Between the first presidential campaign of Donald Trump and the arrival of the #MeToo movement in 2017, progressive activists and social critics increasingly warned us about something called toxic masculinity. The term, vaguely academic in nature, referred to traditional norms of manliness (emotional stoicism, physical aggressiveness) and their potentially dangerous consequences. There were certainly many examples of appalling male behavior, and these were taken as expressions of a deeper problem.
But even as the condemnation of toxic masculinity commanded public assent, there were signs of uncertainty. This was understandable, given that toxic masculinity seemed to encompass a wide range of offenses, from sexual violence to disrespectful manners to mere competitiveness. In the years since, the confusion has only intensified. If the second election of Mr. Trump and the rehabilitation of various “canceled” male figures are any indication, lots of people harbored doubts about whether ostensibly toxic men could, or should, be banished from society.
Among the signs of this ambivalence is a recent spate of erotic thriller movies in which controlling, ambitious, libidinous men appear as objects of sexual fascination. These films — including “Babygirl” (2024), “Fair Play” (2023), “Cat Person” (2023), “Deep Water” (2022), “The Voyeurs” (2021) and “Instinct” (2019) — suggest that today’s sexual politics are trending away from progressive pieties. While the official disapproval of the toxic male persists in these movies, it coexists with an unacknowledged and often perverse attraction to him. All of which speaks, however uncomfortably, to the continuing appeal of toxic masculinity — or perhaps of masculinity as such.
We have seen this before in film, albeit with the gender roles reversed. When noir emerged as a genre in the 1940s, it was centered on the dangerous appeal of the femme fatale, a figure at once alluring and threatening, impossible to ignore yet deadly to embrace.