What Is Wrong with Men Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything

A hilarious, ambitious work of trenchant cultural criticism that traces the origins of today’s crisis of masculinity through . . . Michael Douglas’s oeuvre from the eighties and nineties

How to be a Man? That question—and all the anxiety, anger, and resentment it stirs up—is the starting point for a crisis in masculinity that today manifests as misogyny, nativism, and corporate greed; incels and mass shooters; and panic over the rights of women and minorities. According to Jessa Crispin, creator of the celebrated blog BookSlut, it is the most important question of our time, and the answer to it might be found in an unlikely place: the films of Michael Douglas. 

In the 1980s, the rules for masculinity began to change. The goal was no longer to be a good, respectable family man, carrying on the patriarchal traditions of generations past. Not only was it becoming unfashionable, but increasingly difficult: the economic and political shifts—a slashed social safety net, globalization—made it harder to find a breadwinning income, a stable home life, and a secure place in the public sphere. So, then, how to be a man? From the early eighties to the late nineties, Michael Douglas showed us how: he was our president, our Wall Street overlord, our mass shooter, our failed husband, our midlife crisis, our cop, and our canary in the patriarchal coal mine. His characters were a mirror of our cultural shift, serving as the foundation for everything from the 1994 Crime Bill to Trump’s ultimate rise. With wry wit and wisdom, Crispin examines the phenomenon of the “Douglas character” as a silver-screen seismograph registering the tectonic movements within our society that have fractured it in shocking ways. 

From Fatal Attraction to Wall Street to The Game, WHAT IS WRONG WITH MEN investigates how Michael Douglas’s box office domination illustrates the dark hearts of masculinity’s crisis. Blending feminist arguments and pop culture criticism, Crispin uses the iconic roles of Michael Douglas as a lens to explore men’s and our culture’s ongoing anxieties around women, money, and power. Ultimately, revealing that the patriarchy has now fully betrayed men, along with everyone else—and how unpacking one of its most fervent icons can help us envision a pathway forward.

JESSA CRISPIN is the author of several books, including Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto, The Dead Ladies Project, and My Three Dads. She is the editor and founder of The Culture We Deserve as well as host with Nico Rodriguez of TCWD weekly podcast. In 2002, she launched Bookslut.com, one of the first and most treasured literary websites of the era; it ran for fifteen years. She is originally from Lincoln, Kansas, and currently lives in Philadelphia.