CRAIG NIGRELLI:
It’s hard to hate the tough guy.
MOVIE CLIP:
“Go Ahead, Make my Day.”
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
Or at least – that used to be the case.
MOVIE CLIP:
“Who are you?”
“Your worst nightmare”
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
Legends like Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone dominated the box office for years, and left their impact on a generation of young men.
But as the media has evolved, so has the ROLE of “role models. Young men have been increasingly turning to fictional characters, public figures and celebrities – instead of the men in their lives.
In our coverage of the crisis of masculinity, we’re following Will Adolphy – who says his search for a place in society led him to a man-o-sphere influencer who became like a father figure to him.
WILL ADOLPHY:
influencers are people as well, and having a large voice, you know, becoming famous, tapping into a Zeitgeist without even knowing it.
All of a sudden, they found themselves with, you know, like massive audiences, because there was a whole generation of young people such as myself who were searching for guidance
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
A recent study found 47% of young men between the ages of 13 and 30 say they are looking for people in pop culture for masculine role models – whether it’s fictional characters, public figures or celebrities.
It’s the same report that found 43% of young men don’t know what it means to be a man today.
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
we’ve seen over the last few years and increasing acknowledgement within our cultural discourse, within the media, within the media industry, around this notion of a crisis of masculinity, this sense of young men boys in today’s world are really struggling to understand what it means to be a man in 2025
My name is Fergus Navaratnam-Blair. I’m the Vice President for trends and futures at National Research Group, or NRG. It’s a research firm that focuses on the intersection of culture, technology and entertainment.
we work a lot with clients in the film and TV industry. We’ve heard a lot from them that they are really struggling right now to capture and to hold on to the attention of younger male audiences, especially given that they’re competing for that attention against so many other sources of entertainment, from gaming to social social video and social media to international genres like anime and so on.
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
One of the big questions in the study was: “Who did you look up to as male role models growing up?”
More than half of young men (52%) say most of their role models are the real people in their lives.
But 26% said they looked to fictional characters and 21% said public figures and celebrities were role models in their lives.
Fergus explains – the way Hollywood has portrayed masculinity has transitioned from the golden age to contemporary cinema.
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
So if you go back to the 1960s for example, you can see the way in which a lot of the depictions of masculinity of that era were very much informed by the counter cultural energy of the time. You know films like Easy Rider and taxi driver and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. You know, all grappling with these questions of, you know how, how you can sort of defy the shackles of traditional social norms and traditional sources of authority.
in the 1980s you see the pendulum shift very dramatically towards a more unapologetically macho vision of masculinity, you know. And you think about the cultural context of the time, you have the Cold War reaching its apex. You have Ronald Reagan in the White House
and you see stories like The Terminator franchise, you see stories like Rambo and you know these titles that are about that about sort of very unapologetically macho men, often in military roles or law enforcement roles, who are really have a really sort of physical sense of masculinity about them
Back in the 1990s we start to see more of a preoccupation around, how do you reconcile masculinity and modernity? And there’s a lot of movies from that era of the 90s, movies like Office Space or American Beauty, these sorts of stories that are really about Fight Club, another great example really about what does masculinity look like in the context of the modern information age, in the context of modern office culture?
MATT ENGLAR CARLSON:
when probably you and I were growing up, 70s, 80s, 90s, what you saw was a very narrow band of masculinity was primarily kind of white. There was very few Asian and Latino ever, you know, and if they were, they were stereotyped. And so, particularly men of color, very negative images most of the time
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
Matt Englar-Carlson is a professor at Cal State Fullerton – focusing on the psychology of meta masculinities.
MATT ENGLAR CARLSON:
And most of the men kind of fit into like, one or two different categories, Like the action hero, the bumbling dad, or whatnot, like, and now we see a lot more variety in terms of kind of men in different kind of roles.
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
As Television – and eventually streaming – became a major vehicle for story telling, Fergus says male characters transformed again.
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
You had shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
MOVIE CLIP:
“Now, say my name…
“You’re Heisenberg”
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
They’re all about these characters who sort of live outside of the law, these characters who defy social conventions, these characters who wear this kind of very rigid mask of masculinity.
But he says with nearly endless options for entertainment – some of the most popular characters in film and tv have lost that hard edge.
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
You had shows like modern family and this is us and so on. You know, exploring or Ted lasso, another great example, exploring visions of masculinity that weren’t quite so rooted in these ideas of physical strength and in these ideas of ambition and success and dominance.
MOVIE CLIPS:
“Are you kidding me, I think concerts are rad. I was a Hall-Raiser.”
“A WHAT?”
“ I followed Hall and Oats around the country one summer. Rich Girl just spoke to me.”
MATT ENGLAR CARLSON:
I think
Hollywood’s getting better at it, because they’re being policed more, if that makes sense. And I think there’s some genuine efforts to kind of portray men in more adaptive roles, and I think that’s the main piece, and you don’t see the same expressive kind of violence, homophobia and things like that anymore, and so Hollywood can be a beacon, except that stuff doesn’t always sell, and Hollywood, at the end of the day, is going to be about the bottom line
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
But with all the options – Today – it’s harder to put your finger on what masculinity looks like in film and TV.
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
You don’t see necessarily one concrete vision of this is what masculinity is in Hollywood, in 2025 you see different actors, different entertainment brands playing with that concept in different ways and pushing it in different directions. And I think Timothy Chalamet is a great example of that, you know, trying to create this, like newer version of masculinity that, you know, in something like Dune, he sort of balances the kind of the action hero element with the sort of philosopher king element, almost a little bit. And it’s very interesting narrative from that perspective. But you know, he’s also someone who’s proven he’s willing to explore visions of masculinity, sort of outside of traditional heteronormative paradigms. Films like call me by your name, for example.
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
While Chalamet might illustrate a unique version of modern masculinity. NRG found that when it came to fictional role models in media today, Dune’s Paul Atreides – known to the Fremen as Lisan al Gaib – didn’t make the list. In fact no characters from movies and tv set in the real world made the top 20.
The top-5 were Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Harry Potter and Iron Man.
The authors of the study point out:
“All of this matters because it means that young men are gravitating towards a vision of masculinity that is, by definition, never going to be fully obtainable.“
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
There are very few characters that young men are looking up to right now that are really rooted in the real world. And I think as we move forward as a culture, we need to think about what that’s what that’s saying to young men.
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
When it comes to the real world figures young men are looking up to, it shifts between generations.
Researchers found the top 5 for Gen Z and Millennials were Lebron James, Martin Luther King Jr., Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, followed by Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
But for Gen Alpha… Mr. Beast tops the list, followed by The Rock, Lebron, Steph Curry and Cristiano Ronaldo.
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
particularly younger men, when we look at, you know, boys eight to 13, boys in their teens. Eight years. A lot of that is driven by the world of sports. LeBron a huge influence, people like Patrick mahomes, for example, as well. People like Travis Kelce is of the world
the Mr. Beasts of the world, but also people like Kai Senat, Theo von, the Paul brothers, I show speed. You know, all these sorts of content creators playing a really, really significant role in shaping what masculinity looks like to younger audiences these days.
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
That trend is even more pronounced as you look at what jobs Boys in Gen Alpha aspire to. Video game streamer is number 1, followed by online video creator, and then Social media influencer comes in at number six, ahead of firefighter, police officer and doctor.
For parents worried about their kids’ obsession with online creators, asFergus points this is not a new problem.
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
in the 60s, parents worrying about the impact of rock and roll and popular music, whether it’s 90s and 2000 parents worrying about video games. You know, always have this kind of intergenerational conflict of trying to understand the messages that are being that are being portrayed.
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
Instead, Fergus likes to focus on the positive forms of masculinity presented by some influencers.
FERGUS NAVARATNAM-BLAIR:
a lot of these creators put a real emphasis on male camaraderie, male friendship. They make these videos with their crews of male friends that they are bantering around with and building these relationships with, this rapport with. You know, they stand by these friends publicly. They incorporate them into their videos. I think that’s an element that really appeals to a lot of young men.
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
But not all online influencers are the same. Adolphy’s search for answers led him to an influencer…
WILL ADOLPHY:
So, and I started to watch stuff online, and I started to feel like, oh, the world hates men, right? That idea started to come in to my head,
…So I started listening to a lot of podcasts that were like, oriented around how you can improve yourself and and then, alongside that, I started hearing kind of intellectuals talk about the left.left. And it all started off very reasonable, you know, the left’s going a bit too far, right?
a lot of the influencers I was watching, they were very, very resentful towards the left, right, woke culture, political correctness, feminism. And that really lit a fire in me.
CRAIG NIGRELLI:
As Will became more and more into his influencer, he says it didn’t offer the support he had been searching for. We’ll dive into his content addiction and how he dug himself out to help young men searching for answers in the next piece on the crisis of masculinity.