The Bikeriders
Gareth Higgins on THE BIKERIDERS
I don’t like the term “toxic masculinity” - while it may accurately describe something, the way it’s used may suggest that just being a guy is a problem. I prefer “unintegrated masculinity”, whose antidote is found in consciously apprenticing to wiser people in order to balance the parts of the psyche that some call sovereign (or decider), warrior-protector (not aggressor), magician (not manipulator) and lover (not seducer). Such integration encompasses “masculine” and “feminine”; strength and kindness can manifest at the same time, whatever the gender of the person doing the manifesting.
Jeff Nichols makes films about people needing - and sometimes seeking this kind of integration. His Take Shelter is profoundly astute, as Michael Shannon plays an under-resourced, terrified man who after a breakdown can become the very person that his community needs to help them feel safe. It’s comforting to imagine that instead of losing your mooring that the world around you has gone mad. Finding your center can be more important than changing your circumstances.
Nichols’ newest film, The Bikeriders, based on Danny Lyon’s iconic book about a Midwest motorcycle club is a very accomplished film about men who have lost something, but don’t quite know what they’re looking for. They fill the emptiness by joining other guys, none of whom have experienced the validations offered by everyday life: a fulfilling (nuclear) family, a meaningful job, a sense of purpose beyond themselves. Instead they find mutual recognition by membership in a group that tells itself the story that it’s rebellious. They call themselves the Vandals, initially a fantasy, but eventually it surprises even them to discover that the local police and fire brigade are scared of these guys in leather jackets. One of the great strengths of The Bikeriders is that it shows how, once guys get together primarily in opposition to the boundaries that have left them feeling on the outside, violence may be inevitable if you don’t make preemptive commitments not to use it. The club’s leader, Johnny, played by Tom Hardy in what I think may be my favorite of his performances is a dive bar Don Corleone, wanting to prevent his community from being hijacked into something much darker than just making a lot of noise on bikes or in pubs. Once they burn down another guy’s pub the Rubicon has been crossed; but the point he wants to make in burning it down is that the club is sacrosanct; that (motor) oil is thicker than blood, and that insisting that someone should take off a jacket because it’s displaying club colors is asking for trouble.
That someone, (Benny, played by Austin Butler - a true movie star) says you’d have to kill him to get him to remove the jacket. Why people would feel that strongly about a fashion choice is a deeply important question, because if we can understand the reasons for dangerous belonging - the kind that not only might get you killed, but lead you to burn someone’s house down - we might be able to meet the needs behind those reasons in a more life-giving way.
It’s not rocket science. Discerning why good people do bad things, or merely why ordinary people do selfish things isn’t difficult: people do everything because of the legitimate need for shelter, which is much more than four walls and a roof. Sometimes it’s less than those walls and roof, because shelter is really about belonging: you can get by with very little in the material world if you know that there’s a people - not necessarily a place - you can call home.
In my favorite scene of the year so far, Shannon monologues about being refused to join the Army and go to Vietnam. Like much of the dialogue in The Bikeriders, it’s based on transcripts of Lyon’s interviews; and like much of the imagery in this film (one of those great period pieces that looks like the cinematographer used a time machine) it’s as if he’s talking directly to us. The humiliation he experienced at the hands of people too elite to realize their power (or perhaps just elite enough to enjoy misusing it) - from the military recruiters to academic institutions to his brother - is not difficult to understand. Many of us have had moments of being looked down upon or excluded. Some of us withdraw into depression or self-victimization; it may also make us willing to compromise other values in exchange for belonging to people who treat us like we matter.
Mutual recognition has been brought into focus in the past few months for me as personal circumstances have required it. The illness of a beloved family member has made my life feel smaller and more focused than usual; meanwhile the swirl in the world of “politics” and “the news” has seemed too huge to manage. Some “small” things are so important that nothing else matters; some “big” things are presented as so big that I cannot influence them but only be sucked into their vortex. But at the end of the day, every thing comes down to the same thing: beneath all anger is fear, and beneath all fear is concern for what we love. The meaning of life has to do with learning to love and be loved - if you can build a community that leaves people feeling loved, they will put up with a lot of hassle to be part of it.
That’s the explanation not only for why Johnny wants to start a club, and why Danny wants to be in it, but also why Cathy - the woman Danny makes his wife (and I do mean “makes” - his disturbing mating ritual crosses a line between wooing and coercion) - stays so long. Brilliantly played by Jodie Comer, the anchor of this film, Cathy puts up with more than rough and tumble because it gives her man a place to belong. Once that rough and tumble threatens his life, and her safety, she knows it's time to leave.
The liberation of the open road has perfectly understandable appeal; everyone has the right to follow their bliss. The question for those of us who know that my legitimate shelter will not be strengthened by undermining yours is how to nurture cultures of belonging that don’t depend on diminishing the belonging of others.
The Bikeriders asks some of the most pressing questions - How can you get to a fully realized expression of life (including legitimate rage about authentic injustices without that rage becoming violence; or grief at authentic loss without that grief becoming self-harm or harmful projection) that takes life seriously enough without taking ourselves too seriously? How can we embody strength without conflating it with hostility?
Part of its answer is to push back on the gender essentialism typically associated with biker culture - alpha males and pretty girls. It doesn’t just show how violence begets itself, but that in the aftermath of violence, there are always tears. One key difference between The Bikeriders and other stories of unintegrated masculinity and group membership (including not just The Godfather, but Easy Rider and Goodfellas) is that this film eventually lets the tears flow. It knows that a crying man might be halfway to being a whole one.
Kathleen Norris’ THREE THINGS: CLOTHED IN LANGUAGE
I’ve been thinking about a book I recently encountered, Clothed In Language by Pauline Matarasso, a poet, scholar, and to my mind a great Christian theologian . She’s given to pithy wisdom. “Our only gift to God,” she writes, “is attention,” a notion very much in agreement with Buddhism. I relish all the truth I find in her writing: “Evil is inherently weak and would die if we ceased to feed it;” and “It is we, not God, who limit the operation of his mercy.”
Matarasso’s self-assessment is one I relate to, and her vivid imagery makes it come to life: “I am two people, always. The infant Christ is for ever being born in me, unheralded, unexpected, undeserved...And always there is the old Adam, refusing to give place; a creature of habit, ensconced, as heavy-shouldered as a nightclub bouncer.”
Clothed in Language feels like the product of years of meditation and contemplation, and leaves no room for the ego-aggrandizing notion that our inspirations and desires are divinely inspired. This book, like holy scripture, holds up a mirror to us, reflecting us as we are, and not as we imagine ourselves to be. One line made me gasp, laugh, and then settle into admiration for an insight into something I know is true of me whenever I’m faced with doing what seems right, even though I know it will require a measure of self-sacrifice. It’s Matarasso’s definition of “God’s will,” which she calls the “next thing I least want to do.” That rings so true it hurts.