Hollywood’s Misstep on Men’s Mental Health
The Springsteen biopic pushes therapy as the cure for men’s struggles, ignoring the value of traditional masculinity in overcoming personal demons
This is a guest post by Joseph Holmes. It contains spoilers.
One of the most underdiscussed popular modern genres is the musical biopic. Ever since the box office and Oscar success of Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018, Hollywood has regularly mined history for as many classic rock stars as they can, from Rocketman to Respect to Elvis, last year’s A Complete Unknown starring Timothy Chalamet, and the upcoming biopics of Michael Jackson and the four-part film about The Beatles directed by Danny Boyle.
There are a lot of reasons for the popularity of the musical biopic in Hollywood. It has built-in name recognition and a nostalgia-ripe fanbase. It creates great opportunities for actors to show their chops by doing their best impression of someone everyone knows.
But it also gives Hollywood an opportunity to do something else they really enjoy: deconstruct men’s mental health strategies. And nowhere is this more evident than in the latest musical biopic, Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.
From 20th Century Studios and starring Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) as Bruce Springsteen, Jeremy Strong (“Succession”) as his combination friend and manager Jon Landau, Deliver Me from Nowhere chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska album. Recorded on a 4-track recorder in Springsteen’s New Jersey bedroom, Bruce has to fight the record label to get the album made and fight his own demons as he discovers no matter how much success he gets, it doesn’t fix the enduring trauma of his childhood.
While most musical biopics start the story before the hero is a success and we watch them rise, in Deliver Me From Nowhere, we pick up with Bruce Springsteen when he’s already a huge success. He is selling out stadiums, and old high school acquaintances are fixing him up with their sisters. Record labels are depending on his next album. Paul Shrader wants to make a movie with him. But Bruce still isn’t happy. He’s still haunted by the issues with his father that he hasn’t dealt with. He believes that making his new album–one that is more authentic to his true self–will change that. So he fights tooth and nail to get it made. Sacrificing his relationship with his girlfriend to make it happen.
Once he does get his way, he discovers that he’s still desperately miserable. So his friend Jon Landau pushes him to go to therapy. It’s here and only here–in the therapist’s office, at the climax of the film–that Bruce Springsteen begins to heal.
While most musical biopics typically show the dark side of success for rock stars, Deliver Me From Nowhere goes much further than typical entries in the genre. Because we typically start out with the protagonists before they’re a success, we root for them to succeed and feel catharsis when they do. We typically feel a redemption of their story in their success. Such as when Freddie Mercury proves his father wrong by making the world a better place with his music. And how Bob Dylan succeeds in keeping the people around him from controlling him.
But Deliver Me From Nowhere gives no such catharsis with Bruce’s successes. He’s already a success when we meet him. And when he gets his way with the album–a fight which he didn’t even have to lift a finger, really, because Jon Landau did all the work of fighting the record label for him–we don’t see him enjoy the success. We merely see how empty it feels afterwards. It’s only when he goes to therapy that the shadows lift.
Movies about men and the insufficiency of male cultural norms for dealing with mental health struggles have been very common in Hollywood this year. Friendship argued that the cause of the “male loneliness epidemic” was men’s fault–because men just suck at making friends. Sketch followed a single dad trying to help his son and daughter cope with the death of their mother. But while he thought his son was the healthy one because he didn’t seem like he was grieving (and was processing his grief in particular masculine ways like problem-solving and focusing on tasks), and his daughter was struggling because she was processing her grief openly–the opposite turned out to be true. Sovereign followed a duo of fathers and sons on opposite sides of the law who both ended their stories in tragedy because they focused too much on a “conquer” and “tough” style of parenting and not enough motherly tenderness and empathy. The Smashing Machine Mark Kerr’s obsession with strength and winning ultimately leaves him empty until he walks away from it.
On the one hand, it’s very positive that Hollywood is taking the mental health of men seriously. On the other hand, its narrative around it reflects the trend in psychology to see traditional masculinity and masculine norms as the primary cause of men’s problems. According to a 2018 report published by the American Psychological Association, “Traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors.” These risky behaviors included heavy drinking, using tobacco, and avoiding vegetables, and–worst of all–not going to therapy. Men’s desire to solve their depression and gain confidence by overcoming obstacles was not seen as a valid solution or even a positive, but as an obstacle to admitting vulnerability that would cause them to go to therapy–which is how they would actually get fixed.
Ironically, these guidelines were themselves widely criticized as a barrier to men seeking therapy. According to the 2023 study:
The practice guidelines for men and boys quickly became controversial given concerns that the guidelines were disparaging of men and boys, particularly those with traditional values and sought to impose progressive or feminist gender norms and ideologies rather than remaining focused on clinical wellness and empathy. This review finds that, though the guidelines were offered in good faith, many of the critiques are likely valid. Specifically, the guidelines failed to acknowledge significant evidence for biological influences on gender (e.g., hormonal, and hypothalamic influences on gender identity and gendered behavior), were unintentionally disparaging of traditional men and families, and were too closely wedded to specific sociocultural narratives and incurious of data not supporting those narratives. It is concluded that there are reasonable concerns that the current guidelines may do more harm than good by dissuading traditional men and families from seeking counseling.
Indeed, there’s growing research that masculine forms of dealing with life have a meaningfully positive impact on one’s mental health. Jonathan Haidt lays out the research in his book The Anxious Generation that much of the rise of depression and anxiety in modern young people is that they haven’t built up enough mental toughness that comes from independence. This is something that studies are increasingly saying fathers are uniquely capable of passing on to children because it fits a more masculine personality type. As the Institute for Family Studies reported:
Fathers tend to be particularly attuned to developing children’s physical, emotional, and intellectual independence—in everything from children making their own lunches and tying their own shoes to doing household chores and making decisions for themselves after they have left home. Fathers are also more likely than mothers to encourage children to take risks, while also ensuring safety and security, thus helping children develop confidence, navigate new transitions, and bravely confront unfamiliar situations.
None of this is to deny that you can–even men–take masculine dispositions toward “stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression” too far. Indeed, high-achieving men like Bruce Springsteen and Mark Kerr are likely kinds of men who have “maxed out” (to use video game language) on masculine strategies for conquering their inner demons and need to balance that out with some feminine strategies. The problem is, there are very few–if any–movies that show the other side of the coin. Few modern movies show men–or women–who are suffering because they lack traditional masculinity, and find their solution through it.
The irony is, the only reason anybody watching Deliver Me From Nowhere cares about Bruce Springsteen’s mental health is because of so many of the traits that organizations like the APA derided. So when Hollywood filmmakers make movies that decry traits that make people more likely to succeed, it’s a form of “pulling the ladder up after them”. Popular podcaster Chris Williamson noted this in his critique of the advice people who “made it” often give people. These people say not to use success and problem-solving as a solution to your feelings of “insufficiency”. But Williamson notes they only say that after they’ve already succeeded.
When you look at what got them to where they are, it’s precisely the traits they’re now castigating. Almost everyone has more pain and resentment and fear in the beginning. Which is why they use it. Once you’ve achieved enough success and validation from the world to not be fuelled by that any more, that’s great. But that doesn’t mean that people who are just starting out can achieve the success you now have by using strategies which you only accessed after becoming successful.
I’ve written before about how Hollywood tends to portray all success as the result of being “gifted” but doesn’t portray or glamorize the process of becoming great through hard work. Author and public intellectual Arthur Brooks notes there’s strong evidence that fantasizing about results makes you less likely to succeed, but fantasizing about the process makes you more likely to succeed. This means that not giving people a picture of the process–or demonizing it if you do–handicaps people from actually achieving those goals, and–ultimately–the sense of confidence and peace that comes with it.
The rise in concern about people’s mental health–particularly men’s–is a very good thing. And the musical biopic genre is a particularly fertile ground to explore it. Hopefully, Hollywood will grow a more holistic perspective on the topic going forward, so they can actually help “deliver from nowhere” the people who need it the most.
 | A guest post by
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Based on your description, it also seems the film fits the current cultural obsession with trauma.
Without denying that trauma exists, this obsession has created a condition where everyone is searching for a source of trauma in their lives, and therapy provides the mechanism for them to be the pitied victims of their circumstances.
I went through some very hard times in combat with horrible leaders, and had about a year of decompression and anger that I had to work myself down from. I suppose if it had happened now, I would have been encouraged to think of myself as being traumatized by a senior officer who was just a horrible leader, but never inflicted permanent damage to my person.
These days, however, I have to be patient as an Elder when I listen to young adults talk about the trauma from hen-pecking mothers who might have been imperfect and needy but hardly inflicted trauma on their children. I say this because I have other adults in our congregation who were treated in the most reprehensible ways by their parents and quietly resent the open use of trauma in so many contexts.
Turning attention to men in particular, I have noticed that men need a sense of purpose, a group that accepts them, and a sense, especially, that they are valued and respected. In a heartbreaking case, my wife counsels a man who attempted suicide at one point and is filled with so much regret and self-loathing. He lives for his children and regrets leaving the Marine Corps.
Work, family purpose, and respect are not sufficient for a man to be spiritually whole, but they are necessary for our existence as men. We are in-created with a need to be productive and to have others around us, especially our spouses, to value us. No amount of therapy and learning to seek self-discovery can replace that need. It's why men have so many nightmares and fears about being able to provide for their families. It's why so many young men have taken their lives after leaving a tight-knit group in combat. Without diminishing some real combat trauma in many of these men, the real loss was a loss of purpose and belonging within a group.
I know I've waxed long about this, but the culture's blindness to this is manifest in the progressive reaction to Joe Rogan's interview with Mark Zuckerbug. When I listened to Mark's love of Jujitsu and the sense of confidence and strength it gave him, I could resonate. It was more meaningful to him in that conversation than the fact that he owns a large company. He truly believed that his practical combat experience had good things to guide how leadership in his company was formed. Predictably, however, this was greeted by progressives as so much toxic masculinit because it doesn't fit the mold on what makes someone a healthy individual.
These are good insights on mental health.
I tend to think of these music biopics as essentially a type of "chick flick", despite the male protagonists -- the hit musician being a sort of man that very obviously tends to capture women's imaginations -- but I wonder if this is just my narrow view of things. I've tried to sit through a few of them but have never been able to endure it.
The only one I can really remember people around me discussing enthusiastically was the Johnny Cash one, "Walk the Line," and it was women discussing it. If I look it up on Wikipedia, I notice the poster shown there is obviously targeted at women and is evocative of that chick flick exemplar, "The Notebook".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_the_Line
That doesn't make the analysis here incorrect, but if Hollywood is targeting women with this message on men, it's a somewhat different story than targeting men with this message.