It’s no secret at this juncture that there has been an ongoing “crisis of masculinity.” What that means, ultimately, is that most hetero men can’t fathom why their continued performance of outmoded masculine “ideals” aren’t translating and/or attracting women in the present. Enter Jessa Crispin to explain it all via the films of Michael Douglas, in a book titled What Is Wrong With Men. With the elaborate subtitle: Patriarchy, The Crisis of Masculinity and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything. And actually, they do. Particularly when presented as a trajectory of the steady decline of men in terms of how they view their “place” in society in what Crispin refers to repeatedly as a “post-patriarchal” world. And while many (especially women) assumed that life could surely only get better after the so-called destruction of the patriarchy, Crispin argues that it’s really much worse. And this because, instead of one’s gender being the “thing” that can get you ahead in this world, it’s now, instead, just straight-up cold, hard cash (or crypto, if you prefer).

By starting with 1987’s Fatal Attraction, it’s telling that Crispin would sidestep Douglas’ previous roles to include as characters warranting entire chapters, as the part of Dan Gallagher was integral to revealing both the shift in masculinity as the 1980s came to a close and where it was still stuck when the film was released. And as the end of the 80s/beginning of the early 90s marked the “finale” of second-wave feminism (meaning it had already been well underway and was reaching the type of plateau that started to make way for a necessary third wave), some might have naively believed that men had gotten at least somewhat used to the idea of equal rights for women (de facto, women making their own decisions and being financially independent). But Adrian Lyne’s wildly successful movie proved just how resentful men were of the feminist movement. As Crispin puts it, “We remember the first men who made a fuss about feminism and impeded its progress, and how could you not, as loud as they were being. Besides the grandstanding politicians and preachers and talk radio hosts, there were the men of the media, who, just for example, made something like Fatal Attraction, where a woman who had prioritized career over family and marriage was turned into a covetous monster, absolutely deranged by her underused womb, a destructive whirl of crazy.”

And yet, despite men pulling the strings in media and presenting such two-dimensional stereotypes of women (“virgin” or “whore”), Crispin posits that the people who were even more hostile toward the feminist cause were women themselves. It’s here that Crispin points out how outspoken anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant (major figureheads in the 1980s) actively worked to undermine the movement, as well as the Equal Rights Amendment (which, to this day, has not been officially added as the twenty-eighth amendment to the U.S. Constitution). These were women who argued that “if traditional divides between the sexes [were] not enforced…gender and sexual anarchy would follow.” The “traditional women,” as Crispin calls them, resented feminism as much as the type of men that would later mutate into incels. To them, it was a shift they didn’t ask for, and one that was detrimental to their entire way of life—as a woman like Dan Gallagher’s wife, Beth (Anne Archer), reflects in Fatal Attraction. Whereas Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) is the embodiment of the feminist “threat.” The ultimate unhinged representation of what feminism wreaks upon everyone and everything in its path. This includes the very fact that, for men of previous generations, having an affair with “some woman” was construed as a “nonevent.” As natural as “breathing,” really. Just ask JFK. And, appropriately, Crispin mentions the chasm between men having affairs in the 1960s versus the 1990s with the simple observation, “Marilyn Monroe had an affair with the president and took the story to her early grave; Monica Lewinsky did the same and went on national television.” (Though, to be fair, Lewinsky’s dalliance with “Bubba” was exposed primarily as a result of the Republican hard-on for discrediting Clinton and the Democrats in general.)

Lewinsky, in this sense, also followed in the footsteps of Alex Forrest for being “the problem” that wouldn’t “just go away.” Refused to understand that once she had been used for her “sexual purpose,” her “job” was to then just disappear and leave the man “in peace” (a.k.a. consequence-free for his actions) with his “good,” “traditional” wife. A trope that, in the 90s, even Hillary was styled to mimic—at least aesthetically.

This is why Fatal Attraction makes the deliberate point of emphasizing how Alex is the kind of woman who poses a threat as much to the Dans (read: average middle-class white men) as they do the Beths (read: “traditional” women a.k.a. homemakers) of the world. Or, as Crispin says, “The fact that Alex does eventually die—not by Dan’s hand but by his wife’s—shows just how destabilizing the ability of a woman to live outside of men’s structures really was. The patriarchal man isn’t the only one threatened by Alex and the ‘career women’ who crept around in the shadows of mass media’s imagination like baby-eating Baba Yagas. Alex is also a threat to Beth, the traditional wife and mother.”

However, in the next film that Crispin covers, 1989’s The War of the Roses, it’s the traditional wife and mother, Barbara Rose (Kathleen Turner), who threatens Oliver Rose’s (Douglas) very sense of identity when she one day “arbitrarily” decides that she wants a divorce after seventeen years of marriage. But Barbara’s “sudden” dissatisfaction with Oliver—the life she’s created itself—isn’t random at all. Rather, it goes back to what Betty Friedan had said in The Feminine Mystique: that being a wife and mother with so much more complexity and intelligence to offer beyond these two roles was billable as “the problem with no name.”

Fittingly, Crispin brings up another Betty—Broderick—in the opening to her chapter on The War of the Roses, describing how her story being splashed all over the media at that time was emblematic of a larger shift in the culture among women (though many wouldn’t go “so far” as to shoot their husband and his new, much younger wife). Crispin writes, “Betty Broderick was the aggrieved first wife, a figure that would become almost archetypal in this era of no-fault divorces and tabloid television. Born in 1947, she was coming of age just as the second wave of feminism was telling American women, especially the college-educated, white, upper-middle-class women like Betty… that they could and should be more than just a wife.” Oliver’s “little wife” is experiencing just such an epiphany after realizing that, now that her children have gone off to college and all she really has left to show for her existence are the various material objects she’s collected over the years for their house, she regrets all that she gave up to have a family. And especially regrets her years spent devoted to Oliver—to making his house a home, to ensuring his career advanced while she let her own dreams and aspirations recede. In short, she is Betty Broderick…with a very similar contempt to back it up. And, considering that feminism wasn’t exactly being incorporated into the male idea of what marriage “ought to be,” it wasn’t (and isn’t) surprising that many men found themselves oblivious to the ways in which their wives were changing as a result of the shift toward “post-patriarchy.” As Crispin underscores,

Marriage had in fact retained its patriarchal nature, and therefore was structured in such a way as to benefit primarily the man, often at the expense of the woman. Married men statistically lived longer than single men; married women statistically died younger than single women… In other words, marriage lengthened men’s lives while shortening women’s lives, essentially creating a parasitic relationship where a man sucked health and well-being directly out of his loved one’s body. There was a conflict at the heart of a lot of marriages, and many women were giving up the fight (or at least changing the venue to family court) when it turned out that their new vision for what a life of love could be did not match the reality they encountered in heterosexual relationships.”

The next “outing” Crispin focuses on in Douglas’ filmography is 1992’s Basic Instinct. A film with a movie poster that shows Douglas as Nick Curran still trying to appear all “romantic” and “solid” as Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) looks into the camera with a knowing and ominous expression that indicates Nick no longer knows what or who he’s dealing with when it comes to women and the world. In many ways, Basic Instinct took what Fatal Attraction did, in terms of being an erotic thriller, and ratcheted it up about ten thousand degrees. But what had also ratcheted up was the blatant disdain that women seemed to have for men. No longer even viewing them as necessary or useful (hence, Crispin’s chapter subtitle, “What If We Just Got Rid of All the Men?”). Though they were occasionally amusing to toy with. As Catherine Tramell, a “neo-femme fatale” for the 90s, shows throughout the Paul Verhoeven-directed/Joe Eszterhas-written movie. Even in a “maneuver” as simple as inviting him to a club where, in her heart of hearts (though that might be a void expression here), she knows he’ll feel out of place. Except that, the thing about masculinity, as Crispin reminds, is that, no matter where a white male is—and no matter how out of place—he still seems to assume “that he can just swagger in, take what he wants (drugs and ‘his’ woman) and leave.” And though he does end up leaving the club with Catherine, who brings him back to her place (another “sign o’ the times”), the sex they have is of the variety that caters far more to her “masculine” side than his. She’s the one in control; it’s a “tussle” both literal and metaphorical. And Catherine makes that abundantly clear when she ties his hands to the bed frame with a white silk scarf (the same kind seen during a key scene at the beginning of the movie) and uses him, essentially, like her own flesh-and-blood dildo as she jerks and bucks in just the right way to get what she wants out of him. When it’s over, he’s the one who needs to be held. Almost as if wanting to be reassured that he hasn’t been used. A cliché that, in the past, was always associated with women.

Yet despite Catherine repeatedly showing Nick who she is, he refuses to believe that she doesn’t ultimately want to fulfill the “traditional” woman’s dream of having a hetero happily ever after. He is back to being Dan Gallagher again—except this time, he actually wants this iteration of Alex Forrest to settle down with him. That all Nick can think to offer independently wealthy, artistically fulfilled and physically attractive Catherine is marriage and children just goes to show “how moribund the masculine imagination was in this moment [and even to this day].” Crispin then adds, “Men and women had been liberated from the traditional relationship structure. They can get divorced, they can have sex outside of marriage, they can love multiple partners. But our Michael Douglas character can’t think of any other way to structure his relationship with the woman he loves than the form that drove his first wife to suicide and Catherine to murder.”

Continuing to not quite chronologically explore the trajectory of Douglas’ characters and how each one showed a progressive “shapeshift” or “mutation” into something far more sinister and rudderless over the years, Crispin then goes on to discuss Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, D-Fens in Falling Down, Nick Conklin in Black Rain, President Andrew Shepherd in The American President, Tom Sanders in Disclosure and yet another “Nick” (last name: Van Orton) in The Game. It is in Wall Street, one of Douglas’ most well-known films, that Gekko gets to embody the side of “manhood,” as spurred by 80s-era Reaganomics, that promoted “a vision of the new corporate masculinity, where it’s not achievement but acquisition that is the true marker of a man.” In Falling Down, D-Fens is Gekko’s polar opposite. A “loser” because he can’t keep his job, therefore can no longer provide, let alone “acquire.” Crispin remarks of this divide between types of men in the new era of “masculinity” (post-patriarchy), “In Wall Street and Falling Down, Michael Douglas plays both sides of this economic transformation.” That transformation being one that implies a commitment to no values whatsoever—other than the “value” of profit. This going back to what Crispin theorizes has replaced patriarchy as the ultimate power: wealth. Put another way, “It’s only the man who honors nothing but his own self who succeeds, the man who values nothing other than the numbers in his accounts going up who wins.” In plainer language, fuck family, fuck loyalty, fuck country, fuck everything—except money. Greed is good. Of course, if it actually was, maybe the Earth wouldn’t be where it is at present: eighty-five seconds away from midnight on the Doomsday Clock.

Which brings us to 1995’s The American President (we’ll go back to Black Rain in a bit). Released at a point in Bill Clinton’s presidency when he hadn’t yet been fully “disgraced” (though Lewinsky bore the brunt of that descriptor), the movie still expresses a kind of contempt for what was happening to masculinity during this period. Not only that, but what was happening to America through American politics—intrinsically linked with masculinity (as has been tragically confirmed in the two presidential elections involving the Orange Creature). For, like men themselves, “America is in a period of decline. But instead of dealing with that fact, it remains in denial, lost in nostalgia.” Nostalgia, indeed, is what The American President runs on, as “Andrew Shepherd’s administration is also nostalgic, but for a different era… when the American government did the right thing whether the American people wanted it to or not” (at present, this is still happening, but there’s no way to argue to anyone with eyes that a “right thing” is being done). What should be obvious, however, is that the problem with relying on nostalgia to govern is that it’s “an active form of delusion, a story you tell yourself purposely to avoid seeing reality. This is why nostalgia takes over in times of great strife—it’s a coping mechanism that tells us there were better days in the past, so surely there are better days to come. This is also why it’s a useful political tool. It distracts citizens from the disappointment of reality and disguises political violence.”

Granted, it’s impossible (try as they might) to disguise the political violence that has been ongoing and escalating in the United States ever since the Orange Creature entered the picture. And perhaps Shepherd would have to spontaneously combust at the sight of his “leadership.” Then again, Shepherd is the type of “American president” who himself would refuse to look at all of his own “misdeeds.” To acknowledge the part he’s played in subjugating and suppressing—even if doing it “super nicely” and with only the “best” intentions. For, as Crispin states, “The patriarchy has generated self-serving myths of a god-given order to things (and when that didn’t work out it swapped out god for nature)[,] with the patriarch always conveniently placed on the top. And then they used the fear of an impending chaos that would follow the destruction of the hierarchy.”

This consistent refusal of most men—especially men in power—to “humble oneself, to stand down, to face the reality of diminished powers seems to be a defining characteristic of contemporary masculinity.” And with it, ironically enough, a general identity crisis. Not unlike the one that America has been having ever since the end of the Cold War, which seemed to not so coincidentally align with the crisis of masculinity that arose in the 1980s. The same decade the Berlin Wall would fall, literally and figuratively signaling the end of the Cold War. Yet, while the U.S. was quick to declare victory and happiness over this “logical” “denouement,” the country didn’t really know who it was without the Cold War anymore. All those decades of spying and worrying and threatening to “press the button”—what was everyone supposed to do now? Live happily ever after? Run off into the sunset after filling a few shopping bags up at the mall? No, it was all too disorienting, discombobulating. Worse still, now that capitalism was allowed its free rein throughout the parts of the globe that had once pledged allegiance to communism, it was fast looking like America wasn’t really “number one” after all. Another eerie parallel to when the “feminism dam” broke and it allowed women to see that men weren’t really “number one” either. It was just a myth that had been peddled through centuries of control and a lack of any real competition (in this instance, the real competition being women, who had instead been subjugated and used primarily for their free labor, whether emotional or otherwise).

This is where Black Rain comes in to meld the dual crises of America and its men. Crispin explains, “As the Cold War was ending, America had big divorced-man energy: walking around with an unearned arrogance, refusing to acknowledge past mistakes or screw-ups, taking credit for other people’s accomplishments, showing defiance in the face of other people’s boundaries or rules, attempting to woo partners that were way out of their league and basically running from the confusion that was lying just beneath the surface and bothering other people with it instead. It was the midlife crisis fantasy on steroids…” In effect, Black Rain “is essentially a midlife crisis movie. For the Michael Douglas character, but also for America.”

To regain control of the narrative and stave off unwanted/unpleasant notions of midlife crises, Nick is presented as the quintessential swaggering American who goes to a country whose culture and language he has no meaningful knowledge of, only to miraculously be able to “fix” the corruption within. Crispin adds, “However you want to understand this character—the white man, the American man, the colonizer man—he believes himself to be naturally dominant… This is the man who is going to set things right. So if he is struggling in some way, it’s because something has gone wrong—not with him, but with the system. If our Michael Douglas is not on top, it’s because the world has turned itself over.”

And this eventually brings the reader to the Disclosure portion of What Is Wrong With Men. A film that has a poster with a very similar look to Basic Instinct’s. Except in this one, Douglas bears the kind of fearful, “what the fuck” expression on his face that’s usually associated with women when they’re around a lecherous man. The lecherous man in this case (and movie poster) being Demi Moore, in the role of Meredith Johnson (even her last name is phallic). Released in 1994, the script was adapted by Paul Attanasio from the Michael Crichton book of the same name (which also came out in ‘94). So maybe Attanasio can’t be entirely blamed for the core “message” of the story, which turns out to be that men are “frequent” victims of women’s sexual harassment and “evil” machinations as well. After all, isn’t that what feminism under capitalism is bound to translate to? Equal “fucking someone over” rights for women? That appears to be what Disclosure is offering as a reality to audiences, in addition to validating the male fear that if women are given too much power, they’re only going to use it to destroy men. And if women can’t be “trusted” either, why not just keep things the way they are? Crispin writes of watching Disclosure that it’s “like a two-hour version of this conversation[:] ‘Well, what about men?’ say the men when a woman says she’s having a problem. What about my problem? When are we going to talk about me again?… The protesting men are trying to avoid the information that these problems are structural rather than individual. [And] if the world actually is set up to disadvantage whole groups of people, it would require substantial changes to rectify that. And if things do change, that might mean that, after the changes, their position might decline.”

Of course, as many have observed, even the most “in decline” position of a man is still better than most women’s “average” position. And, incidentally, in David Fincher’s The Game, it takes putting Nicholas Van Orton into that state of decline to make him see even a glimmer of life outside his own bubble. Van Orton, as far as Crispin is concerned, is an amalgam of every other role mentioned in the book that Michael Douglas has played, “distilled into its purest form. All the facets he’s performed in the movies before are revealed to be part of the same crystalline structure. The wealth of Wall Street, the personal failures of Falling Down, the broken marriage of [The] War of the Roses, the woman trouble of Basic Instinct, the authority and power of The American President, the daddy issues from all of them.” To be sure, at least half of Nick’s hate for himself and his life might vanish were it not for spending every waking minute working to protect and emulate his father’s “legacy.” A legacy that means ensuring the business keeps running and the numbers keep crunching, making Nick a very rich man, but someone who, like so many men conditioned to emulate a defunct version of masculinity, feels “the intense absence of an emotional self, and a powerful incapacity for relationship[s]. There is nothing in his life that brings him joy or pleasure or meaning… [Nick’s] path follows a very old-fashioned way of thinking about legacy and patriarchy. It’s the thing of monarchs and emperors. The father manages the empire, the son replaces him as emperor. His only job is to protect what his father created.” Even if it comes at the cost of suppressing what he wants for himself, ergo his own identity.

Through a series of elaborate, well, “pranks” one might call them, Nicholas is at last able to pull his head out of his own ass by the time the eponymous “game” is over. Yet, just because he is ready and open to changing his behavior doesn’t mean he will. Because, as Crispin notes, “The film doesn’t show the results. There is a broken, vulnerable man who has hit rock bottom and is now ready for real, sustainable change. But the story is left with a dot dot dot.” Or an ellipsis, if you prefer. An ellipsis that “will be a recurring trope in Michael Douglas films that come after The Game… A man is in the process of transformation, but the screen fades to black right as he emerges from his cocoon.” Still begging the question that Crispin asks after: “What does a reformed man look like?” As the rest of the book unfurls, taking what has been presented in these Douglas movies and explaining why this version of masculinity is so flawed (and unsatisfying to men and women alike), Crispin does what she can to not only imagine that reformed man, but the steps necessary to get him to that point. And it begins, first and foremost, with “reintegration, starting with the very local. Resentment keeps a person impotent, scarcity keeps them selfish and paranoid and grievance keeps them isolated… The tools of patriarchy—exclusion and dominance—will only create new divisions. And the tools of post-patriarchy—greed and competition—will destroy a collective’s goodwill.”

Even though many people, somewhere deep down, are aware of this fact, of the ways in which patriarchy and post-patriarchy are detrimental to everyone’s soul, they still can’t stop looking to the classic examples of “how to be.” The movies that showed what a “real” man or “real” woman was and what a “great” life ought to consist of. Which is why Crispin also writes on the final page of the book, “Still I see people with their noses pressed against their screens, believing the fantasies that this is what is required of them, this is what a good life is, this is what creates happiness. And it’s all still about money, ambition, property. It fosters envy instead of curiosity. It stunts development and lets whole sectors of the human psyche go to rot.” Regardless, it appears, somehow, to comfort people—these anachronistic “ideals” of masculinity. Even as it cripples them at the same time.