Overview
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; gives rise to incels and mass shooters; and leads to panic over the rights of women and minorities. According to Jessa Crispin, 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 Michael Douglas character as a silver-screen seismograph registering the tectonic movements within our society that have fractured it in shocking ways. Blending feminist arguments and pop culture criticism, Crispin uses the iconic roles of Michael Douglas, from Fatal Attraction to Wall Street to The Game, as a lens to explore men’s and our culture’s ongoing anxieties around women, money, and power. Ultimately, What Is Wrong with Men reveals that the patriarchy has now fully betrayed men, along with everyone else and shows how unpacking one of its most fervent icons can help us envision a pathway forward.
Full Product Details
Author: Jessa Crispin
Publisher: Random House USA Inc
Imprint: Pantheon
Dimensions:
Width: 14.80cm
, Height: 2.60cm
, Length: 21.90cm
Weight: 0.420kg
ISBN: 9780593317624
ISBN 10: 0593317629
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 03 June 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
“Using one actor's filmography as a codex, Jessa Crispin has done what so many sociologists, psychologists, and other experts have not been able to: clearly, shrewdly locate the origins of our ongoing ‘man crisis’ not in feminism but in rampant, extractive capitalism. In Douglas's leading men, Crispin finds a timeline of the bait-and-switch that hollowed out American masculinity, leaving in place the old ideals, but not the opportunities.” —Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once “The most surprising thing about Jessa’s prescient, rigorous, and sneakily hilarious What Is Wrong with Men, is how quickly and easily (and, for me, shamefully) she shifted my ‘Michael Douglas explains the modern man? Really?’ skepticism to ‘Get out of my brain!’ and then to ‘Wait … am I Michael Douglas?’” —Damon Young, author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: BookPage, The Millions “A keen, original, and intrepid social critic[, Crispin draws] on astute research, intellectual clarity, and droll wit, [to track] the crumbling of the patriarchy in a bravura performance pegged to Michael Douglas’ ‘blockbuster’ movies of the 1980s and 1990s. . . . Cogently argued and thought-provoking.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist “Crispin’s adept cultural synthesis is delivered with amusing snark and an undertone of increasing anxiety, pontifical concern, and moral urgency designed to confront the current moment. A fiery synopsis of a formative period for American masculinity.”—Kirkus “Crispin’s expansive cultural analysis is astute and well researched, showing how men, rather than redefining gender dynamics alongside women, saw the ’80s and ’90s as ‘a time of disempowerment’ and turned instead to a winner takes all individualism.”—Publishers Weekly “Using one actor's filmography as a codex, Jessa Crispin has done what so many sociologists, psychologists, and other experts have not been able to: clearly, shrewdly locate the origins of our ongoing ‘man crisis’ not in feminism but in rampant, extractive capitalism. In Douglas's leading men, Crispin finds a timeline of the bait-and-switch that hollowed out American masculinity, leaving in place the old ideals, but not the opportunities.”—Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once “The most surprising thing about Jessa’s prescient, rigorous, and sneakily hilarious What Is Wrong with Men, is how quickly and easily (and, for me, shamefully) she shifted my ‘Michael Douglas explains the modern man? Really?’ skepticism to ‘Get out of my brain!’ and then to ‘Wait . . . am I Michael Douglas?’”—Damon Young, author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker “Jessa Crispin told us what is wrong with contemporary white, bourgeois feminism in Why I Am Not a Feminist. In her new book, she tells us—and not a moment too soon—what is wrong with men, slyly examining the transformations, adaptations, and metamorphoses of masculinity through Michael Douglas' cinematic roles. What is Wrong with Men is whip smart and hilarious, an unforgettable condemnation of patriarchy, and the cultural, economic, and political institutions that uphold it.”—Tanya Pearson, author of Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the 90s
Author Information
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.
