The banality of white male rage
On Sunday, at the Super Bowl, Travis Kelce pushed his 65-year-old coach, then shouted in his face. This isn’t the first time he’s acted like a mad baby.
Some have reported that Swift fans are now “concerned,” pointing toward Kelce’s pattern of behavior and self-admitted childhood aggression. In fact, the Kelce brothers have turned stories of preschool violence into part of their mythology. On their podcast, Jason laughed about stabbing other kids with sporks; Travis thought it was hilarious and a sign of his own winning-mentality that he threw a chair at a teacher who told him to share. They joked about their dad defending their actions. They were both, apparently, kicked out of preschool because they “fight the Kelce way.”
Many kids go through periods of aggression like this and don’t turn into violent adults, but the point these guys make in telling these stories is not at all that— it’s the vibe they’re into, the story they tell about themselves. Shirtless and shouting like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. That is how they want to be seen.
Much has been said about football and war, how the game both distracts from and symbolizes global conflict. There was a stark manifestation of that this weekend. But moments like these— these seemingly banal cultural images of tough white men losing their shit, they too demonstrate how anesthetized we are to male aggression. This is teleological and circular, I know—the idea that more male anger begets more male anger. But that’s the point— the loop and collapse of white male rage, the way it feeds itself, folds in on itself. I’m angry because I’m a man and men are angry; I’m a man because I’m angry and that makes me a real man.
It feels like we’re having a moment when even feminists are saying that men are always being put in the position of the villain. And, okay. Men are complex humans, too, yes. They are damaged irreparably by gender too, of course. But actually, it’s this loop, the way that gender works, that we don’t think too hard about— much less the possibility of how we step off the merry-go-round. The way this banal, boring violence presents itself over and over again, such that it’s not even worth an eye roll anymore, because been there, done that. More to the point of the moment, perhaps, the woman eye-rolling at the commonality of it all, the football of it all, she gets the eye rolls.
And what does it mean that the most powerful woman in the world is in love with this meathead? That she is not eye rolling, at least not when the camera is on her? One piece that recapped Kelce’s history of aggression pointed out that Swift has mocked Alpha male athletic aggression before. She’s done the eye roll before, so where is it now? The contradiction is hard to ignore.
And yet. Now Kelce’s behavior has become a problem for Swift to resolve. An issue with her own ethics, her own contradictions and silence, her own failure (if only implied) to leave, to practice her politics or be consistent, and so on. The ubiquity of male anger, the institutionalization of it, the very ordinary nature of it, the connection between it in romance and on the field, well that’s all been said right? It’s just football! So come at women’s critique or lack thereof, but leave the poor guy alone. What more is there to say about the men who benefit from the power that comes with masculinity, who stoke it by performing it without reservation, who just care so much about the game.
I don’t share such critical positions, but I get the exhaustion with the loop and the replay. When that leads us just to turn back toward women, however, and to say— why aren’t you dealing with this right? Well, I know what kind of loop that is and it’s coming from all angles.
While writing this, news about the Kansas City shooting came through my inbox. Another banal headline, an ordinary violence, more loss. Click and open. The thing is, when something reaches cultural saturation, we try to innovate on it, poke at it. We try to say something new.
I like novelty. I believe in it. I’m also skeptical of it. Because sometimes, that is how horrible things keep happening—we become not just numb to them, but so accustomed to trying to make sense of them, that we forget it doesn’t have to be this way.
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