Picking up right where we left off:
So then, Ted Lasso swarms with positive man vibes. Different forms of manly behavior are set in conversation with one another, putting the very concept of masculine, as a gender, under the microscope and, thus, up for debate. Good stuff. Yet hegemonic behavior in any social sphere is hegemonic for a reason. It is behavior that somehow has clawed its way to the top. It is behavior that’s not only feared for its power, but desired for its privilege. The phenomenon of internalizing the oppressor operates in this manner, by way of this one-two punch of dread and lure. There can be a kind of if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em fatalism to the process—if you’re even able to gain entrance into the exclusive club of the hegemonic. As mentioned above, a big if. In Ted Lasso, we watch two characters undergo the misfortune of internalizing the hegemonic masculine oppressor. Their experiences are lamentable and distressing to witness.
One character is Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham). Now, before you do a spit take like Ted surprised by a sip of sparkling water, I warned you that gender is a complicated thing. Females are perfectly capable of performing masculine behavior, just as males can perform feminine behavior. Gender is like a cosmetic worn on the body; it is not a necessary set of mannerisms originating from within the body. Female biology does not guarantee a display of the current conventions for Woman. Nor does male biology ensure an exhibition of the customary standards for Man. When we talk about gender, we’re talking about social constructs, not inevitabilities of nature. As I say in Part 1, many more Rants will deal with the thorny issues of gender. For now, let’s return to Rebecca.
As many women experience, Rebecca finds herself struggling to navigate within a male-dominated domain. In her case, this is the doubly manly realm of business and sport. Both are hostile territories to females. In order to fight back, Rebecca adopts the behavior of the very thing tormenting her—the rich, powerful, and privileged men who own professional football clubs. In fact, throughout Season 1, Rebecca mimics the very person she hates most for making her life miserable: Rupert. In her attempt to enact revenge on her pig of an ex-husband, Rebecca more or less becomes her ex-husband pig. She single-mindedly connives to run AFC Richmond into the ground simply to spite Rupert. Key to this shameful scheme is hiring Ted as a spectacularly unqualified coach. Not only is Rebecca counting on Ted’s incompetence to crash and burn the club, but she works to undercut his coaching efforts at every turn. Exactly as Rupert might do, Rebecca exploits Ted and could not care less about humiliating the rube from Kansas.
However, Ted’s Better Man magic rubs off on Rebecca (and all those cookies certainly help). She confesses her sins to Ted in the final episode of Season 1, and Ted forgives her. Rebecca’s character trajectory in Season 2, then, is similar to Sam’s—one of coming into her own. Rather than implementing the cruelty of the masculinist mode of power she sees all around her, Rebecca develops an executive style that suits her personality. She forms a businesswoman bond with Keeley that is crucial to the professional and personal growth of them both. She rebuilds Richmond into a club that wins its way back up to the Premier League. She resists the bullying of the formidable CEO of Dubai Air when he instructs her to terminate Sam because of his protest (S2.E3). She stops obsessing about Rupert’s divorcing her to take a younger wife and dares to enter a nourishing and unconventional romantic relationship with Sam. By becoming her own woman, Rebecca throws off the yoke of the hegemonic businessman. Of course, being white and wealthy certainly helps her endeavor. Race, class, and gender are inextricably mixed. Still, kudos to Rebecca for escaping the dark imprisonment-enchantment of masculine domination.
Nathan Shelley (Nick Mohammed) isn’t so lucky. By the end of Season 2, heading into Season 3, Nate has become nothing short of a tragic figure when it comes to internalizing the oppressor. It’s painful to watch his slow march toward the dark side. He goes from being the lowest of the sport low—an equipment manager and general locker-room dogsbody—to the highest of the high—the head coach of a Premier League club, West Ham United. Rupert bought West Ham presumably to wreak vengeance on Rebecca for taking AFC Richmond away from him. While Nate likely believes he was hired for his football acumen, far more likely—given that Rupert is an incorrigible asshole—Nate was brought on only to play a part in Rupert’s vendetta. That is, Rupert gives a fig about Nate only insofar as Nate is expedient to Rupert’s trickeries.
No doubt, Nate has a keen mind for football tactics and player analysis. Ted and Coach Beard recognize Nate’s abilities immediately and make him part of their thinktank, eventually getting Nate promoted to assistant coach. But as Nate’s power grows, so does his cruelty—the same type of cruelty he suffered at the hands of the powerful when he was a nobody. Just as Rebecca internalized the hegemonic brutality of Rupert, Nate internalizes the arrogance and nastiness of Jamie. Jamie used to ridicule and torment Nate mercilessly, making his life miserable. Nate turns around to berate and threaten the new equipment manager, the innocent and cleverly named Will Kitman (Charlie Hiscock; S2). Jamie belittled the football talent of his teammates. So too does Nate needlessly and heartlessly run down the abilities of his players, in particular Colin Hughes (Billy Harris; S2.E7). In short, Nate does not handle his rise to prominence gracefully. He internalizes the oppressor to become a prick.
To be sure, we’re given lots of room to sympathize with Nate. When it comes to the hegemonic masculinity department of British society, he’s obviously been dealt a weak hand. Being of South Asian lineage, Nate undoubtedly has faced racial prejudice. Being of small stature, Nate hasn’t the innate athletic aptitude to be a star footballer himself. Being shy and unassuming, Nate is not adept at the dating scene. The poor bloke even has an overbearing jackass of a father. (Sidebar: Into the thick man-soup of Ted Lasso, we can add the ingredient of father-son relationships; both good and bad ones prominently dot the landscape.) It seems that before Ted took him under his wing, Nate has been overlooked and ignored at best, denigrated and maltreated at worst.
Still, these are reasons—not excuses—for the awful things Nate does. His worst act is leaking to the press, as an anonymous source, the story of Ted’s panic attack during a match. Maliciously, Nate exposes to the world Ted’s private struggle with the mental health issue of anxiety (S2.E12). At the end of the episode, after Richmond dramatically wins promotion back to the Premier League, Nate childishly rips in half Ted’s all-important BELIEVE sign hanging in the locker-room. The former “Nate the Great,” as Ted dubbed him, has turned full-on Sith.
Why? Apparently, because all those unhappy years Nate spent suffering as a non-hegemonic male have burned into his personality an acute sense of insecurity. The mistreatment Nate endured as an inferior man has made him acutely susceptible to slights—actual, unintended, or merely imaginary.
Tearfully, Nate tells Ted, “You made me feel like I was the most important person in the whole world, and then you abandoned me. Like you switched out a light, just like that. And I worked my ass off trying to get your attention back, to prove myself to you. To make you like me again. But the more I did, the less you cared. It was like I was fucking invisible.” This unbearable snub perceived by Nate has seethed into resentment and loathing. “Well, I think you’re a fucking joke. Without me, you wouldn’t have won a single match ... ‘Cause you sure as hell don’t belong here. But I do. I belong here. This didn’t just fall into my lap. I earned this” (S2.E12). Ted tries to apologize, of course, but Nate’s having none of it.
An interesting question to ponder, though, is whether or not Ted did ignore and take for granted—maybe a little bit—poor Nate? Ted did expend a lot of time and energy drawing Roy into the Richmond coaching circle. And Roy is far too hegemonic for Nate to compete against. For example, Roy doesn’t take Nate seriously as a romantic rival for Keeley, as Roy does Jamie. The insult is inadvertent, but nonetheless it makes Nate feel further belittled in an arena, dating and sexuality, where he already lacks confidence (S2.E12). Similarly, where Nate is a gifted strategic coach, Roy is a much better coach of the players themselves, having been one. Roy saw how to fix Jamie’s game. And in the decisive match at the end of Season 2, Roy makes the call of letting the players decide what strategy to use in the second half. Nate argues to abandon his tactic of the “false nine.” When Ted asks Roy what he thinks, Roy says simply, “You should ask them. They’re the ones out there actually doing this shit.” The players decide to stay with the strategy—and it wins them promotion. In spite of his scheme having won the day, Nate stomps off the pitch in a sulk—heading for the locker room to tear up the BELIEVE sign.
Will Nate never be able to achieve the status of bona fide hegemonic masculinity? Is it his tragedy that he is driven to try? If Ted failed to give Nate the undivided attention he craves, will Rupert, as his new boss at West Ham United, supply Nate with the man-support he needs? (My guess is no way.) Only Season 3 will tell us. Judging by the publicity photo for S3.E4 released by Apple TV+ (https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/ted-lasso/episodes-images/), the next season of Ted Lasso looks to feature a manly showdown of archetypal proportions. Rupert stands phantom-menacingly in the background, decked out in basic Emperor Palpatine black. Like a cocky Darth Maul, Nate stares up coldly at Ted, only disdain in his eyes. Ever the nice guy, Coach Lasso just grins back at Nate, like some kind of goofy Obi-Ted Kenobi, always happy to be underestimated.
So what?
What does it matter if Ted Lasso qualifies as a contextually aware and critically informed look into culture (that is, a Rant) targeted at some of the dominant beliefs that inform and guide a collective approach to reality by a group of people (that is, a Regime)? If the show does play about with the concept of masculinity, as I suggest, why might that be culturally significant?
Great questions. Three answers.
Answer One:
Looking at the show through the lens of gender raises a number of interesting issues. For example, what is the point of sport? To “win” some arbitrarily designed contest or to help shape healthy and well-adjusted people? Now, I’ve nothing at all against some good competition and have participated in plenty of it myself. But do you have to be an individualistic jerk like Jamie to be good at it? Or is competition better undertaken as a group effort? Growing up, I always noticed how coaches preached team-play nonstop but at the awards banquet at the end of the season inevitably handed the MVP trophy to the most selfish guy on the team. Hmm.
An even more important topic foregrounded by Ted Lasso is masculine behavior. Is it uniform? Is it set in stone? Does it have to be emotionally incompetent and ruthlessly self-centered? Or is there more than one way to be male? If so, can a dominant form of masculinity be challenged and replaced by other forms of masculinity—by better forms, one hopes? And just where in the heck does feminine behavior fit into all this man-mess? These are all huge cultural issues.
Maybe the most vital issue of all, though, posed by Ted Lasso has to do with internalizing the oppressor. How can this subtle yet potent imperative/enticement be recognized and resisted? Nate certainly presents a sad, fictionalized case of the phenomenon for us to contemplate. But what about real incidents of internalizing the oppressor? Far more serious instances with far more grave social consequences? Such as when five black police officers in Memphis drag an innocent young black man out of his car and beat him to death.
Answer Two:
A second thing to note about Ted Lasso as a Rant is not just its use of gender, but its use of genre—that is, its form as a piece of entertainment. To paraphrase Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernández): Comedy is life!
The British writer, politician, and all-around man of letters Horace Walpole (1717-1797) wrote: “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.” By that I think we can extract the following: if you want to feel deeply, watch Tragedy; if you want to think deeply, watch Comedy. Such a statement might seem counterintuitive. Tragedy, after all, deals with Kings and Queens and Princes, grandiose circumstances of State, the mysterious workings of Fate, and is as high-falutin a western literary form as there is, right up there with Epic. But Tragedy, like Epic, depicts a world unfamiliar to our everyday lived experiences. Those genres are meant to awe us, thrill us, turn us into sentimental wrecks, scare the pants off of us, and most of all make us feel trivial compared to the fortunes and feats of the noble and powerful.
The genre of Comedy, on the other hand, is us. Comedy (and Satire) puts us on display within our current social circumstances. In effect, we watch ourselves in action—our weaknesses, our strengths, our cruelties, our kindnesses, our idiocy, our good sense. And, when done well, Comedy gives us an awfully lot to ponder about ourselves and the kind of society we’ve created. Things such as the thorny issues of gender behavior.
Hail, Comedy! Instruction and delight rolled into one!
Answer Three:
A third thing to consider when applying a fancy cultural theory to something as culturally routine as a TV show is simply this: theory opens up a text—any kind of text—to all kinds of different interpretations. To all kinds of distinct ways to view, to enjoy, to hate, to react to that text. Rather than thinking (or someone like me telling you) that Ted Lasso is about THIS, Ted Lasso can be about a whole range of things. From light-hearted and merely amusing things to heavy-duty and profoundly depressing things. And all of those responses are useful and legitimate. And, I would argue, the more ways you have to react to a cultural text, the more in touch you are with the culture that gives rise to that text—that is, the culture that determines you.
I’ve applied the notion of hegemonic masculinity to Ted Lasso, but by no means have I exhausted the number of readings available in the show when it comes to matters of gender. Keeley can be inspected as a fascinating illustration of an emerging Independent Woman. And I’m sure there’s a dissertation waiting to be written about the matriarchically named Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift). What is more, Ted Lasso can just as easily and rewardingly be explored for any number of other social issues: race, class, colonialism, cross-cultural experience, and so forth.
Again, my aim in pointing out Rants that attack Regimes is not to tell anyone how to read a certain text or cultural event. My aim is to show theories doing important cultural work. Work that opens up discussion and debate. Work I’m hoping you’ll find both cool and worthwhile.
Theory is life!
Readings of possible interest on Masculinity:
Connell, R. W. “The Social Organization of Masculinity.” The Masculinities Reader, edited by S. Whitehead and F. Barrett, Polity, 2001, pp. 30-50.
Connell, R. W. and James W. Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society, vol. 19, no. 6, December 2005, pp. 829-859.
Readings of possible interest on Internalizing the Oppressor:
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum Books, 1970, Chapter 1.
COMING NEXT WEEK: Words
Magnificent and thought-provoking! I look forward to more.
I wonder how all this relates to the show's near obsession with father-child relationships. Ted has a terrible relationship with his dead father (or did until Dr. Sharon "cured" him). Jamie Tartt has a terrible relationship with his father. Nathan has a terrible relationship with his father. Rebecca has a terrible relationship with her father. We are clearly meant to assume that Rupert will be a terrible father to his newborn baby. Sam's father is the show's only GOOD father (other than the saintly and ambiguously emasculated Higgins), and being a good dad is Mr. Obisanya's only significant character trait, as if the character only exists to provide father contrast. Are fathers meant to be the source of hegemonic oppression in "Ted Lasso"?