Let's get the disclaimers out of the way.
a. If you haven't watched Martin McDonagh's 2022 tragic comedy, 'The Banshees of Inisherin', you should stop reading right away.
b. This is not a movie review. I will use a few references and characters from the movie to discuss nice men syndrome and men's issues.
Pádraic Súilleabháin and Colm Doherty
Two men. One problem. Both cannot accept that some things are just not in their control. Colm is an ageing artist on a small island, so desperate to create music that will last forever that he is willing to trade his sanity for it. But is it simply about an artist wanting to create an everlasting legacy in the twilight of his life? In fact, that is what he tells himself every night. But why does Colm wish to end his friendship with a seemingly dull but nice Pádraic? The truth is that Colm is a man, and men would rather cut their fingers off to keep their word than seek therapy. Men would rather lose themselves in chasing something than think about what or who they are losing or sacrificing in the process. But then this chase itself is a product of their ego refusing to back down, refusing to let a man come out of a situation unharmed, refusing to let a man seek help and understand that he no longer has to live by 'fight or flight'. A man can simply choose to – and I know it is not easy – talk. Dear men, please talk. You do not have to feel something heavy and overwhelming alone and act on it because you think you have to. Please allow yourself to share what is killing you inside with people around you. People you love, people you know. Colm declared he'd cut his fingers if Pádraic did not stop talking to him.
Colm: And each day you bother me more, another I’ll take off, and I’ll give ya until you see sense enough to stop. Or until I have no fingers left. Does this make things clearer to ya?
Pádraic: Not really, no.
Colm: Because I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Padraic. I don’t, like. But it feels like the drastic is the only option left open to me.
Pádraic: You’ve loads of options left open to ya. How’s fingers the first port of call?
How’s fingers the first port of call? Because Colm could not give a shit about music, he was a lonely musician who woke up one day and realised he no longer felt. And he wanted to feel something, and he had limited time to do so. Maybe Colm gave in to the idea that the comforts and calmness in his life and the modest but uninteresting folks who surround him on a small island are not allowing him to feel enough pain to create art of unequalled greatness. He wanted to feel like a tortured artist. Because god forbid that a man with a seemingly enjoyable life could also make art that lasts forever.
And enters the scapegoat, his best friend, Pádraic. A dull, dim, nice Pádraic. And so Colm did eventually cut off all his fingers on his left hand. Colm was right, though; he did achieve something through his antics – the death of 'niceness' in a nice man named Pádraic, his best friend.
Nice Men Syndrome
Now, we come to Pádraic. A self-proclaimed nice man. And he was nice. Nice because he lived a simple, small and unambitious life. He was content with his lovely and intelligent sister, Siobhán, his best friend, Colm, and his beloved pony, Jenny. He needed nothing more but also nothing less. The fact that Colm no longer wanted to entertain his company was confusing to Pádraic. He could not digest that a man could wake up one day and refuse to be friends with a friend of many years. How can a nice man's friendship be rejected? And why? Colm cannot decide for the two of them.
Pádraic: Yeah, well, it can’t all be you, you, you, can it?
Colm: Yes, it can.
Pádraic: There’s two of us in this.
Colm: No, there isn’t.
Pádraic: It takes two to tango.
Colm: I don’t want to tango.
This is now not about Pádraic, the character. Let's talk about nice men and their inability to accept that niceness does not come with a reciprocation guarantee. You could be the nicest man in the room, or fuck it, the world, and you are still not entitled to the friendship of a person who just does not want to be your friend or the relationship with a partner who wants to part their ways with you. It does not work like that. Being nice is a quality so romanticised (because most men are not nice) that people feel entitled to brownie points because they possess a rare quality, a quality that once was the bare minimum, so much that if you were not nice, what even were you? Now, it is a currency – you have it, or you do not, and if you do, you want something in its exchange.
The Tragic Life and Death of Dominic Kearney
What even was Colm versus Pádraic for? What was so unimaginable and unsolvable between two men that made finger chopping and house burning (with a man inside) fair play? Do you know what the real tragedy in The Banshees of Inisherin was? The life and death of Dominic Kearney. Dominic was perhaps the top contender in the list of people who needed help and escape from life on the island. But he was not smart like Siobhán to be able to do something about it. But could Dominic have left even if he had tried? He was the son of an abusive policeman, who Pádraic describes as “A fella who beats his own son black and blue every night that he’s not fiddling with him”. Dominic was as dull as Pádraic, maybe slightly more, but also, he wasn't.
When Pádraic told him how he sent one of Colm's musician buddies away from the island by telling an awful lie, it was “the dim one on the island” who got up and left because he could no longer enjoy the company of the guy who was until then a 'nice' person, unlike other islanders. Turns out, the nice guy was not so nice after all.
Pádraic: I went and sent him packing from the island.
Dominic: Did ya? How?
Pádraic: I told him a bread van crashed into his daddy, and he’d have to be rushing home to him, lest he die.
Dominic: Oh…That sounds like the meanest thing I’ve ever heard. I used to think you were the nicest of them. Turns out you’re just the same as them.
Long story short, once Pádraic had spilled the beans on the sexual and physical abuse of Dominic by his own father in the pub filled with the island's entire population, there was not much for Dominic to do on the island. No one in the pub cared for his ordeal; perhaps they already knew or were too afraid of his father.
Dominic, the nice guy who did not have to call himself one, the dimmest of all islanders, the abused son, and the rejected lover with self-awareness, killed himself by jumping off the cliff. Even in his death, his existence was ignored by Pádraic, who was waving Siobhán goodbye from the same cliff. Perhaps he could have saved him. But Pádraic had troubles of his own to deal with. He had to cope with his sister leaving him, and he had a house to burn. And Dominic, well, he was the dim one anyway.
Let's Address Men's Issues
So, to men's rights activists (yes, this segue was always coming), I urge you to talk about the sexual abuse of men, the cloak of masculinity a man must always wear, and the unbearable pressure to act and behave like a man. Young men learn emotional repression from their fathers and fail to share their feelings with other men because they are tough, and tough men do not cry over feelings. Men do not talk about depression and hyper-masculinity because it is difficult to open up when you know you'll be on the receiving end of ridicule and mockery. If you care about men's sufferings and ordeals, start by creating safe spaces for men to share their experiences and provide them with resources that can help.
But please do not do so at the expense of women and women's issues. It doesn't say in the rules that a men's rights activist must sign up to become an anti-feminist. You do not have to discuss men's issues in an ongoing conversation about women. You not only hurt the case of women, but you dilute and make a mockery of men's issues that should be talked about more and freely. You are not against feminism; you are against patriarchy. Know that and work towards ending the dysfunctional behaviours men are generationally conditioned to adopt and display. According to the latest report prepared by the Health Ministry on the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, 71% male and 29% female accounted for the total number of suicide deaths in the country in 2020. Let's talk about it. Men get sexually assaulted and raped, but many male victims choose not to report their cases out of shame, confusion, and stigma around male rapes, be it in India or around the world. Rape against men takes place in a variety of places, including homes, workplaces, schools, and mostly in prisons. In India, heinous sexual crimes have been committed in the past in police stations and jails by police officers against male prisoners and detainees. Let's talk about it.
Patriarchy rewards men but also forces them to conform to gender roles and the toxic idea of masculinity. Exercising patriarchal conventions is exhausting – it drains men. It turns them into aggressive, angry robots who repress their emotions and see acts of seeking help as weak and unmanly. Therefore, it becomes imperative that we learn how to express what we feel and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. We must understand that women's movements do not affect men; on the contrary, they pave the way for men to speak up for their rights and issues as well and help them find allies in women and safe spaces within women's movements. We need to fight patriarchy together, and men must step up and help fight it from the inside.
Men in The Banshees of Inisherin needed healing. And so do you. Let's talk about it.