Angry White Men

Director Peter Hutchison’s film is essentially an extended illustrated lecture by sociologist Michael Kimmel of the State University of New York at Stony Brook that is based on research he conducted for his 2013 book Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. Kimmel seeks to explain the causes behind the country’s highly polarized and often volcanic politics—particularly the rage expressed by many white men at what they perceive as their victimization. That attitude, Kimmel argues, is central to the rise of Donald Trump and the hostility to liberals, feminists, and immigrants exhibited by his base. Kimmel’s analysis suggests that the fundamental force at work here is downward socioeconomic mobility, which has frustrated white American males’ ability to support their families as their fathers did—i.e., as the breadwinners while their wives stay at home and rear the children. According to Kimmel, their failure to realize this antiquated concept of "what it means to be a man" has led many to seek validation in prejudice, men’s rights movements, and white supremacy—a trend that Kimmel claims was further encouraged by the election of Barack Obama, which fanned racism among white middle-class men who saw it as yet more proof of the triumph of "the other." The solution, says Kimmel, lies in finding ways to allow these men to find dignity within new standards of masculinity that are suited to the changed contemporary world. Interview clips accompanying Kimmel’s presentation lifts Angry White Men from the realm of pure abstraction, but it remains more a timely dissection of the problem than a recipe for its solution. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)