Monday, October 28, 2019

Adam Driver Thinks He's "Part of the Problem"


In a recent interview in Men’s Health, Adam Driver known best for his roles in HBO’s series Girls and as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars franchise, admits that he isn’t “exactly sure what [toxic masculinity] means.” His character in Girls could usually be found shirtless, spewing profanity at women, and being emotionally manipulative towards them. His character was also known to use physical violence around women, breaking furniture and belongings within fights. His character (also named Adam) was known to display situational couple violence, by using physical force without context of control. His character in Star Wars shows him, again, being a poor communicator and relying heavily on physical force to display dominance. Driver explains that his conservative and religious upbringing sheltered him from a lot of pop culture and films, so he only recently began to explore medias. When asked about the toxic masculinity within Fight Club, Driver admitted that he wasn’t familiar with that term and joked that it could be because “[he’s] part of the problem.” This was unnerving to read, because here is someone who is known for taking roles that exhibit men using violence/physical force to exert their masculinity and it seems as though Driver doesn’t even understand the potential effects of this. Driver’s characters exhibit heterosexual, violent masculinity and this falls in line with current hegemonic views of masculinity. Rather than attempting to understand the archetypes he’s playing or attempt to “queer” the ideals of masculinity, he performs under slight ignorance. 

https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a29536370/adam-driver-toxic-masculinity/

1 comment:

Saffy said...

That is absolutely wild, and so interesting to think about! I always got the impression that Adam Driver was an educated guy doing these roles for a subversive reason but I guess that was just me projecting onto him. My mind is sort of blown that someone could take on these kinds of roles without really thinking about their broader societal impact and context. At least his comment shows he might start looking into these ideas about toxic masculinity. Great post!