matrix). The romantic relationship of the two is not revealed until the very end of the film, but Trinity’s act of kissing Neo powerfully resuscitates him within the sentient world (his interfaced physical body) and within The Matrix as well, where his avatar has been active. It is a phenomenal moment when the obscure meaning of The Matrix, Trinity’s love (from afar!) for Neo and Neo’s resurrection and fate are revealed all at once. Trinity does not have to quest for Neo: his sentient body remained right there with her in the laboratory. One can argue that Neo’s life is saved (literally) through the efforts and love of a beloved: Trinity has loved Neo all along. One can also posit that Neo’s acceptance of his destiny as “the One” is augmented by his awareness of Trinity’s love for him.

At the very opening of the film’s sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, the two have now become lovers, and, in one of the film’s final sequences, Neo has a choice: save mankind from extinction (it would happen through a “system reboot”), resulting in the survival of the destructive machines (but not humanity), or choosing to save Trinity’s life: in a face-to-face battle with an Agent (humanoid robot of The Matrix), she crashes out of a window and a bullet pierces her heart. In his abbreviated and breathtaking quest, Neo catches her in mid-air, but she dies. Loath to allow Trinity’s death, Neo uses his superhuman abilities to remove the bullet and revive her. The balance of the two scenes is perfect: in The Matrix it is Trinity who rescues Neo, while in the sequel Neo the hero saves his beloved through love. These films do not illustrate every aspect of courtliness or court culture, but the revealing moment does transport the viewer to a realm of heightened emotion. As in Hercules, love reigns supreme.²³

Our final film is Slumdog Millionaire, billed as a kind of bildungsroman, a straightforward story about Jamal Malik, an eighteen-year old orphan from the slums of Mumbai. But the film has multiple strata, and underlying the story is Jamal’s search for his “far-away love”—a theme made legendary by twelfth-century Occitan poet Jaufre Rudel’s amor de lonh.²⁴ As the film’s narrative revolves around “Kaun Banega Crorepati,” the Indian TV version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? each chapter of Jamal’s increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the responses to the show’s seemingly impossible questions. To witness the unfolding of Jamal’s life journey—surviving as a street urchin/career thief, his many colorful adventures, gang encounters, his job serving tea in a call center—helps to explain several mysteries, like how and why he ended up as a featured contestant, but most especially how he knows the answers. His life story—in reality a quest—includes being orphaned at an early age; growing up with an older brother, who was both his guardian/protector and antagonist (a kind of rival and dark “other”); and having a relationship since childhood with another orphaned child, a girl named Latika.

A parallel plot line deals with the law—in the present-time episodes, the police grill him to determine how Jamal can be doing so well on the show when others who are brighter, more educated and wealthier fail. Is he cheating? Is it purely luck? But the fact is, the complex and interwoven story is simply a tale of love: every action of Jamal is motivated by his search for his lost childhood love, Latika. The resplendent joy manifested in the final sequences—an emblem, we recall, of courtly life (Battais 135)—unlocks all the puzzles and enigmas of the film.²⁵ With great generosity of character, Jamal, enduring and shaking off all sorts of suffering and pain, was searching endlessly for Latika: that is why he found a way to get himself recruited to be a contestant for the game show, for he knew she would be watching and that they would be able to meet together, finally, at a designated locale, and no doubt live “happily ever after” and in joy.²⁶

As we have seen, in these selected films (and in many other contemporary ones) transformation through kindness and love frequently manifests itself as a part of the finale. The quest motif very often subsumes the conversion—not necessarily as dramatic as an Augustinian one—yet nevertheless resulting in the rescue of the hero/heroine, where rescue is a generic term including redemption, resuscitation and/or vindication. Melvin Udall, Edward and Vivian, Lancelot, Neo and even Rick Blaine—all are made over or made better by love. Beauty and the Beast, Hercules, Rapunzel and Eugene—these are characters transformed from within; Jamal Malik’s life quest, motivated by a far-away love, ends in a glorious epiphany. An explanatory rationale for the preceeding essay might suggest how faintly aware of these themes our readers might be, but the need remains to inform them of their exact correspondence with courtly love themes. However much it has been transplanted, the courtly legacy sustains. And “the better man” (or woman) survives today.

Works Cited

• 10. Dir. Blake Edwards. Orion Pictures, 1979. Film.
• Aberth, John. (2003). A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film. New York: Routledge.
• As Good As It Gets. Dir. James L. Brooks. Gracie Films, 1997. Film.
• At First Sight. Dir. Irwin Winkler. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 1999. Film.
• Auerbach, Erich. (1957). Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard Trask. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
• Battais, Lise. “La Courtoisie de François d’Assise: Influence de la littérature épique et courtoise sur la premi?re génération franciscaine.” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome—Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 109 (1997): 131-160.
• Beauty and The Beast (“La belle et la b?te”). Dir. Jean Cocteau. DisCina, 1946. Film.
• Beauty and the Beast. Dir. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. Walt Disney Pictures, 1991. Film.
• Bernau, Anke, and Bettina Bildhauer. (2011). Medieval Film (Filming the Middle Ages). London, Reaktion Books Ltd.
• Bogin, Magda. (1980). The Women Troubadours. New York and London: W. W. Norton.
• Burns, E. Jane. “Courtly Love: Who Needs It? Recent Feminist Work in the Medieval French Tradition.” Signs, 27 (2001): 23-57.
• Casablanca. Dir. Michael Curtiz. Warner Brothers Pictures, 1942. Film.
• Deleyto, Celestino. “Between Friends: Love and Friendship in Contemporary Hollywood Romantic Comedy.” Screen 44, 2 (2003): 167-182.
• Driver, Martha W., and Sid Ray. (2004). The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.
• Duby, Georges. ”Le modèle courtois,” in Histoire des femmes en Occident, ed. G. Duby and M. Perrot (v. 2, Le Moyen Âge, ed. Ch. Klapisch-Zuber). Paris: Perrin, 1991.
• Elliott, Andrew B. R. (2003). Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the Medieval World. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.
• Excalibur. Dir. John Boorman. Orion Pictures; distributed by Warner Bros., 1981. Film.
• Fatal Attraction. Dir. Adrian Lyne. Paramount Pictures, 1987. Film.
• Finke, Laurie A., and Martin B. Shichtman. (2003). Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.
• Galician, Mary-Lou. (2002). Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass Media Analysis and Criticism of Unrealistic Portrayals and Their Influence. Routledge Communication Series. New York and Oxford: Routledge.
• Genz, Stephanie. “Singled Out: Postfeminism’s ‘New Woman’ and the Dilemma of Having It All.” The Journal of Popular Culture 43 (2010): 97–119.
• Grossel, Marie-Geneviève. “Remarques sur le motif du ‘service d’amour’ chez quelques trouvères des cercles champenois.” Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales 15 (2008): 265-276.
• Grice, Paul. (1989) Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Hercules. Dir. Ron Clements and John Musker. Walt Disney Pictures, 1997. Film.
• Hume, Kathryn. (1985) Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature. New York: Routledge.
• Jeffers-McDonald, Tamar. (2007) Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. London and New York: Wallfower.
• Johnson, Kimberly R., and Bjarne M. Holmes (2009) “Contradictory Messages: A Content Analysis of Hollywood-Produced Romantic Comedy Feature Films.” Communication Quarterly 57, 3 (2009): 352–373.
• Kantor, Jodi. “Elite Women Put a New Spin on an Old Debate.” New York Times June 22, 2012. Consulted online: .
• Kelly, Douglas. “Courtly Love in Perspective: The Hierarchy of Love in Andreas Capellanus.” Traditio 24 (1968): 119-148.
• Kim, Ji-hyun Philippa (2012). “Pour une littérature médiévale moderne: Gaston Paris, l’”amour courtois” et les enjeux de la modernité.” Coll. Essais sur le Moyen Age, n° 55. Paris: Honoré Champion.
• Leithart, Peter J. Zizek and Courtly Love. 4.29.15. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2015/04/zizek-and-courtly-love. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
• Lewis, C. S. (1936) The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. Oxford: Oxford UP.
• Marcabru. “L’autrier jost’una sebissa.” In The Medieval Pastourelle, vol. 1, edited and translated by William D. Paden, 36-41. New York: Garland, 1987.
• Marie de France.(1954) Lais. Ed. A. Ewert. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Monson, Don A. “The Troubadour’s Lady Reconsidered Again.” Speculum 70 (1995): 255-274.
• Novak, Michael. The Myth of Romantic Love. 2.14.11. http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2011/02/the-myth-of-romantic-love. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
• Peberdy, Donna. “From Wimps to Wild Men: Bipolar Masculinity and the Paradoxical Performances of Tom Cruise.” Men and Masculinities 13 (2010): 231-254.
• Poètes et romanciers du Moyen Age, (1952) Ed. Albert Pauphilet. Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard.
• Pretty Woman. Dir. Garry Marshall. Touchstone Pictures and Silver Screen Partners IV, 1990. Film.
• Pugh, Tison, and Susan Aronstein, Eds. 2004. The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-Tale and Fantasy Past (New Middle Ages). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Raw, Laurence. “Imaginative History and Medieval Film.” Adaptation 5, 2 (2012): 262-267.
• Reddy, William M. (2012) The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 CE (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning). Chicago: U Chicago P.
• Robertson, D. W. (1968) “The Concept of Courtly Love as an Impediment to the Understanding of Medieval Texts.” in The Meaning of Courtly Love, ed. F. X. Newman. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1-18.
• Roxanne. Dir. Fred Schepisi. Columbia Pictures Industries, IndieProd Company Productions, L.A. Films, 1987. Film.
• Saturday Night Fever. Dir. John Badham. Producer: Robert Stigwood Organization (RSO). Distributed by Paramount Pictures. 1977. Film.
• Scaglione, Aldo. “Petrarchan Love and the Pleasures of Frustration.” Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (1997): 557-572.
• Scala, Elizabeth. “Pretty Women: The Romance of the Fair Unknown, Feminism, and Contemporary Romantic Comedy.” Film & History 29 (1999): 34-45.
• Schultz, James A. (2006) Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality. Chicago: U Chicago P.
• Slumdog Millionaire. Dir. Danny Boyle. Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Brothers Pictures, 2008. Film.
• Tangled. Dir. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard. Walt Disney Pictures, 2010. Film.
• The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Village Roadshow Pictures, Silver Pictures, Groucho II Film Partnership; distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, 1999. Film.
• The Matrix Reloaded. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Village Roadshow Pictures, Silver Pictures; distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, 2003. Film.
• The Princess Bride. Dir. Rob Reiner. Act III Communications, Buttercup Films Ltd., The Princess Bride Ltd., 1987. Film.
• The Wild One. Dir. Laslo Benedek. Columbia Pictures, 1953. Film.
• Walsh, P. G., ed. and trans. (1982) Andreas Capellanus on Love. London: Duckworth.
• Witt, Ronald G. (2012) The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
• Zipes, Jack. (2011) The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fair-Tale Films. New York: Routledge.

Notes

¹ William A. Reddy, The Making of Romantic Love, 14-16; on “desire as sexual appetite,” see 105-107, 220, 351-352; on romantic love and anthropology, 16-21. See as well James Schultz, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness…, xvi, xxi, 91-94 (on the courtly paragon)—another recent publication, more specifically on courtly love itself, that posits an eroticization of noble power arising from paradigmatic roles of refinement and social distinction.
Also topically of interest is Galician’s work, Sex, Love and Romance, more negatively-oriented self-help guide than scholarly analysis, deals with “rescue fantasies” (26), courtly love, 28-29, as well as more than a few films, including Coming to America (156), Ever After and Far and Away (169), Legally Blonde (199), Jerry Maguire (206) and What Women Want (138).

² Reddy’s focus unfortunately occludes the influences on twelfth-century European verse and romance of, among others, antecedent Arabic poetry as well as Marian devotional lyrics.

³ Magda Bogin, The Women Troubadours, p. 56.

⁴ Celestino Deleyto, “Between Friends,” 169.

⁵ Selection was nowhere near as systematic as that found in the modern media study by Johnson and Holmes; their “RomCom” films all had implications for adolescents, containing in fact (they concluded) contradictory messages (366) with both desirable and undesirable outcomes to romantic relationships; only four of the forty films studied seemed familiar to me (You’ve Got Mail, Runaway Bride, What Women Want, and Sabrina—all still non-courtly it would seem).

⁶ This essay is dedicated to a colleague and friend of over forty years, Deborah Nelson-Campbell of Rice University.
Regarding other films I might have selected for study here, or recent scholarship that I might have “engaged” with, lack of space obliges me to disregard a spate of references to medieval legacies in cinema: medieval scholar Kathryn Hume deals mainly with fantasy, not courtly matters; extreme and heavily theoretical works like Bernau and Bildhauer’s Filming the Middle Ages or Pugh and Aronstein’s The Disney Middle Ages (major recipe discovery: traditional gender roles are reinforced in Disney movies, and Tangled is labeled “racist, speciesist…”—204 ). In theme-based studies like A Knight at the Movies, Aberth is oriented more to epic than romance and to films like Camelot, El Cid, Robin Hood, Seventh Seal, The Navigator, or to Joan of Arc films, and he does not mention any potential aspects of courtly values; while comprehensive and definitive Finke and Shichtman’s Cinematic Illuminations focuses on historicism and film conventions and does not deal with courtly subjects, nor does Elliott’s more recent Remaking the Middle Ages while offering innovative semiotic and historiographical analyses. Driver and Ray’s The Medieval Hero glosses over chivalry and knighthood (12-13, 44-45, esp. 73-87) but does not confront courtly issues directly. Laurence Raw reviews several other recent books in this category.

⁷ See C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility. For D. W. Robertson, the medieval phenomenon never existed: “I have never been convinced that there was any such thing as what is usually called courtly love during the Middle Ages” (1).

⁸ On fin’amors see Reddy, 164-167; also, Burns, Kelly and Monson provide full details and background on the subject; see Kim for the term “amour courtois.”

⁹ On this work, Burns writes with urgency (47): “As courtly heroines resist, recast, and manipulate paradigms of femininity, the standard scenarios available for male lovers shift as well. The anomalous and highly courtly fairy heroine in Marie de France’s twelfth-century Lai de Lanval, for example, openly displays the stunning beauty and refined behavior of the classic, commodified courtly lady while riding heroically to defend her seemingly helpless lover in a legal suit. The effect of this woman’s uncharacteristic participation in the legal system at King Arthur’s court is to disrupt it substantially and to defy simultaneously our preconceived notions of gendered options in the courtly world […]. While this heroine plays both parts of lovely lady and heroic knight, her lover Lanval is cast as stunningly ‘beautiful’ but not effeminate. He is a courtly suitor propositioned atypically by the lady’s expression of desire and a lover not required to prove his chivalric mettle in deeds of prowess”—obviously a view of the text quite different from mine.

¹⁰ My methodology will not include reference to courtliness or to the pragmatics of politeness/impoliteness (see e.g., Grice, Studies in the Way of Words); nor will I deal with obsessive-compulsive, erotic and neurotic Tristan & Iseut-type passionate love, as demonstrated in the movie 10 (George fanatically pursues Jenny) and/or Fatal Attraction (psychopathic Alex hounds Dan endlessly). As Genz observes (119), “[t]he film’s villain, Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), is forcefully prevented from ‘having it all’ as her joint desires to succeed in her career and have a child with her lover are represented as equivalent to madness and ultimately resulting in death. Thus, the backlash reinforces the division between professional and domestic world […], maintaining that women have to opt between a typical existence as a woman and independence.” On the other hand, At First Sight features a generous female (another “gender-bending” role reversal) who attempts to “save” the blind hero (i.e., find a way to bring him sightedness) but complications thwart her success.

¹¹ Contemporary relevance is found as well in the writings of theorist Slavoj Zizek who saw courtly love as masochistic; one reviewer wrote that Zizek “sees courtly love everywhere still. It’s not a medieval phenomenon only, but a contemporary one. The femme fatale is an heiress of the cruel lady of courtly love […].” (Leithart, “Zizek and Courtly Love”—a account of The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality by Zizek.)

¹² Battais, 133-135. Cf. G. Duby, ”Le modèle courtois,” in Histoire des femmes en Occident, 261-276. Reddy, 108-109, 219-220, describes what he calls a “longing for association” in the context of romantic love.

¹³ De amore, ed. Walsh, 1.6.371 (146), 377 (148), 399 (156); 2.8.44 (282).

¹⁴ See C. S. Lewis, Allegory of Love. On “love service” to/for the Lady, see Grossel’s essay.

¹⁵ Surprisingly, the final scene of Saturday Night Fever in which Tony and Stephanie conclude the story, reveals a similar sentiment: Stephanie—“There were other reasons why I was hanging around you. / Tony—What do you mean? / St—You made me feel better. You gave me admiration, you know? Respect. Support. / T—Stephanie, maybe now, when I’m going to be in town, maybe we could see each other. I don’t mean like that. I know you’re thinking I’m promoting your pussy. I mean like friends. Like you said: we could help each other. / St—You want to be friends? / T—I’d like to be friends with you. / St—Do you think you know how? Do you think you could be friends with a girl? Could you stand that? / T—The truth? I don’t know. I could try. That’s all I can say. / St—OK.” < http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/s/saturday-night-fever-script-transcript.html>. Accessed 12 Oct. 2015.

¹⁶ For Deleyto (170), this film curiously reveals a “postmodern aesthetic of ironic vampirization of traditional rituals.”

¹⁷ See Peberdy’s article. For Pretty Woman, Reddy, 176-179, 180, sees parallels with the Lancelot romance by Chrétien de Troyes ; for Lancelot and adultery, parallels with Casablanca.

¹⁸ Perhaps a stretch, but I see a parallel here with the famous pastorela of innovative Occitan troubadour Marcabru: the rhythm and tone of the dialogue, its frankness (the shepherdess, in the chilly wind, has admirable nipples; the knight wants to see her beneath him to do together the “sweet thing” (per far la cauza dousanna), etc.) remind me of the banter between Edward and Vivian, particularly during the first half of the film.

¹⁹ Genz, 98. The term today is the “higher-harder-faster school of female achievement” and, in the oracular proclamation of Ms. Sandberg (CEO of Facebook): “require your partner to do half the work at home, don’t underestimate your own abilities, and don’t cut back on ambition out of fear that you won’t be able to balance work and children.” (Kantor NYT)

²⁰ In this regard, see Jeffers-McDonald on the sub-genre “radical romantic comedy” of the sixties (59-84), that interrogates romance’s ideology itself, a result of the profound social changes of the era; she perceives in such films a conspicuous self-reflexivity, self-consciousness and self-absorption—what one called narcissism back in the day.

²¹ Fairy-tale specialist Jack Zipes has this to say about the numerous Beauty and the Beast films: they are “self help films [that] basically [offer] variations on the same theme: how to help attractive, seemingly strong women realize that appearances are deceiving and that happiness in wedlock is within their grasp if they understand the goodness of good-hearted men” (239).

²² As for relevance and continuity of appeal, one may note the film’s total domestic gross: $35 million—a testament to its success with audiences.

²³ Chaos, death and mayhem reign in yet another film worthy of mention in this context: The Wild One (1953): the motorcycle hooliganism cannot overshadow the eight-minute romantic and quiet interlude (the hero safely escorts the girl away from violence), during which a desperate Kathy (Mary Murphy) expresses to the brooding Johnny (Marlon Brando) her yearning for salvation by “someone” who will rescue her from small-town mediocrity.

²⁴ See, for example, Jaufre Rudel, “Quan lo rius de la fontana…” (amors de terra lonhdana) and “Lanquan li jorn son lonc en may…” (l’amor de lonh) in Poètes et romanciers du Moyen Age, ed. Pauphilet, 780-784.

²⁵ Channeling St. Francis of Assisi, Battais observes (136) that pain delights the courtly lover since it can no doubt lead to ultimate happiness.

²⁶ Michael Novak observes, on the very subject of that “rarefied spiritual passion” in a “higher sphere” known only to romantic lovers:. “Romantic love is a transfiguring force, something beyond delight and pain, an ardent beatitude, purer, more spiritual, more uplifting than physical “hooking up.” It is not a sated appetite, but in fact quite the opposite. It loves the feeling of never being satisfied, of being always caught up in the longing, of dwelling in the sweetness of desire […]. This is why romantic love desperately needs obstacles […].” On this, Zizek would say that such impediments elevate the value of the beloved (see note 10).

Republished under Creative Commons licence 4.0

The following is an addition to the lexicon:

Gynoreductivism

(Gynocentrism + Reductionism)
1. noun. The act of simplifying gynocentric phenomena or their root causes to the point of minimizing, obscuring, or distorting them.

Examples:
a). “Women’s nature makes them completely gynocentric in every facet of life.”
b). “Because gynocentrism is genetic and never influenced by culture, women can never change.”

Gynoreductivist: A person who engages in gynoreductivism.

Synonyms. Gynoreductionist

By Paul Elam

A long-standing tradition of the mentally unemployed is the advice column where people send lopsided versions of their current life problem to strangers, and invite said stranger to advise them on what to do about it.

One recent example of this was brought to my attention that starts with a recipe for disaster;  an excerpt from an advice column in which a woman is getting advice from another woman, who doesn’t know her, about dealing with a man who she also doesn’t know.  From the South Bend Tribune we have the ‘Dear Annie’ column featuring the thoughtful sage advice of one Annie Lane, a cutesy looking 20-something whom I am sure is steeped in the wisdom of Ages.

She demonstrates her incisive nature in a response to the following plea for help: “Dear Annie” a woman writes,

“My husband and I have been married for over 20 years we’ve had our share of highs and lows during our time together. However, recently I discovered some things that are really bothering me. My husband always said he didn’t do the whole Facebook thing I discovered he’s been lying about not having a Facebook account when I was trying to set one up for him so he could use it to receive some promotional offers. I then discovered that he was searching for old girlfriends, single sites, pornography and other women on Facebook for two years behind my back. Some of the women my husband was looking up on Facebook were our daughter’s age or even a couple of years younger. We live in a small town and some of these women work where he gets his hair cut, where we bank, or at other places where we do business. He visited several of the woman’s Facebook pages multiple times. This is all very disturbing to me. When I try to discuss this with him he gets extremely defensive and angry with me. I’m hurt and don’t believe that what he’s doing is right. Please help;

Signed – ‘Feeling Very Broken.’

Now of course Dear Annie, whose name I’m sure just coincidentally sounds like Dear Abby, charges into the rescue to make sure that this advice seeker doesn’t slip into self-blame.

“Dear broken” she answers, “the only one who should feel broken is your husband. Honesty is the cornerstone of a healthy marriage. Though it’s definitely questionable that he’s been browsing very young women’s Facebook pages, there could at least plausibly be innocent explanations for that. The alarm bells sounded for me when you mentioned that he’s been on single sites. This could indicate offline real-life infidelity. Talk to him about going to marriage counseling; if he refuses then consider separation or divorce. It’s better to live alone than with a louse.”

And that is it. Annie has summed up a plan of action that could determine the course of two lives in 90 words without so much as a single follow-up question and with no more knowledge of the people involved than she got from a single email.

Now you might be saying at the moment why should I give a fuck about any of these idiots, and of course you’d be right to ask. While both Annie and Broken aren’t significant at all as human beings, what played out between them is an absolutely sterling example of the lens through which our culture, including self-help gurus and the mental health industry, view relationships.

I’ve known licensed marriage and family therapists who made well into six figures treating relationship problems with no more thought than Dear Annie has in her column, which is to say that they made big money from what the average person on the street would say for free – namely that whatever your sad story is as a woman, the man is at fault. We don’t need to ask questions, he’s wrong and the solution to the problem is either to get a professional to confirm that, or to kick them to the curb or both. After all just as Annie says, he’s a louse now.

I know that none of this is a secret to this audience. I needed a much better reason than just telling you what you already know to make an article about this particular advice bimbo and her latest foray into terminal stupidity. The thing is, I like this example because it is so similar to what I witnessed in my clinical practice.

Many of my predominantly male clients were also in couples counseling as a part of their addictions treatment, and it was routine for me to sit in on at least one session with their couples therapist in an effort to ensure continuity of treatment. What I witnessed there, over and over again, was a repeat of Dear Annie giving advice to ‘Feeling Very Broken,’ and shitting all over brokens husband in the process.

Generally speaking, the approach was always the same. On cue from the couples counselor, the wife would go through the litany of everything he did while drinking or drugging. Going into sometimes excruciating detail about the damage it did to the family, and the lives that it harmed, the goal was to have him acknowledge all this without avoidance, minimization or other forms of denial. And he would be measured directly by the open remorse he showed, how genuine he was at expressing that remorse, and how well he was able to articulate his plans to make sure that the same mistakes would not be repeated in the future.

To be fair this is a standard and I think necessary part of the treatment for addictions. what was missing though, what was always missing, was the ways he was being harmed in the relationship.  It was as simple as 1, 2, 3; he was the relationship problem. There was no need for shared examination or review of the marriage that was more realistic. Just hand him the whip and let the self flagellation begin.

Of course there was some attention to her enabling, and efforts were made to have her look at how behavior on her part made it easier for him to continue engaging actively in his addiction.  That, however, was generally where any demands for her introspection ended. She was the designated victim, he was the default perpetrator.  There’s your fucking therapy.

I never saw a marriage and family therapist even begin to explore whether the female in that relationship might be the kind that makes sobering up seem worse than drinking Drano.  Focusing on the worst parts of him and the best parts of her is a completely lopsided proposition. Even a crackhead recognizes that, so they use massive amounts of shame to beat the man down into compliance: “So she cheated on you? Well isn’t that because you drove her away with your drinking? What’s that you say – you didn’t start drinking heavily till after she cheated? You’re projecting the blame; no one made you pick up a bottle. How do you think that made her feel?”

What was even more fascinating was seeing how malleable men were in these situations. They were usually incapable of defending themselves. All they could do was stutter and fall flat in the face of shaming, no matter how blatantly unfair it was. The men who tried to defend themselves, or point to the fact that the wife was often as destructive as his addiction, were easily shut down by the sisters of shame – the tag-team pair of marriage therapist and wife.

For instance I remember one man who briefly interrupted the procession of his mistakes being beaten like a herd of dead horses and said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I drank a lot out of frustration, living with her is like living with a block of ice. She barely talks to me unless she wants to complain or needs money.”

He was going to say more but the marriage therapist interrupted and said quite sharply, “So your being an alcoholic is her fault?!”  She might as well have added an eye-roll. Now of course that was a ridiculous mischaracterization of what he actually said, and it was totally unfair, but it had the intended effect.

He shut up about his problems and went back to apologizing for the pain he had caused her. It was as though he was apologizing for being alive. His pain over feeling unloved used isolated and demonized got shoved right back down into his gut where he would probably drink over it in the future. The wife got to maintain her position of superiority with the help of her mental health professional, and I got to take on the task of trying to help him clean up the mess in the wake of that session.

Again I don’t think that what I’m saying is anything shocking or new to a men’s audience. We all know that, generally speaking, women lack an accountability, just as we know that the mental health profession and the world at large is hopelessly gynocentric.

What may be useful in this story is the lesson about shame and how it is used to control men, and how utterly powerful it can be. I worked with the particular client in my story, and scores of other men just like him about that shame. I found that in a supportive environment that they could clearly take responsibility for their choices and behaviors. They also had the capacity to keep it all in perspective and not let their feelings cloud their view about injustices that were also done to them. They could discern right from wrong, and tell the difference quickly between what was and was not their fault.

And then, when a judgmental woman entered the scene, all of that would fall apart. They quickly became fish-out-of-water struggling for words. Their self-confidence, even their self-respect, immediately circled the drain the moment their previously clear and concise thoughts were questioned by a woman.  They faltered sometimes, they lost their cool and reacted with anger, becoming just as irrational as their female detractors.

So in a sense they defended themselves, but not by looking at these women in the eye and saying you’re wrong and here’s why. My client, when the therapist accused him of blaming his alcoholism on his wife, could not just stand up for himself and say “you’re blowing what I said at a proportion and taking it out of context.”  So he retreated.  Others might have blown up and told her to fuck off.  But very very few would be able to stand firm, reject the bullshit, and insist that their experience was part of the discussion.

Shame, the universal male Achilles heel would, likely as not, blind them to the very possibility of healthier alternatives. Most men are socialized to feel deeply ashamed of standing up to a woman.  In fact that is why you see white knights conflate setting limits with women with attacking them; like a lot of men they can’t see the difference. Men are supposed to protect women, even vicious dishonest and dysfunctional ones.

Subsequently they live by a code that shames them for doing anything else even if it is vital to their psychological and emotional well-being. So when faced with that conflict of interest they usually either back down, or they cover their shame with enough anger to act in their own interest.

I have some questions that I would have asked Feeling Broken had she approached me with her problem. I’d start with something simple like tell me, Broken, when’s the last time you had sex with your husband? Or how much time do you spend berating him, regardless of how justified you might feel?

I mean seriously, assuming that what Broken was saying is true, it is clear this guy is missing something in his relationship. I understand it’s easy to fall into the expected position of showing moral outrage and indignation that a married man might be involved in or heading toward infidelity.  It is painfully simple to take a ‘case closed’ attitude say the guy’s a bum, and move on to the next put-upon woman with an ax to grind against her husband. You can do the same thing with guys that drink do drugs or act out violently. After all, if you don’t give a damn about what is driving people’s behavior then the sky’s the limit.

Call me crazy but I don’t like easy answers. That is probably because they are seldom right.  Sure, some guys make promises and then get to breaking them at first opportunity, just because that’s their nature. In my experience those guys are the exception that Broken and her future therapist will brand her husband as being regardless of the truth.

Most men I have known who broke promises to their wives, cheated on them, hit them, verbally abuse them, or who snuck around behind their backs were driven by forces into a life marked by one no-win situation after another.  It was not even something they could put into words, and when they opened their mouths to try someone — usually a woman —  shoved a big fat shame sandwich in to shut them up.

Men’s experience in long-term relationships is often marked by abject loneliness, emotional and sexual deprivation, incessant unrealistic demands, constant badgering, indifference to the most fundamental of their needs, and even mocking and humiliation heaped on them if they had the temerity to say anything about it.  The answer to this is simple and extraordinarily difficult: It is for men to learn to be shameless, and to take pride in it.

Guilt is “I made a mistake,” shame is “I am a mistake.” Guilt gives us a moral rudder that allows us to correct mistakes and move forward as better people. Shame is a set of shackles that binds us permanently to worthlessness. It gags us because inside we know that we are hopelessly unworthy and have no right to speak.

As I look around the world today, across the spectrum of human existence, I see little more than a worldwide culture that feeds itself on the shame of men. Traditional gynocentrists and feminists both share equally in the blame.  Personally I’m pretty fucking tired of both of them.

The following excerpt is from M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Travelled.

________________________

The Myth of Romantic Love

To serve as effectively as it does to trap us into marriage, the experience of falling in love probably must have as one of its characteristics the illusion that the experience will last forever.  This illusion is fostered in our culture by the commonly held myth of romantic love, which has its origins in our favorite childhood fairy tales, wherein the prince and princess, once united, live happily forever after.

The myth of romantic love tells us, in effect, that for every young man in the world there is a young woman who was “meant for him,” and vice versa. Moreover, the myth implies that there is only one man meant for a woman and only one woman for a man and this has been predetermined “in the stars.” When we meet the person for whom we are intended, recognition comes through the fact that we fall in love. We have met the person for whom all the heavens intended us, and since the match is perfect, we will then be able to satisfy all of each other’s needs forever and ever, and therefore live happily forever after in perfect union and harmony.

Should it come to pass, however, that we do not satisfy or meet all of each other’s needs and friction arises and we fall out of love, then it is clear that a dreadful mistake was made, we misread the stars, we did not hook up with our one and only perfect match, what we thought was love was not real or “true” love, and nothing can be done about the situation except to live unhappily ever after or get divorced.

While I generally find that great myths are great precisely because they represent and embody great universal truths (and will explore several such myths later in this book), the myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. Perhaps it is a necessary lie in that it ensures the survival of the species by its encouragement and seeming validation of the falling-in-love experience that traps us into marriage. But as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters.

Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth. Mrs. A. subjugates herself absurdly to her husband out of a feeling of guilt. “I didn’t really love my husband when we married,” she says. “I pretended I did. I guess I tricked him into it, ‘so I have no right to complain about him, and I owe it to him to do whatever he wants.”

Mr. B. laments: “I regret I didn’t marry Miss C. I think we could have had a good marriage. But I didn’t feel head over heels in love with her, so I assumed she couldn’t be the right person for me.”

Mrs. D., married for two years, becomes severely depressed without apparent cause, and enters therapy stating: “I don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve got everything I need, including a perfect marriage.” Only months later can she accept the fact that she has fallen out of love with her husband but that this does not mean that she made a horrible mistake.

Mr. E., also married two years, begins to suffer intense headaches in the evenings and can’t believe they are psychosomatic. “My home life is fine. I love my wife as much as the day I married her. She’s everything I ever wanted,” he says. But his headaches don’t leave him until a year later, when he is able to admit, “She bugs the hell out of me the way she is always wanting, wanting, wanting things without regard to my salary,” and then is able to confront her with her extravagance.

Mr. and Mrs. F. acknowledge to each other that they have fallen out of love and then proceed to make each other miserable by mutual rampant infidelity as they each search for the one “true love,” not realizing that their very acknowledgment could mark the beginning of the work of their marriage in-stead of its end.

Even when couples have acknowledged that the honeymoon is over, that they are no longer romantically in love with each other and are able still to be committed to their relationship, they still cling to the myth and attempt to conform their lives to it. “Even though we have fallen out of love, if we act by sheer will power as if we still were in love, then maybe romantic love will return to our lives,” their thinking goes.

These couples prize togetherness. When they enter couples group therapy (which is the setting in which my wife and I and our close colleagues conduct most serious marriage counseling), they sit together, speak for each other, defend each other’s faults and seek to present to the rest of the group a united front, believing this unity to be a sign of the relative health of their marriage and a prerequisite for its improvement. Sooner or later, and usually sooner, we must tell most couples that they are too much married, too closely coupled, and that they need to establish some psychological distance from each other before they can even begin to work constructively on their problems.

Sometimes it is actually necessary to physically separate them, directing them to sit apart from each other in the group circle. It is always necessary to ask them to refrain from speaking for each other or defending each other against the group. Over and over again we must say, “Let Mary speak for herself, John,” and “John can defend himself, Mary, he’s strong enough.” Ultimately, if they stay in therapy, all couples learn that a true acceptance of their own and each other’s individuality and separateness is the only foundation upon which a mature marriage can be based and real love can grow.