Making the American Man | Little White Lies

Mak­ing the Amer­i­can Man

01 Jul 2016

Words by Spencer Moleda

Directed by Gregory Caruso

Starring American men

Two men in black shirts overlooking a cityscape with mountains in the background.
Two men in black shirts overlooking a cityscape with mountains in the background.
3

Anticipation.

A first-time director tackles an unhip but potentially revealing idea.

3

Enjoyment.

A bit too short and rather shallow, but its craft and sincerity are hard to resist.

2

In Retrospect.

Heart is in the right place, but really could have benefitted from deeper focus.

Do clothes maketh man? Direc­tor Gre­go­ry Caru­so search­es for answers in this fas­ci­nat­ing but uneven documentary.

On the evi­dence of every­thing pre­sent­ed, it remains to be seen whether or not one can ful­ly appre­ci­ate Mak­ing the Amer­i­can Man – a 66-minute doc­u­men­tary now avail­able to watch on Net­flix – with­out actu­al­ly being an Amer­i­can man. It has an irrev­er­ent heart with a desire to ques­tion elit­ist atti­tudes until even­tu­al­ly it stum­bles into one of its own. Still, there cer­tain are plea­sures to be had, espe­cial­ly for those who con­sid­er man­hood as best epit­o­mised by tai­lored suits, alpine calms and thick, bushy beards.

The film attempts to explore what it means to be a man in the 21st Cen­tu­ry, how adver­tis­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing have warped that image, and how res­ur­rect­ing it may insti­gate a return of the Amer­i­can Dream. First-time direc­tor Gre­go­ry Caru­so inter­views 21 dif­fer­ent cloth­ing design­ers and her­itage man­u­fac­tur­ers and probes their own con­nec­tions to the kind of clas­si­cism that’s too often dis­missed as unhip. Many of them feel that much of the integri­ty and sense of nation­al pride that’s the DNA of more archa­ic por­traits of mas­culin­i­ty has been lost to time. In the good old days, the Amer­i­can man was some­body who could make what he want­ed in life with his own two hands – be that a house, a boat, or a small business.

There is an ear­ly moment when Oui­gi Theodore, own­er of NY-based cloth­ing com­pa­ny Brook­lyn Cir­cus, claims that more tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can goals are no longer con­sid­ered pro­gres­sive or rev­o­lu­tion­ary; in his own words, If you’re dream­ing in that old fash­ioned way, you’re not dream­ing big enough. That’s not pro­gres­sive enough. That’s not Face­book, Mark Zucker­berg. It’s not Bill Gates enough.” That’s a brave sen­ti­ment in the social media age, but the film is so com­mit­ted to sell­ing its affec­tion that it nev­er stops to con­sid­er where that affec­tion comes from or why the coun­try became con­nect­ed to it in the first place.

Instead, Caru­so looks at how adver­tis­ing brought it to life and how man­u­fac­tur­ing goods over­seas caus­es it to with­er. There’s a greater point to be made: per­haps we desire these things because, for over a cen­tu­ry now, we’ve been sold the idea that we’re less man­ly – and by exten­sion less Amer­i­can – with­out them. If that’s the case, you could argue that our break from that clas­sic image is lib­er­a­tion from the cor­po­rate think­ing that oppress­es the sense of lega­cy so many her­itage man­u­fac­tur­ers hold dear.

For all its pas­sion, then, Mak­ing the Amer­i­can Man is less thought-pro­vok­ing than it might have been. When you’re pre­sent­ed with things like men kvetch­ing about the reduc­tion of the mous­tache to an object of par­o­dy and ridicule – long­ing for the days when it was a sym­bol of class and self-respect – it becomes increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to view the film as any­thing more than a hip­ster van­i­ty project. Its mes­sage is paint­ed so broad­ly and thin­ly that at cer­tain points we begin to won­der if the obses­sion with all things vin­tage exists beyond high-mind­ed fetishism. Still, it’s easy to relate to their con­nec­tion for old-fash­ioned style and imagery – after all, these things make us feel in touch with our roots, and our roots are essen­tial to our identity.

You might like