"The Hurt, Betrayed Son" / 171

WRA relates Robinson's perspective and the key question surrounding this essay well:

The movie Rambo has become an emblem of blind, unthinking machismo and the myth of the macho man who does not feel or think--a killing machine. Accorind to Robinson, Rambo represents the tension for men in a patriarchal society between outward hardness and inward softness. Doug Robinson suggests renting the first Rambo movie, First Blood, after reading this chapter. Many viewers, especially feminist viewers, have found the Rambo movies anything but positive experiences and models for males. Does Robinson's reading of Rambo seem convincing to you? (171)

First, do watch the film after you read this piece. And then after you watch the film, be encouraged to re-read the essay. This will really reinforce what's going on in "The Hurt, Betrayed Son." Second, know that similar to what Peter Middleton points out in "Boys Will Be Men: Boys' Superhero Comics," Robinson suggests that for Rambo, the "[. . .] fear of being weak is mainly a fear of letting his tough image slip--the image of a man, a superhero, self-sufficient, unneedy, indifferent to sympathy or kindness, unaffected by others' claims on him" (177). This is key to the piece.

In No Less a Man (1994) Robinson investigates how men have changed as a result of the feminist movement (http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/press/pp0025.html). This is a new form of art, according to Robinson. More recently, Robinson has been exploring how this topic applies to cyberspace (http://hotwired.lycos.com/talk/club/special/transcripts/robinson.html). In this online interview, he talks about the importance of reading materials in their original language or in at least a first translation, and hypothesizes about how a "human/machine system or interface" can be used to write. Humans and machines working together.

The companion critical readings will make the connection between Robinson's piece about male identity and his hypotheses about new writing environments more apparent.