Jonah Hill’s debut film, Mid90s, a “coming of age” tale set around the skate parks of Nineties LA, opens with such a violent beating of a boy by his brother that there was a communal intake of breath as we watched it. The sound of flesh being pummelled is sickeningly real, matched with the repeated crunch of the boy’s head against the floor in a dingy, claustrophobic chartreuse passageway; a scene of domestic hell.
I wanted to shout, “Why didn’t you warn me?” to the PR but it sets the tone for a film that deftly zooms in on the undertone of violence in the protagonist’s lives and the seductive pull of it. And how growing up around deprivation means you are doubly vulnerable to the message that being a man means you must hang tough, whatever the cost.
Most youth culture still pushes this message, through the films they watch, the computer games they play, the music pumped into their ears. In contrast, Hill’s gentle but punchy film explores the heart-breaking emotions behind the ill-conceived actions of young, angry, confused boys without judgment.
We need many more films such as this … culture can’t solve a rampant drug trade ruining lives but it can change societal perceptions. And sometimes that’s the first necessary step. There’s been a lot of talk about “toxic masculinity” and how it affects women. It affects men, too, in devastating, life-threatening ways. Another 19-year-old fatally stabbed the day before yesterday. Boys being ambushed, murdered with such ferocity and cruelty it makes you recoil.
Some 41 per cent of offenders between 15 and 19 are responsible for knife crime; eight per cent between 10 and 14 and the attacks are becoming more ferocious. “Excluded from school, no significant role model in their life, involved in petty crime very early on; they come from a household known to social services…”
These were the common links listed by the Chief Superintendent of Scotland Yard this week as he revealed the grim statistics and pleaded for every profession to work together. The above doesn’t explain away a lot of the victims we’ve seen lately — boys from families doing fine but in poor boroughs, children seduced by a deadly lifestyle that traps them in violence.
I’ve watched hormones hit my son like a freight train; the explosions of aggression at home when he feels under pressure or upset. Like lots of his friends, he feigns a mock “gangsta” outlook. Only buried deep under the bravado are his deeply felt teen insecurities. With different circumstances, it could be my husband and I desperately tracking our teenager in the streets as he disappears into the arms of an older crowd.
"The stereotyping around men damages our society: schools excluding boys because they’re rough and not likeable"
My social feed is full of hashtags for women but where are the campaigns for boys? We need to fight just as hard for them. The stereotyping around men is also deeply damaging to our society. Schools excluding boys because they’re rough, unmanageable and not very likeable. Too many teachers are women, who don’t know how to handle them. Boys used by drug dealers because they know how to tap into their dreams of being “men”, carrying guns and knives. We helped create that.
These boys deserve to come of age. Society owes it to them that they don’t take the blame for our failings to enable change.
I love AOC but have we noticed what she stands for?
Like many other fans, I’m taken with AOC, a Democrat female politician so popular she’s got her own abbreviation.
Aged 29, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez swept into government during the recent mid-term US elections and ever since has been elevated into the upper strata of the Twittersphere. Admittedly, until recently I didn’t take much notice of her politics — it’s her smile that makes you feel like the world is OK, the red lippy messaging femininity alongside her punchy persona.
Who couldn’t fall for the cute dance she whipped up on Instagram to her 2.2 million followers with the tagline “Congresswomen dance, too” (in response to a failed attempt to humiliate her with old video footage).
“Go girl”, we all messaged back with emoji fist- pumps. This week she wore a white cape to Trump’s State of the Union Speech, which endeared her to a new legion of fashion fans. So desperate are we for young women in politics shouting a positive message of hope and fighting for actual climate change that the dreary details of what else they stand for can pass us by.
But for many voters and Democrats, her policies on green initiatives and her tax policies when looked at closely may seem a dance-step too-far. A burgeoning Twitter account and sparky ideas need to be grounded in hard research and fact. With that done, then you have a true political pin-up.
*Instagram succumbs. Its new leader, Adam Mosseri, announces it will remove all offending images of self-harm “as quickly as we can …” A blurry picture of a man’s genitals or a woman’s nipple are removed within hours. Every time. So absolutely no excuses. Mosseri, be warned, we will be watching.
