One small step for mankind: How movies in 2018 stared down the damaging myth of masculinity

Within the first 15 minutes of Damien Chazelle's First Man, we learn that Neil Armstrong chooses to suffer in silence. He silently grieves the loss of his young daughter and he eventually silently grieves the loss of his fellow astronauts. He also silently parents: he defers difficult father-son conversations about life and death to his wife, and begrudgingly answers his sons' questions with little or no emotion or feeling. He sacrifices what makes him human for what he believes is the greater good. And while Armstrong's story is a (largely) true one, Gosling's take on it falls in line with a few other prominent stories told in 2018 — specifically, stories belonging to tragic men.

Especially Bradley Cooper's. In the actor/director's Academy Award-bound A Star Is Born, we meet Jackson Maine, a tragic country star whose silence is such a part of his identity that we learn he's actually stolen his brother's voice. (Well, sort of: he's stolen his brother's singing voice, so no, this isn't an Ursula/Ariel situation.) His ability to articulate his thoughts and feelings require the filter of a put-on growl and copious amounts of alcohol — but like Armstrong, Maine favours silence over the articulation of truth: he suffers quietly and all alone, a victim of so much, but also the myth of masculinity. After all, a Real Man™ endures, represses and battles his fear of becoming a burden by any means necessary. Which is a trope that also extends past the year's award-nominated dramas and into the realm of action.

Enter: Tom Cruise. While the Mission: Impossible franchise is a bankable vehicle for Cruise's stunt work, the stories have only gotten richer over the course of the last 22 years. In the latest, Fallout, his character Ethan Hunt grapples with the end of his marriage and how his very existence is a danger to his ex-wife. But instead of sharing this with his friends and contemporaries, he buries his grief until his enemies exploit it, with his emotional unavailability proving dangerous not just for him — who throws himself into dangerous situations to protect everybody he cares about — but for those who work alongside him. Ultimately, Mission: Impossible may be a loud, exciting, larger-than-life series, but the sounds of explosions balance Hunt's completely inability to speak up and surrender the myth that to be silent is to be strong.

This isn't breaking news, I know. The "strong, silent type" is a myth that's existed for eons and succeeds masterfully at pressuring men to avoid sharing how they feel in exchange for dubbing them keepers of traditional masculinity. (Think of every John Wayne role.) And that's a disservice because we know better. We know that bottling up feelings will lead to a person's undoing, and we know that gender roles are a myth further perpetuated by the belief that men can't be sensitive or articulate their emotions because doing so will jeopardize their reputations as "real." As though one forfeits strength by admitting vulnerability. As though softness will jeopardize the illusion that if one identifies with a specific gender, they must also uphold the traits that have led to that gender becoming toxic.

But the thing is, pop culture this year succeeded in drawing attention to just how damaging the myth of masculinity really is. In television, Bojack Horseman gave us a main character whose capacity (or sometimes lack thereof) for feeling and reflection has made the whole series a means through which we can explore the layers of humanity, while The Good Place uses its characters to explore social norms and their pitfalls. (To that end, so does The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel: Joel's season two monologue on whether we can ever really be forgiven was as heartbreaking as it was frustrating.) Over in music, Shawn Mendes used a recent interview with Rolling Stone to call out the pressure to seem heteronormative and traditionally masculine, while Harry Styles used his stage to celebrate inclusivity and self-expression. All of which are powerful — because to help break a taboo, it helps to see big names break it with you.

A Real Man™ endures, represses and battles his fear of becoming a burden by any means necessary...The 'strong, silent type' is a myth that's existed for eons and succeeds masterfully at pressuring men to avoid sharing how they feel.- Anne T. Donahue

And that's the thing: the most prominent messages don't tend to flash onscreen during the credits — they're often left for us to figure out for ourselves. Which is something the likes of Mission: Impossible, First Man and A Star Is Born succeeded at. Ethan Hunt grapples with his relevance, his legacy and his pain, and ends the movie surrounded by friends he's finally felt comfortable opening up to. First Man forces us to question whether it's worth it to force men like Neil Armstrong to sacrifice their humanity for, well, humanity. And while I truly hated A Star Is Born, it still excelled at the way we tend to romanticize tragedy and encourage men to avoid real vulnerability if it delivers unto us top 40 hits.

After all, maybe it's time to let the old ways die — at least in terms of how we discuss masculinity and the pressure that still exists for complex, complicated human beings to subscribe to an ideology that wants them to be much less.