Prime Time’s Real Men : The Myths and the Movement Come to TV

Men talking with men. Men emoting with men. Men drumming and chanting with men. And they’re doing it on prime-time TV.

Thanks largely to a movement launched by poet-mythologist Robert Bly, who has inspired countless males to go searching for their inner “wild man,” the fall TV season to date has been, as John Belushi might have put it, a manly, masculine affair.

Kicked off in earnest by Bill Moyers’ 1990 profile for PBS of Bly and his “Gathering of Men” seminars, the “men’s movement,” as it is loosely described, predictably has turned into a favorite subject of sitcoms and talk-show monologuists.

Since the new season began in September, “Murphy Brown,” “Cheers,” “Home Improvement,” “Northern Exposure,” “Arsenio Hall,” HBO’s “Sessions” and even “Star Trek--The Next Generation” have weighed in on the topic. Directly or indirectly, they have invoked Bly’s name, debated about male modes of feeling and communication or focused on wilderness bonding rituals and storytelling sessions.

And it isn’t over yet: “Anything but Love” has an episode slated to air Jan. 8, and “Coach” has a still-unscheduled entry about old-style male bonding called “Loonstruck.”

Mostly, it’s been fodder for laughs, especially satire-ready practitioners who meet in American Indian-style sweat lodges, conduct drumming marathons or teach spear-fighting.

“I have a prejudice in that I find all of this a bit silly,” said Peter Noah, executive producer of “Anything but Love.” In an episode entitled “Call of the Mild,” co-star Richard Lewis’ character and two co-workers will be sent on an outdoor bonding adventure.

“If there is one group since the dawn of time that has least reason for complaint,” Noah said, “it would be the white American male in the latter part of 20th Century, which is basically the group that’s taking part in this stuff.”

The sitcom treatments began, by most accounts, with HBO’s “Dream On,” in which a male-bonding workshop was the focus of a 1990 episode. But the real TV flood came this fall, unleashed by major men’s movement features in Newsweek and on ABC’s “20/20.”

“When we first talked about doing a show on this last April, we were worried that no one knew what it was,” said Michael Patrick King, writer of the “Male Call” episode of “Murphy Brown” that aired recently. “But when we came back to work four months later, it had been on the cover of Newsweek and since then it really exploded. It worked to our advantage that America got aware of it very quickly.”

In that show, Murphy set out to skewer a poet-mythologist named Eli White, a character based closely on Bly and his best-selling “Iron John” book. At the end of the half hour, however, the testy journalist came away from one of White’s male-bonding sessions with open admiration.

“We deliberately went out of our way to create the (Eli White) character who was true and genuine, and not a charlatan or a fraud,” said King, 37, who said friends first made him aware of Bly’s book. “We never made fun of the message of the movement--we made fun of the way some people receive it.”

In fact, most sitcoms have shown a degree of respect, however begrudging in some instances, in their views on such men’s movement concerns as absent fathers, clingy mothers and corporate pressures for men to compete with one another.

In “Home Improvement,” the ABC series in which stand-up comic Tim Allen wrestles weekly with the conflict between male pigheadedness and female lack of respect for power tools, the creators have given an ongoing voice to those and other male issues.

A next-door neighbor, known only as Wilson (Earl Hindman), regularly dispenses pearls of wisdom such as “It is the nature of men to do, and the nature of women to feel,” drawn from such sources as Bly and Keen, said series co-producer David McFadzean.

“Wilson gives us the guru-father-confessor that most men don’t have, and he allows us to explore feelings deep inside of men. For instance, one show we’re going to do will explore the idea that men’s creative drive may come from the fact that we can’t give birth,” he said.

“Home Improvement” also looks to Deborah Tannen’s best-selling book on male-female miscommunication, “You Just Don’t Understand,” and other sources to provide an equivalent woman’s point of view.

“I wouldn’t say this is (exclusively) a male-movement show,” McFadzean said. “Some people have asked us, ‘What are you going to do when this thing blows over?’ I don’t think it will be a problem because the core of our show is men and women, male-female issues that have always existed. Those things are timeless.”

Indeed, similar concerns still will be topical in the 24th Century--if television can be trusted.

“Star Trek--The Next Generation” aired a typically serious-minded episode in October that drew upon the same themes and sources that are at the heart of the men’s movement. In “Darmok,” two men from different races learn to communicate by sharing their respective mythologies. Capt. Jean-Luc Picard turned to the ancient Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh, a myth that also figures into Bly’s “Iron John,” to break through centuries of failed attempts to establish communication with a mysterious alien culture.

Joe Menosky, series co-producer and writer of the “Darmok” teleplay, said that the episode was not a conscious effort to capitalize on the men’s movement. It was, however, inspired by the same beliefs that have prompted Bly, Keen, mythologist Joseph Campbell and others who use ancient myths and legends to understand and explain contemporary human attitudes and problems, he said.

“Darmok” grew out of concepts from Jungian psychology that certain metaphors in mythology remain interesting and relevant today and can even drive and explain behavior, Menosky said.

Others, however, take a shorter view of the staying power of such explorations. People magazine recently stated that because network TV had discovered the men’s movement, it necessarily has lost any credibility it might once have had.

Not surprisingly, most writers and producers of shows that have approached the subject don’t agree.

“The fact that this is on television says that it is important,” said Richard Lewis, who nonetheless conceded that he feels no special connection with the back-to-our-primal roots drive.

“To me, when I talk about how important ‘Comic Relief’ is to a bunch of people in my living room, that’s one thing,” Lewis said. “But I’d much rather talk to David Letterman about it, because that kind of audience is much more important. I have no doubt that many shows might trivialize important themes. But there also are some really wonderful writers . . . and producers with consciences who won’t allow something important to get (trampled) over.”