The former EastEnders star could have been the perfect person to take toxic men to task in this report on modern masculinity. Instead, he utterly fails to push back. What a waste
‘With traditional gender roles a thing of the past, what does it mean to be a man in modern Britain? Danny Dyer explores modern masculinity, men’s health and male identity.” So says Channel 4 in its publicity for the hour-long documentary Danny Dyer: How to Be a Man. Run through the Dyertron at the top of the programme, Danny has it thus: “Channel 4 bunged me a few quid to talk to geezers up and down the country. Is there really a war on men? ‘Fuck knows’ would be my initial reaction to that. But there’s a lotta shit going down and perhaps some men – maybe a lot of men – are resenting that.”
By the end of a superficial, overstuffed, chaotic hour it’s hard to feel that either we or Dyer are much the wiser. It begins promisingly with Dyer taking us back to his childhood home on an east London council estate and meeting his brother Tony. They remember the joy and sadness of their violent father eventually leaving the family, the deep-seated belief in their community that men were providers and protectors and women nurturers and the treatment Tony got for being gentle, for not liking football and for preferring to play with their sister’s toys to his own. “I’ve got so much respect for him. Never in a million years would I have had the bollocks to pick up a doll,” says Dyer. But just as it looks as though we are setting up for an interesting look at the nature v nurture elements of masculinity, or where the strength to resist peer pressure comes from, or how the boys negotiated their differences as they grew up and they – surely? – became more meaningful or problematic, we are off to something new.
