Examples Of Masculinity In The Wizard Of Oz

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Henry Gruger English 112 Finan 10/26/14 The Pressure of Being a Man In the movie The Wizard of Oz, the Great and Powerful Oz is supposed to be considered the ultimate alpha male. He is the feared yet admired by all for his all knowingness and his ability to grant wishes. However, “The climactic scene…where Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal a nervous, tragic man pretending to be the Great and Powerful Oz represents more than just a classic moment in American cinematic history” (Katz 16). It is also a metaphor for how masculinity is portrayed in American men today. Masculinity is not something that every man is born with. Men are not all naturally gifted with the traits that make them confident in themselves as men. With the way…show more content…
They didn’t even gain the right to vote until the 1920’s. They have always been looked at as the inferior sex in almost all categories. They were the ones who were supposed to stay home and watch over the children while the husbands got jobs and worked out in the real world making a difference. This was the societal standard even into the mid to late 1980’s. However, when the 1990’s began a lot of feminist movements began that spoke out to the fact that women should have more of a role in society than just to cook and clean. This is when women started competing with men for jobs and education like they never had before. “Young men…have been challenged by women in areas that our fathers and grandfathers never were—in education, the workplace, business, the professions” (Katz 17). For a lot of men, this is a difficult thing to deal with. Being in a position where a male is not the dominant sex can really make one begin to doubt their masculinity. In a society where males and females compete for everything, it is hard for a male to establish himself. This can be seen metaphorically through Fight Club when Marla Singer invades The Narrator’s support groups. Those meetings allow him to sleep at night and this is his peace. He goes on to talk about how much she hates her for being a faker and plans on saying, “…Marla, you big fake, you get out” (Palahniuk 24). This shows the irony that he wants her to leave for being a faker although he is just as much at fault. This can be related to men being angry that women were coming in and competing for jobs even though it was a completely reasonable thing to
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