movie appearances include wet hot american summer the baxter and sextuplets black is the author of several books for children. including the award-winning trio on board i'm sad and i'm worried. and the and a parity a child's first book of trump. his books were adults include the essay collection of my custom van black also coauthored with megan mccarthy mccain. i'm mccarthy. sorry mccain america, you sexy -- now i got to know more about that. i really do. as a stand-up comedian michael regularly tours the country and he has released several comedy albums his podcasts include mike and tom eat snacks. with tom cavanagh topics with michael showalter how to be amazing and obscure now, which please help me. welcome michael ian black this is my first time behind a pulpit. i like it. thank you for that warm introduction. so nice to be here in at the beautiful trinity church here in savannah. i am not just a visitor to savannah i moved here. about six months ago from the wilds of connecticut where i was residing for the previous 20 years. but my children who you will hear more about we're getting older. showbiz had shut down because of covid. i wasn't making any money. and we thought maybe it's a good time to sell our house. so we sold and and googled what's the best small city in america and wouldn't you know, it's savannah, georgia came up on that list. and i looked we looked at a house down here. and then i think within a week we had made an offer on that house and within a few months we became savannah residents and we moved here in august and that was terrible that that was a terrible decision on our part. so much so that maybe we moved into our house. it's an old 1867 house. we thought oh, this is just a charming charming house and then we discovered that there were roaches invested in the house and it was august. and by about week two i was googling what's another place that i could live? but the exterminators came and the weather broke and now we are very happily ensconced in savannah georgia. and so it's my first time in this church. certainly not my first time at this square and so it's just a pleasure to be here and be a part of my hometown book. festival the book that i will speak to you about today is called a better man. and then the subtitle is a mostly serious letter to my son. as i mentioned i have two children. my son is the elder. he turns 21 this sunday. my daughter is 18 and currently attending school in los angeles. my son actually attends scad which is why we kind of knew savannah to begin with. and we thought well, we'll just follow him down to savannah because that's what every kid wants. i imagine just to follow them wherever they are. so i wrote this book as my son was graduating from high school. and it began. in and well, i'll backtrack i am a comedian. i mean, i that's sort of how i make my living and this book is not a funny book. it's got jokes in it. and i like to think i'm just naturally charming, but the book is as it says in the subtitle mostly serious. and it came about because if i go all the way back to its origins as i mentioned i was living in the wilds of kinetic it and one day one my son was in fifth grade. i think my daughter was in third. i was on twitter. and on twitter it said that there had been gunshots at the school right in the town next over called sandy hook elementary school. and at first i sort of thought well, that's that does that certainly doesn't sound good and but there's nothing on the news. so maybe it's just a little mishap something terrible and but it'll be okay. and then within an hour or so, we all know. what happened? it was at that moment. i think that i sort of became. radicalized maybe against gun violence and spent a lot of my time and energy. railing against this problem that we have in this country, which is gun violence. fast forward to my son senior year of high school. my daughter is now a sophomore. and there is another high school shooting high school marjory stoneman douglas. in parkland, florida um and yet again i find myself. yelling into the wind about this problem. i get on twitter as i do too often. and i tweet just my aggravation at this situation, but then in my twitter thread i ask a question. i'm just venting, but i ask a question sort of out loud to the twitterverse, which i haven't really considered before in the question is this why when these events happen? is it always a boy pulling the trigger? like we don't even think about it. we're just like oh what what did some guy do now? why is it always a boy or a man? and i never really thought about that before. like i was i i had spent a lot of time being angry at the gun lobby and gun manufacturers and politicians who don't do anything to address this problem, but i'd never really stopped to consider the very obvious point that it's always boys pulling the trigger. so i just asked the question why? right after that the new york times got in touch with me. they had seen my twitter thread. they said would you like to write an op-ed about this topic? i said, i don't think so. i'm not really qualified to do that. and they said but we're the new york times and i said, oh, okay. well, if you're the new york times, i guess i'm qualified. i guess i'll do it. so my ego would not let me decline the new york times i thought oh, yeah. absolutely. yes. i'm an expert on this now. so i wrote it not bad for the new york times entitled. the boys are not all right, which really just expanded that question. why why why when it comes to not only matters of gun violence but violence in general do we just assume almost always correctly that it is male people. who are instigating that op-ed came out it went as the kids say viral a publisher contacted me and said would you like to write a book about this? and once again i said, i really don't think i'm qualified to do that. i had a meeting with these publishers and i said, you know, i'm just i'm just a jerk off who shows up on vh1 sometimes, you know, i i do commentary about cabbage patch kids. like i don't really think i'm the guy you want for this. i'm a college dropout worse. i dropped out of college to go be a teenage mutant ninja turtle. like i don't have the resume. that necessarily lends itself to a deep dive into masculinity so then the woman who would become my publisher said well. all of that may be true, but at the same time why not you and that was one of those rhetorical i guess it wasn't even rhetorical. it was one of those questions that just kind of made me go. oh, yeah. why not me? because i have kids i have a son. i i have thought about this issue throughout my life for reasons that i will discuss in a moment. and i really couldn't think of a good reason why not other than my other lack of qualifications. and so i thought about it. for a while and when faced with uh decisions like that career decisions. i generally have i generally will say yes if the criteria it meets one of if the decision means one of three criteria, the first is will it pay a lot of money? and the answer to this was absolutely not. the second was will i get to work with friends and the answer again? that was no because i just have to sit by myself, and i'm not i'm not my biggest fan and then three was does it scare you because what i have found is the things that scare me tend to provoke. better work than things that don't and it absolutely did. and i was like i know the pastor here. can i curse? i was gonna i can curse right? yeah. okay great. as i gosh --. all right, let me let me say yes. to this and so i said, yes. and so i decided to write this book and what i knew from the beginning was it can't be. i can't approach it from the point. from the place of an expert from a gender theorist from a historian from a sociologist from an academic. demian academic academic because i'm not any of those things but what i am is a dad and i could write it. i could write it as a dad. and i knew it wasn't going to be saying timonius and i'm glad that i'm not speaking from behind a pulpit because if you if you don't want to write a sanctimonious book by all means get yourself behind a pulpit and so i started writing. now the reason that i have thought about these issues. ah in one way or another for most of my life without even really being fully aware that i was doing it and the issues being the the sort of large issue of what does it mean to be a man? what is that? what do we mean when we say masculine? what do we mean when we say when we describe masculinity? what does it mean when somebody says to to a kid or something? come on be a man. what does that even mean? i grew up in a household. my parents divorced when i was five because my mom started a sleeping with the next door, basically. she got into this relationship with this woman. and my parents divorced and then as tends to happen in those situations. we moved in with my mother and her partner and my partners her partner's son and so that was an unusual living arrangement for those times. and then my dad. uh was like a lot of men in his generation a little bit distant little bit emotionally unavailable. worked a lot and was not particularly good at communicating with his children not like. he loved us, but he just didn't know how to talk to kids. he died when i was 12, just as i was starting to kind of get to know him a little bit. um and so growing up i felt a keen lack of a real strong male figure in my life. and while i am the first person to say by all means, you know be a single mom be a lesbian couple be a you know, male gay couple. i did miss that part of my life that that male presence in my life. and then also i grew up in new jersey in the mid 1980s, um, which was like it's like if bon jovi was a state. like that's what it was and and as you can probably tell just by me so far like i just didn't quite fit into that like it was a very sports driven for lack of a better word, you know masculine culture. i from the age of nine was like i'm gonna be an actor, you know, and and it just wasn't like it wasn't the best fit. and so i was one of those kids who occasionally got picked on and called certain names and pushed into certain lockers and and all of that. and i knew that i knew that i had to leave there which i did as soon as i graduated from high school. i went to new york to go to new york university the school that i would then drop out of. to become a teenager. we ninja turtle raphael by the way, if you're wondering rafael um but i knew that the guys that were around me that i was growing up with. they fell to me at times like an entirely different species like just there was a there was a model of boyhood. that i certainly wasn't in totally alienated from i played little league and i ran around and i did dumb stuff and whatever. but nor did i feel like it fully. encapsulated who i was and from an early age. i felt like i understood that there was some sort of mismatch between what it meant what the guy i was supposed to be and the that i was and that was hard to reconcile. and then as i got older and you know became well, i guess turtle and actor and comedian. and met all kinds of different people. i that sort of theme kept coming up again and again in my work and in my comedy. and so and but it wasn't until this. book started taking shape that i understood really for the first time that i had been wrestling with this. my entire life and so i got to work and and the question my first question to myself when writing this book was well how the hell do you like even start to answer that question? what does it mean to be a man? because the phrase most commonly the word most commonly affixed to masculinity in our contemporary culture is toxic. so, how do you how do you how do you look at that? how do you look at masculinity? and go well, what's the good version when we don't we don't know what that is. what is the healthy version of masculinity? because all the attributes that we think about when we think about a healthy masculine at least that i do if i think about strength or independence or you know at times aggression or you know, fortitude, you know you think about any of those attributes they are so easily flipped. to enter that realm of toxicity that we hear so much about in the culture so which is it, you know. when is aggression for example appropriate when is it not when is displaying our strength appropriate? when is it not when is it appropriate to be stoic and suffer in silence? and when is it appropriate to be vulnerable and open? well, how do you how do you wrap your head? around these questions and i didn't know. so the first thing i did was like well, i guess i'll i'll just border a bunch of books and maybe they'll tell me. so that's what i did. i just bought a bunch of books and started reading and reading. and eventually what ended up? surprising me more than anything else. in my reading and in my thinking was my increasing sympathy for men like, you know i'm a i mean you can tell i'm just a big old lefty, you know and liberal and all of that, you know. whatever pejoratives you want to. say about liberals and everything like that's me. like i'm just that guy. but i found myself feeling a lot of sympathy maybe empathy. for what? i would consider my more conservative brethren. the men who are raised to be that kind of strong silent type. the men who are raised to endure the men who are raised to protect and provide. it's a very it's a very compelling image if you're a guy i think for what the way you want to live your life. as a man the provider the protector it feels kind of cut and dry. this is my role. i provide for the family. i protect the tribe. great. until you realize that the sands upon which that architecture was built are now shifting entirely. and all of that is crumbling. for reasons that we all know globalization automation the rise of the creative economy the fall of the kind of industrial economy. the entrance of women into the workforce as independent agents who no longer have to rely on men to provide for them. um, the the greater role of just women's autonomy in general the women's ability to raise children, for example without necessarily the need of a partner to do that with so what happens to a guy when his central identity to provider and the protector? is no longer as clearly defined what happens to his own sense of self. who does he believe himself to be and i think what we're seeing i know we're seeing over the last however many years you want to call it. we're seeing the rise of the angry. primarily white man and people like me. my knee jerk is to go ah that having guy you know, he's that effin knuckle dragger or whatever. but the more i started looking into this. topic the more sympathy i started to have for these guys because it is reminiscent of a phrase that we hear a lot of politicians talk about when they talk about, you know, the economy in general. they'll say things like we believe that if you play by the rules, you know, you should make a fair wage and get ahead etc. etc, etc. well, i think for a lot of these guys they felt like i played by the rules like i did my part as a guy and now i'm finding my identity is being threatened by forces so far beyond my control things that i didn't imagine would reorganize my life are now reorganizing my life without my consent. and that i imagine is tough. in fact, i know it's tough. i'll give you an example from my own life. i'm in showbiz and for any number of years previous to the last couple there has always been a market for this sort of funny sidekick. you know, the the goofball neighbor who comes in and you know yells at jack tripper that he's you know messing around with too many girls and then he goes out and he gets a nice check at the end of the week terrific. well, those are the kinds of roles that went to guys like me. they are no longer going to guys like me. because hollywood at long last has recognized that they have a problem with representation. in the products that they make um and so the roles that went to guys like me are now going to guys who are black or asian or puerto rican or trans or whatever, you know. the the pecking order has now gone from you know, white guy up here to white guy way down here. that's happening. i wouldn't say that's a very deliberate choice. that is that hollywood is making sort of by by race, but the door is opening for all kinds of other people in all kinds of other industries. and of course i think most of us look at that and go that's fantastic. that's the way it should be. but then when it's your job on the line you go. i'm not sure how enthusiastic i am about this anymore. it's so it's great to be open-minded. in theory in practice. it's a little bit. harder, so i and i feel like i have some empathy for the guy whose job just got shipped off. to mexico to china to wherever and i understand how that affects your sense of self. as a man so that was a surprise to me. it was a surprise to me that i came out of my research on this book feeling more empathy. for traditional masculinity that i thought i would walking into it. on the other hand i also emerged from the writing of this book feeling like we have so far to go to help guys. so very far. because for the last half century 60 years we have devoted a lot of time culturally. to elevating women in the culture correctly, so you know starting i mean you can go way back, but let's just pin in the culture correctly so. you can go way back but let's pin it to the mid-1960s as women gained agency and moved into the workforce and kicked down the doors that had been closed to them for so long, messages about female empowerment started really resonating in the culture. we now i feel like understand culturally and celebrate culturally the idea of the strong woman, independent woman, the woman who can endure and have sportitude that in men we look at and feel suspect about. we have expanded the definition of what it means to be a woman, but we haven't begun that conversation with men. so that is where i think we need to move. the conversation needs to continue with women. it needs to start with men. this book that i wrote is meant to be a small part in kickstarting that conversationc it is happening.ou 's turn to percolate. the fact that you are here today andnd i think you are familiar with these questions already means the conversation is already starting to happen. and so for book that i wrote is just one man's letter to his kid about where the conversation maybe could go. don't want to talk too long in case you have questions. it is one:17. if you have questions i will be happy to entertain them not necessarily in an entertaining way. [inaudible question] >> this fellow. >> with such a broad-based topic, how did you decide upon the length of your book? how many pages as it? >> 50,000 words, how did you decide what to write about when the topic is so big? it wasn't easy. it was a difficult topic to write my head around and the way i started doing it was just by asking myself that one question what does it mean to be a man. in asking that question i started thinking about what i associate with manhood so i talked a little bit about strength. strength. when i thinkro of men men are strong, okay, but what is strength? what is strength when you think about it? there is physical strength and there was a time in our history when brute physical strength was incredibly important. that time has passed somewhat. we don't need to wrestle sabertooth tigers nearly as often now as we did a few thousand years ago. there is emotional strength, there is spiritual strength, but there is also i think the profound strength as a man in being able to lay bare your heart and say in this moment right now i am weak. there is profound strength in expressing vulnerability. and it cuts to the essence of our humanity when we allow ourselves to do that. and i think all of these traditionally masculine attributes can be viewed in that way. i will end there for now. >> hello and thank you for coming can. >> my pleasure. >> ies have -- i am going to combine two questions into one. to you do you have any conversationsas with elaine showalter over your career concerning gender? i was sure -- before i was where of her or of you, were you aware or do you have ideas about masculinity when you were doing certain send ups like johnny blue jeans, did you feel you were striking a sort of ironic distance regarding masculine performance with those kinds and i could name others but those kinds of things? maybe you weren't aware? >>. ever speak to elaine showalter, some of you know already, elaine showalter is one of the best regarded scholars in this area, in this arena in the country particularly, mostly as relates to women's issues but i'm sure she has a lot to say about issues around manhood as well. she's also the mother of one of my best friends, michael showalter. it never dawned on me to ask her. how stupid is that? it never even occurred to me, i never --ha that just goes to sw how unqualified i am to have written this. what an idiot i am, what a moron. the second question, in the parts that you played, i think what you're asking, did you ever address or sort of subvert traditional notions of masculinity in the roles you play and the answer to that is absolutely yes. and sort of consciously, sort of not consciously. there have been times in my career where -- i will give you one example. there was a show called ed that i was on from 1999 to 2,004, something like that. i was brought on to replace a guy who had to go off and do another show. so i flew out to la for the last audition before i secured this part. went in, gave the audition, sat outside, waited waited waited, finally they came out and said you got the job. but there was a note and the note was, i don't want to butcher it, something like we don't do what is the character's name was phil. we don't want phil to be gay. there was nothing that i was doing and that audition -- other than being myself -- that would have led them to believe -- i wasn't -- i didn't know where it came from. it was a deeply painful note to me because in a sense it was the note i had been receiving my entire life. it was stop acting so gay. i don't think i clarified, i am straight. my wife is here. i may be the gayest straightman you will ever meet but i am a very straight guy and so in performing that part, the back of my mind was always. it up, black. i don't want to lose this job. there have been other times int my career i felt i have been 3 to express myself the way i express myself and that comes across to a lot of people as gay and i had to make a choice mentally for myself to be okay with that, with just being who i am. i think it took me until i was 40 years old to make that choice. it is hard. >> question will be related, thanks for your bravery in tackling the subject first of all. my question aside from what you are starting to say in yourd last answer, i have two kids, 18 and 21 and what i see is doesn't seem to matter whether these emotions and characteristics are tied to masculinity or femininity specifically within a man or a woman, what i see with the kids is they don't careou anymore si am curious if you tackle any of that in the book. i haven't read your book yet. but i hope to, thank you. >> guest: i think you are right. we are seeing, at least i am seeing in my kids and their peers that there is a lot less concern about these traditional norms than there was in my generation. i hope that i wrote a book that is already out of date. that would be fantastic. unfortunately i feel like we see a lot of evidence day in and day out of men doing crap e-mail things, men abusing their power, men sexually harassing, men unable to express themselves in a constructive way. a perfect example of this was masks during the pandemic, continues to be an issue. the way the masks were portrayed among certain portion of the population as week. has feminizing. there were a lot of guys who i thought were out there inth th world saying things like i will just get covid. it's not going to kill me if it is even real. i'm not going to put this thing over my face. it was a real problem and a lot of it had to do with these ideas of strength and weakness and how i care more about this armor i have erected for myself to portray myself is real man than i do the health and safety of the people around me. i found it insane but it happened and continues to happen. pastor? >> congratulations. you are not the first or last person behind the pulpit. thank you for sharing this. we work out at the same gym. i read this book before meeting you and really enjoyed it. iff. i see a couple kids and young dads like myself, my son is 5, out here, and for you at a different stage of fatherhood in light of this research and taking the backwards look at your role and there are successes and failures, what are you most proud of in light of this, being a dad? >> i am most proud that i have been there for my kids. there have been times i have been away, working or whatever but i feel like day in and day out, i have been a constant presence in their lives. i didn't have that and it was important to me that i be that for my kids. theye haven't always taken advantage of it, they are not always thrilled to see me ther' but they know that i am there and that every night before but i will tell them i love them and i think 80% of parenting might just be that. >> i'm reading about mass murders and i learned about a new word, in the cell, involuntary syllabus. there are enough of these men, straight men, to be an identity. men who will probably never have a relationship with another human being, intimate relationship with another human being, they are a sad group, very lonely. in one case it did lead to mass murder. >> i'm having a hard time hearing you with of a mask on but i think you're making the point a lot of men have a hardn time expressing empathy and may be incapable of expressing empathy? >> not exactly. the people i'm talking about are straight men who find it impossible to attract the interest of a woman. they don't have the attributes it takes to attract a woman, women are much more independent, don't need to attach themselves to a man to live and these men are lonely, sad and angry and in one case it did lead to mass murder. >> yes. that does happen. that is true. i would say in response to it that -- i am not an expert, don't want to make any proscriptions about this problem which is a profound problem, a lot of timeses when have seen these guys portrayed in the news or wherever, one would look at them and say my god that person is whatever, physically reprehensible, or whatever.ey they are just normal dudes who are struggling. i wonder if some of that struggle doesn't have to do with a lack of ability to empathize and communicate and to be vulnerable and, so much of that can be tied, i think, to poor representations of manhood in their lives or in the media they are consuming. when i talked about strength i talked about bearing yourself to the world. the oldest model of masculinity, maybe the one that sticks with us the longest is the model in which you armor up, you affixed pieces of armor to your self so that you can go out into the world and protect the tribe and provide for the tribe without getting stabbed or bitten by some animal or whatever. we affixed so much psychic armor to ourselves that we make it impossible to be hurt, we also make it impossible to emote. so much of what i want to do with my work on this topic is to get men to start removing some of that armor and in doing so i think, i hope we will allow each other, to see each other, to hear each other, not just be better men but better people. >> last question. >> my brothers and i -- this can about the pope coming is my favorite one. >> which is why i feel at home. >> i have two sons, 16 and 13, the oldest going to college in a few years. i thought a lot about what you are discussing too but i'm curious what your son thought about the book that you wrote. >> he didn't love it. i suspect it is hard to read a book written by your father, in which your father is baring his soul. i imagine a lot of that is -- oh my god, please just shut up, dad, shut up. i will say this, though. there was nothing in that book there was nothing i wrote in that book that was new to him, there may have been anecdotes, stories, whatever that he didn't know, but my sword of general approach to parenting and to loving and to modeling masculine behavior and what i expect from him, i hope he was already familiar with it. if he had opened that book and been like oh my god i had no idea you felt this way about empathy, that would have been terrible. i think the fact -- don't think there were any surprises in there for him and i think that is a good thing. thank you guys, so much, for coming out.na i really appreciate it. thank you c-span for covering this event. take care. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast, every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including media,. >> the world changed in an instant, media, was ready, internet traffic sword and we never slowed down, schools and businesses went virtual and we powered a new reality because at media group we are built to keep you ahead. >> media, supports c-span2 as a public service.
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