Instant Favorite.

Don't Believe the Hype

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The documentary raises some valid points, but ends up very superficial. The downfall starts with blaming of superheroes and video games. The old stereotypes from the brainwashed boy are popping up, that are refuted in a lot of studies. Sure, media has influence, but the "how" and the "how much" only implied. The study it presents is from the 70ies and 80ies and hardly representative of the present state of psychology.As such it feels the movie pushes a narrative. Some of the interviewed people offer only anecdotal reference and some just lack any credentials for the issues they discuss. At times it feels weirdly constructed, as with the vilification of porn segment. Even Philip Zimbardo only conjures the old outsider-stereotype and an extremely bold statement like "violance against women is at epidemic proportions" is not supported by any historical figures. Questionable feminist terms like "rape culture", "entitlement" and "privilege" are thrown around.The main topic of this film is very important and current and at times it seems the film is highlighting the right issues. But ultimately it looses itself in general attack on anything that it perceives masculine. I wish it was more subtle in the approach and better researched and balanced.

The film, The Mask You Live In, demonstrates the difficulties that men face in society to fulfill the expectations associated with the idea of manhood. The film illustrates the pressure from parents and other adults to limit the expression of emotions because it is viewed as a weak and negative characteristic that is typically associated with girls. The mindset of constantly hiding emotions and portraying a sense of toughness, just to make sure one does not loose their manhood, can lead to bullying or depression because it psychologically affects boys and men. Additionally, media plays a significant role in pressuring the idea of manhood because it illustrates a limited view of what men should be. A significant amount of violence and porn can influence how men treat women in society simply to prove their manhood. I think the film does a great job at showing these ideas to the audience to help understand the mix messages society creates to define manhood, and the need to redefine the ideas and concepts of manhood.

This infomercial, I refuse to call it a documentary, is extremely creative in its deceptiveness. Besides being entirely inspired through the narrow, uncritical lens of feminist theory, this production never admits this. It has been specifically designed to groom the viewer into feminist ideology. I could not be more offended about the hypocrisy of this production. Imagine for just a moment, an all male production in the modern age, told through some narrow male ideology, defining female problems, explaining the lived female experience, providing contrived statistics produced through this narrow male ideology and proscribing the solutions to these female problems. I can only imagine the outrage. I can't even count the number of times that in feminist circles it has been stated unequivocally that men cannot understand female experience and that it is misogynist to even try...clearly double standards are perfectly fine as long as they benefit women. The anecdotes and the problems men experience are all real, it is the explanations for those problems that are either lacking or outright deceptive. Women's role in men's problems is completely ignored. Single mother households, something that is completely ignored (they are called single parent families...would not want to bring attention to the fact that 90% of single parent families are led by a mother...such a distraction to feminists...) in the program, is a massive factor in most of the statistics offered...suicide, school drop outs, criminal activity... It's a massive omission...and the "other" single parent families, those led by a father, do not experience these problems on anything like the same scale...both sons and daughters do much better in a father led single parent family than in one led by a mother...almost as well as intact two parent families in fact. Apparently that was not worth mentioning to the producers of this program. This is not at all surprising because if you know anything about feminist ideology, you would know that the ideology has serious problems with marriage...as in I am fairly confident that good feminists would like to see it abolished. If the above is not convincing enough, now we have to turn to the bogus statistics and crisis language that is used in the program, in particular, in regards to rape. A huge flag went up when the narrative promoted the idea of "rape culture". I am kind of surprised that this program went there. The producers had kept their agenda on such a subliminal level for the most part up to that point. The idea that we live in a "rape culture" has always been a huge stretch. Everyone, and I do mean everyone...at least in this country, is aware that rape is highly illegal. In prison, even among the concentration of violent criminals found there, rapists are at the bottom of the food chain. Everyone knows that. Even RAINN, the largest and most important anti-rape organizations had this to say about "rape culture"...and I quote "Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime." Feminists, of course, denounced this judgment but this does not alter the fact that feminists were happily quoting the statistics of the organization for many years before this apostasy. Feminists didn't realize that RAINN was interested in facts, not ideology. The other false statistic is THAT 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted on campus...what the program does not bother to tell you is that the study was done at only two universities, was done online, and suffered from a high non-response bias...super misleading. It is not to say that sexual assault is not a serious problem, it is. It's just not a crisis or an epidemic. The truth is that women have never been safer from violence, sexual or otherwise, in western societies now than at any point in human history...but, you see, that doesn't fit the feminist narrative, so it is omitted.In conclusion, I am both very disappointed, because men do experience a long litany of problems and they are rarely discussed, and offended...the producers didn't even feel the need to include a token male in the production when all of them would have been deeply offended at the reverse. I can't imagine that they couldn't have thought about and discussed that. Is it possible that they are so blinded by their ideology that they couldn't see the double standard? It beggars the imagination. I just wish that the resources that were used in creating this deceptive piece of indoctrination and feminist ideological grooming could have been used for another purpose, mainly the solutions to the many problems that men face. What a waste of time and resources.

I'll start with saying I understand the motivation behind making this film. I think there needs to be much more discussion about these sorts of issues. There is a lot of social dysfunction in the world and men suffer the consequences and are a big part of the causes of this dysfunction. But so are women and they don't feature at all in this film, like they are just spectators or victims and not active participants. They had lots of guys sharing their experiences and that's nice and its important to tell those stories, but I consider myself an average guy and I never had any of these issues. I don't see myself or any of my friends in this film. It's like they missed out whole sections of society Because I can't see myself in the film I draw the conclusion that this film isn't relevant to me or the people I know. This perception may not be correct, but that's the way I see it. I thought in some respects this was a really silly and annoying film. It started by suggesting that masculinity is bad and not real because it's just a distortion or absence of femininity (like how darkness is absence of light and not "a real thing"). That put me off right from the start. I hoped it would get better but it didn't.Having just watched it, I can't actually recall many facts that were relevant. Mostly how boys/men are bad and bad things happen to them and how they perform worse than girls etc. Plus just lots of random people spouting their opinions without much justification. We are supposed to just take "experts" opinions as facts. This annoyed me even more. People can't seem to tell the difference between facts and opinion and there is no credible contrarian view when appropriate, so this is just a big propaganda piece (some parts). This film doesn't use facts of logic, it uses emotional appeal, manipulation and biased opinions. Nothing wrong with that as long as people are aware. Then they say insanely stupid stuff like: "boys can't tell the difference between reality and video games." That really got me mad. I run around lopping off people's heads with light sabers, but that doesn't influence me in real life in the slightest. I thought it was a bit rich that a film about men and masculinity was directed and produced entirely by women. Imagine a film entirely directed and produced by men, about femininity, telling women they need to do this and that. I'm not saying you can't do that, it just doesn't carry as much weight for me. Plus I guess its OK if you buy into the narrative that men and women are all the same (which I don't).I did like the last 5min though. Generally a good summary that gets some key points across.I wanted to like this film, but if I were to summarize the message of the film, it would be: "Men are bad and need to be more like women and just accept that as fact because we said so."I gave it a 3 because I didn't like the film, but I didn't hate it enough to give it a worse rating. It is a topic that needs more discussion, just not like this.