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by Sam Kuhlmann
I have this friend that doesn’t put up with my whining. She keeps telling me to “grow a sack.” Like, I’ll be all, “Hey, that ‘Send In the Clowns’ song is so sad,” and she’s just like, “Jesus Sam, grow a sack already,” while kind of shaking her head to herself. Sure, it’s true that I do avoid most confrontation, employ some passive aggressive behavior and generally conduct myself in a wimpy manner, but I don’t think it’s because of a lack of testicles, rather, a lack of foreskin, and that’s not my fault.
Circumcision is one of the most pressing issues in current Masculism theory. The girth of emotional scarring incurred by young boys as a result of this horrific mutilation is profound and has only begun to be understood by our greatest Masculist minds. Having just come from the movie theater for a screening of the trailer for Meet the Fockers (2004), it appears one of those minds, Hollywood, California’s own Jay Roach, has made his statement about this procedure and its grim results. Mr Roach’s film trailer is the crumpled, silky flap that precedes what I’m sure will swell to become a definitive discourse on the emasculation of the American male at the hands and scalpels of our cruel parents.
Cutting off foreskin, like everything else, was invented in Africa. Africa doesn’t get much credit for anything besides AIDS, and this article isn’t looking to reinvent the basketball, so I’ll skip ahead a bit to the Jews. It’s the Jews that adopted the practice as a religious rite and effectively transported it into
modern times. Abraham’s tip was nipped, so was Joshua’s and so down things went, on and on through the generations. I think it’s funny to think of all Christians as a huge penis and Jesus as the
foreskin, the crucifixion nothing more than a way to circumcise (and attempt to control?) a growing Christianity!
Anyways, somewhere around the year 140 AD the procedure was modified. As opposed to merely removing the tip of the prepuce (foreskin) it was completely stripped away from the glans (penis meat), this was known as peri’ah and is basically the modern process. It was adopted for widespread medical use around 1870 in the United States and was used by the puritanical American Anglos not for religious ritual, but to hinder sexual pleasure and prevent masturbation. (An effect, I’m happy to report, that has not occurred in this gentile–that isn’t so gentle with his self. Woooo, somebody stop me.) Today the Jews still have ritual circumcisions and most Christians just seem to want their children to resemble them when naked. Regardless of reasons or religious backgrounds, men are now together in pain, victims of the physical mutilation and emotional violence that’s resulted in generation after generation of wimpier and wussier men.
Jay Roach is married to Susanna Hoffs, the hottest Bangle, and I think we all know who wears the pants. I bet they listen to “Eternal Flame” while making love. The man is evidently circumcised; his filmography would support this conjecture. His riskiest career move has been taking the camera operator’s job on A Gnome Named Gnorm. However, his Focker franchise (Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers) is shaping up to be a major Masculist treatise. The trailer for Meet the Fockers is a literal representation of the process of emasculation experienced by the average American male. A process symbolized by, and beginning with, the removal of the foreskin.
Mr Roach begins his trailer with a montage of clips from Meet the Parents. Streisand’s “The Way We Were” plays as Stiller is shown pretending to milk a cat, wearing a Speedo, getting vomited on by a baby, and spiking a volleyball into a woman’s face. Stiller is haunted by memories of humiliation. It’s also important to note that the humiliation is of a sexual nature; Stiller is continually cast in a non-masculine light. The ultimate sexual humiliation is castration, or to a lesser extent, circumcision and is directly addressed in the next section of the trailer. Stiller’s parents are embarrassing him in front of his fiancé and her parents by showing a picture of Ben as a baby. They come across photos of his circumcision and the future mother-in-law actually handles the saved remains of his foreskin! GROSS, I know, but what’s really disgusting is the behavior of Stiller’s parents. When I was twelve, my dad once told a girl I liked that I had “a nose-picking problem.” It was embarrassing, but it doesn’t compare to the abuse that Stiller’s parents bring about. These monsters have sliced up a defenseless baby-dink and then tortured the grown-up man-wuss with memories of the gore.
The final result of this emasculation is illustrated by the other male characters in the trailer, Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman. They are cast as frightened old dandies. We see Mr DeNiro peaking out of the shower as he sees Mr Hoffman sitting on the toilet a few feet away. Mr Deniro is embarrassed and uncomfortable. There are some homosexual overtones as Mr Hoffman recites a touchy-feely line about being close to each other. These actors used to be two of Hollywood’s most eligible men (forget about Tootsie for a second). Mr DeNiro is no longer Travis Bickle. He’s traded in his gun and shoulder holster and hides, humiliated, behind a shower curtain. When you chop off a wiener you’re left with a pussy.
Mr Roach masterfully comments on the effect of circumcision with the content of the trailer and by portraying classical Hollywood virility in less than virile roles. He also effectively marries form and function by using the trailer as his method of discourse. What’s a trailer if not a movie that has literally been cut down? A movie trailer is the perfect medium for discussion of circumcision. Mr Roach, makes the supposition that a piece of film is like a baby boy with the potential to blossom into a MAN, but is then cut into pieces, fleeced of his power. (or at least his length.) When watching a trailer the male viewer is continually and subconsciously reminded of his circumcision with each and every cut. This constant reminder weakens masculinity; watching movies is akin to castration. It’s taken the Masculist mind of Jay Roach to point this out. He has created a work in which every male figure is sexually humiliated, but underlined that point by utilizing an art form that, in it’s very nature, cannot help but diminish male power.
Well, this article is getting a bit boring, but I predict that as feminists moisten to the pages of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, men everywhere will rise in excitement to Meet the Fockers. It has the chance to become the rallying cry for emasculated viewers. “I am a man, and you Fockers can’t take an edge to my sword ever again! You want to sing about memories, Streisand? I remember the way we were: intact.” Personally I am content with the demise of masculinity. I’ll be a stay at home man. The tip of my penis looks like it has a bowl cut, but I’ve grown a sack big enough for several loads of laundry.
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