When Boys are Men (Boys dont cry) essays

When Boys are Men (Boys dont cry) essays Smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, speeding on the open road, yelling out curse words, and getting into fights is what a man is supposed to do and Brandon Teena is into all of that and even more. Boys Dont Cry focuses on the complicated story of Teena Brandon, a young girl whose sustained efforts to suppress her gender and decided she wanted to be a man. She cut her hair short, taped her breasts back, put a sock down the front of her pants, and switched her name around to Brandon Teena. She hides her female identity and seeks the excitement of a new love and of male bonding with new friends. She made a social transformation into a boy but punished by the intolerance of those who refuse to see beyond her body. The film touches upon the issues that concern the difference between being a lesbian and being a woman who feels she is a man. Throughout history the American culture has established roles and expectations for females and males. The film is successful in emphasizing the other ch aracters ignorance, driven hatred and use of violence as a manifestation of their sense of manhood. Brandon ironically, is just the kind of man every girl wants, sweet and sensitive but he does not fit the role that Americans know men to be. He was hugely successful with women who seemed to have little trouble buying his identity as a man probably because they didnt want to believe that there would be such a thing, in their town, as a woman trying to be a man. He repeatedly found him-self in trouble with the law due to peer pressure of trying to be a man. He was always trying to impress the girls by drinking and hanging out with the guys because that is what men are supposed to do in our culture. He felt he was doing what he was supposed to do when youre a boy. Brandon embodies the ongoing dilemma of masculine identity. But she knows what she wants, to live as a boy, fall in love with a girl, and...