Answering Your Questions: Men and the Arts
Recently we opened up the blog to your suggestions of topics to address. Three suggestions were received, and today we are dealing with the second of them. Remember, the purpose of these posts is to foster ongoing reflection and discussion. So let’s comment on these, folks.
Today’s topic comes from Dan, a student at the North Carolina School of the Arts. When he looks at his campus, he sees that the dominant make up is women, effeminate/passive men, and homosexuals. This leads him to wonder why the arts have left men behind.
This is an interesting topic to address, and I’ll preface by saying that these are just my two cents. I don’t have a definitive answer. But I do see certain trends that I believe have contributed to this situation.
First, our culture has lost a definition of manhood. It’s not just that the arts lack men. Most areas of culture lack men, including the church.
Obviously, we have lots of biologically male adults out there. But that doesn’t make them men. Manhood in general is being eroded, and not always in the ways that we would think. It cuts two ways. When we act as if we can just define manhood and womanhood however we want, willy-nilly, there’s trouble. If I decide that I should just let my wife lead the home because it comes more naturally to her, I’m not working with a biblical definition of manhood.
But when we harden cultural gender distinctions into hard and fast rules that apply to all times and all places we get trouble too. For example, if I decide that I will never do laundry in my house because that is “women’s work” then I’m not working with a biblical definition of manhood either.
I think this is what happens in the arts. Art, by its very nature has to do with an appreciation of and sensitivity to beauty. Yet culturally, sensitivity and love of beauty is usually attributed to women. Biblically, that’s not the case (see, e.g., Psalm 27.4). Thus, men tend to gravitate away from the arts, which demand such sensitivity. And the only model of sensitivity to beauty available for men who find themselves drawn to the arts is effeminate. Thus, they don’t know how to be both masculine and artistic/sensitive to beauty. And in some cases, they are probably told by the culture that if they are artistic that they can’t be masculine.
This is an area where the culture needs to be redeemed. We need, first of all, to have good, biblical definitions of manhood and womanhood. Second, we need to be able to produce a biblical account of the beautiful and artistic, so that neither men nor women are excluded form participation in the arts.
Well, that’s my two cents. What do you think?
Also, note that our resource page has links to several books, etc. on gender issues.
Posted by: Gene Schlesinger
excellent post.
So how do men break this incorrect gender thinking? What can I do about it?
thanks
First, be very familiar with what the Bible teaches about gender and manhood. Know God’s created order. Know how it is redeemed in Christ.
Second, be very conversant with what the culture is doing with gender: how is it being devalued, twisted? What cultural expressions differ from the Bible’s teaching? What cultural expressions aren’t at odds with the Bible, but also are not laid out in the Bible?
Third, live out biblical manhood within the cultural context. This is hard. A lot of times it will clash with the culture. Sometimes you’ll seem chauvinistic. Other times you might seem “unmanly” because the cultural definition of manhood doesn’t allow for certain things. In those cases, be careful in how you go against culture…1 Corinthians 11 indicates that, in general, we should stay within cultural gender norms. I guess what you would need to do is not worry about being “unmanly,” but avoid being effeminate. There is a difference…but it’s hard to map out. That’s why we have to be rock solid on our definition of manhood.
Finally, we need to develop a theological account of the aesthetic, the beautiful, art. Some of this is underway already. But more needs to be developed. As someone conversant in both Christianity and the arts, you can help further that conversation.
Check out http://www.cbmw.org for some additional resources on gender (biblical and cultural).
hi. i think it’s worth mentioning that our culture does not regard the majority of art forms and aesthetics as highly as many do and used to. we’re all so americanized that anything not creating maximum revenue and maximum output isn’t at the top of the list. this, of course, leaves those artistic exceptions of movies and sho-biz. my point, i think, being that our culture still maintains the old idea of “hysteria” and frivolity when it comes to ladies– and those things seen as frivolous are associated as women’s things. because, obviously, men never do anything whimsical. always very sensible. so the two paths are there… either the men should feel stoic about it, or they have to jump ship and feel like rubenesque, girly men.
so… yea. culture constructs gender. but gender doesn’t define sex, so disallowing cultural constructions to rattle your ideas about males and/or females. this is a good place to return to thinking about redeeming the parts of our culture that have left from bringing glory to God. He didn’t create half of eden for adam and half for eve… He gave all the beauty in the world and beyond for man and woman to enjoy and create together.
so there, manly men. forget your pride, paint the roses.
(hey, hey! first blog entry. and i got to use the word rubenesque.)
You’re right about the productivity thing…but I would twist it a little more. American society doesn’t really PRODUCE any more. We’ve become consumers, almost exclusively so. In his treatment on the transition from modern to postmodern cities, Graham Ward points out that in the postmodern city we don’t really aspire to things anymore…instead, the city is laid out in such a way as to create desire for things, which we then buy. The city is designed just to sell us stuff. We are dutiful servants of the market. Think about the stimulus checks the government sent to us this summer. They were premised on the idea that we’d go out and consume…buy stuff and all of our problems will go away.
So, whereas it’s true that men are typically constructed as sensible and productive, in our current context even men aren’t really sensible and productive. They are blatant consumers of frivolity (think about Fight Club and buying ikea furniture). It’s just a different frivolity than the women.
this is good stuff. i like. keep doing.
by the way… this is the guy who decides who is a real man.
I’ve had some conversations with gay men and found myself very grieved that our culture has decided that just because a boy would rather nurture a doll than play with guns and trucks, a guy would rather sing Broadway songs with the choir than play football, or a man would rather be an artist or fashion consultant than work in construction, that they’re automatically gay. Makes me wonder how many have Taken on this identity because they somehow figured they just didn’t fit into the culture’s idea of a “real man.” The truth is, God has all those wonderful artistic and nurturing characteristics that he put in women and men alike, and I can only imagine how grieved His heart must be that such pure traits have been attributed to something that’s far from what God intended for us.