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| Jeremy & Grayson © Richard Ansett 2016 |
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| Detail from Jeremy & Grayson © Richard Ansett 2016 |
This image is from an ongoing exploration of the issues
around the expression of emotion in men following the recent shocking
statistics of male suicide in the UK. Through the
observation of relationships between fathers and sons at varying stages of
development, subjects are requested to express intimacy in the boundaried
atmosphere of the photographic session and the response recorded.
The influence of cultural conditioning on males from the
earliest age has historically punished the expression of any significant
emotion with accusations of weakness, femininity or homosexuality. The stiff
upper lip as a metaphor of the Victorian era and more particularly the British empire
still pervades an element of the psyche of the male. The very definition of
manhood has been represented by the exercise of great self restraint in the
expression of emotion as a celebration of national character.
I am exploring the divergence of the male and female
response to feeling as it relates to a moment of self awareness in the child
when the outward expression of unfettered emotion that could be read by others
is perceived to be judged as wrong or dangerous (or equally as powerfully) as
successful. The young male child begins to see the expression of emotion as
revealing weakness, exposing them to potential attack and defeat, whereas the
female child at the same moment learns of its equal and opposite power. The
female child conditioned through centuries of oppression to not have a voice
adapts, understanding the power of the expression of emotion whereas the male
child correlates withdrawal as protection. In terms of this as a broader and
more defining cultural representation, the British empire itself relied
entirely on this outward cold bloodedness so that only a very few could
control such vast swathes of population. The legacy of this success
has led to its continued resonance in the male psyche in a modern world where
the rise of women towards equality has recognised these notions as limiting and
mysoginistic. This is creating a contemporary emotional vacuum exacerbating the
dangers for men who feel they cannot compete with their own engrained
expectations. My work as a Samaritan forces me to empathise with these notions
as pressures that can lead to thoughts of suicide and self harm and the
statistics for men are terrifying.
Whilst it is important to recognise that the fight for
true equality between men and women is far from over and men are still the predominant force in the
world, it must be recognised that there is a consequence to a behaviour that
represents a certain form of success that has led to the dramatic contemporary
statistics of male mental health issues and suicide. The suicide rate for men
is now three and a half times that of women. The very machismo values that
remain the definition of manhood are directly implicated in men's reluctance to
seek help and support, whether from friends or professionals, preferring to
self-medicate with alcohol or drugs with all the consequences that hold for
careers, relationships, social isolation and homelessness, all of which are
known to be key risk factors for suicide.
In this image of artist Jeremy Wood and his son Grayson, I
perceive even at this early stage the child's need to escape from the immediate
and present expression of feeling through self distraction. Often this can be
observed as a desire for food, computer games, television, behavioural issues
and in this particular case a small red car. The toy represents a self imposed
block to his engagement with his father, he feels unable to engage with the act
of intimacy without it. It seems the expression of emotion triggers a fight or
flight response at such an early age that we start to develop complex evasive
strategies that become the defining characteristics of the male personality in
adulthood.
