Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere

Netflix always seems to be able to make documentaries that suddenly everyone starts talking about. While their film and TV section can be quite hit or miss, the documentaries are, on average, at a decent level of engagement and storytelling. Though it must be said that the Netflix style of "attention editing" that aims to draw out more drama than necessary at times can be quite generic, in my opinion. This brings me to "Inside the Manosphere". Theroux's style of observant probing that lets the subject naturally reveal themselves seemed like it could be very well suited to the already overly energetic and dramatic life of the manosphere interviewees. Overall, the documentary is quite solid. Decent edited storylines that ultimately deliver at the attempt of showing how these manosphere influencers live their lives and what their values are. This can be one of those documentaries that, if you are watching with someone else, you pause almost every five minutes because you want to discuss a segment or scene. It seems that at times this is quite an easy job for Theroux in terms of driving the documentary; the people that he interviews make content and drama for a living. 

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However, after watching it, there is a feeling that something was missing. While Theroux's style does provide a quite expected outcome, I feel that there is a wider missing part of understanding how this culture came about that has allowed these men to become so successful. For a world so divided at the moment, I think retrospective analysis of culture would have provided a much better argumentation of why the manosphere even became a thing, even if it may not be Theroux's typical style. Allow me to demonstrate an example of said approach. I do not want to get into politics here per se, yet culture and politics work in tandem and are very reactive to one another. For a second here, I want you to check out this clip. Never did I think that I would see videos of tactical bombings mixed with very heavy pop culture hetero masculine imagery on my feed made by The White House, but here we are. I know, it's not about the documentary, but it is linked to the manosphere. A mere skim of cultural analysis already allows us to see that this imagery is being used to propagate a politically orchestrated point that is based on seemingly lost pop culture masculinity. This isn't subtle. The White House is using and appealing to the visual language of fandom and geek masculinity. Not just "traditional" masculinity but specifically the kind that lives online, plays games, watches anime, and grew up on action movies. That's a precise demographic target: men 18-40 who came of age on this exact media diet. Notice that there is mostly circa 2010 pop culture media being used. I would like to make an argument, one with potential for a thesis. There was a period, roughly 2015-2022, where a certain strain of Hollywood and media storytelling leaned heavily into a specific formula: a superficially competent, strong woman arrives, existing male characters become bumbling or irrelevant, and the lesson is delivered. Ghostbusters remake, certain Disney Star Wars choices, and multiple superhero reboots. You don't have to be in the manosphere to have found that pattern creatively weak or ideologically heavy-handed in certain projects. A lot of people did, including people with no political axe to grind. For myself, what made me not like some of those projects was never that a female was playing the protagonist; it was the weak storytelling in favour of ideological correction based on the past patriarchal structure and female representation in film or media. I agree that it must be done; inequality has been happening for generations, let me fully state here, yet it must be done right in the arts. However, at the end of the day, art is just art, and it should not justify building a cult following surrounding the idea of "strong" men. What the manosphere did in part was take some of that legitimate aesthetic subjective frustration and used it as one of their building blocks to build their (seemingly new) worldview. Their argument became: this isn't bad filmmaking or storytelling, it's an attack on men. Once you frame it as an attack, you need a defence. Suddenly, you have a movement. Both media sides eventually came to perpetuate each other in a cycle, with the online manosphere dependent on their rivalry with the "woke" media. Fueling more hate and division, leading to the political impact you saw in the Instagram clip and, in part, to the rise to fame of these manosphere influencers. 

 

The manosphere claims to be about male strength and self-sufficiency. But their entire movement is mostly powered by grievance, by feeling wronged by women, by the media, by culture. That's not strength, that's reactivity, and where are those reactions best spread today, online. The internet and, by extension, social media offer two key aspects for the manosphere to grow: amplification and anonymity. This part is explored in the documentary, and Theroux does a fine job of trying to understand the online side of this world. I just wish he had gone a bit further, as his style here gets the job done but leaves a lot on the table in the grand context of things, especially when making a piece like this on a very sensitive subject.​