`` A One Hour Long Film Produced By Media Education...

A one-hour long film produced by Media Education Foundation and directed by Sut Jhally, Tough Guise is a documentary released in 1999. The film features Jackson Katz - an anti-violence educator, filmmaker and author – who, as the title of the film itself implies, speaks about representations of violence and hypermasculinity prevalent in our social media, and how this affects our society as a whole. The film starts with the narrator, Jackson Katz, underlining the extreme notion of masculinity that is presented in our everyday lives. Contrary to popular beliefs, masculinity is a projection that is put up by men and not a fixed state of being. The ‘tough guise’, defined by Katz as â€Å"the front that so many men put up that s based on the extreme notions of masculinity that emphasizes toughness and physical strength and gaining the respect and admiration of others through violence or the implicit threat of it†, becomes the main issue that affects people who identify as male. When Katz brought up the meaning of a man, the film intercuts to scenes of interviewed teenagers who used words like ‘tough’, ‘independent’, ‘muscular’, ‘strong’, and ‘powerful’ to describe their ideas of a man. When asked to describe a man who does not conform to these standards, the teenagers used words like ‘wussâ₠¬â„¢, ‘sissy’, ‘weak’, ‘bitch’, and ‘fag’ instead. This scene truly underlines the widespread binary gender roles that are seen as common and universal among adolescents. In a sense, this influential