What's Wrong With Men? (Check Michael Douglas)

[MsAmerica]

What’s wrong with men? A writer looks at Michael Douglas characters for clues (Judith Warner)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/celebrities/what-s-wrong-with-men-a-writer-looks-at-michael-douglas-characters-for-clues/ar-AA1Kdnfj?ocid=BingNewsSerp

In her new book "What Is Wrong with Men: Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything," podcaster and author Jessa Crispin examines how the films Michael Douglas made in the 1980s and 1990s reflect the anxieties of those times.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/08/08/what-is-wrong-with-men

I remember when Disclosure came out discussing with friends how ridiculous a concept it was in the time when sexual harrassment of women wasn't uncommon in the workplace. And to turn it on it's head and make the man the harrassee! Unheard of (by me) then or now. We found it incredibly disheartening wanting harrassment and rape tackled more strictly at all levels. The fact it was a beautiful woman doing the harassment was basically a man's wet dream in our opinion. TBH I didn't watch it, but there was plenty of hype, clips and discussions in the media at the time.

The article mentions she studies 9 films so I’m assuming that she also included films such as Wall Street and Falling Down which contextualise the financial and structural times which enabled the growth of the idea of the victimised male to grow?

Micheal Douglas is an interesting study of the characters he portrayed. It’s interesting that Fatal Attraction and Wall Street were released in the same year. But that ‘bunny boiler’ has entered common language to describe a bad/mad woman who won’t accept male privilege but ‘greed is good’ is more or else accepted as an obvious truth of how to succeed for those who won’t accept workers rights.