A few weeks ago, my wife and I sat down to watch Stand By Me. It felt like the right movie to mark the turn from summer into fall. The story is about four boys heading out on one last adventure before school starts again.
The movie is based on Stephen King’s novella The Body. King grew up in my hometown in Maine. I even had the same English teacher he did in middle school. So, watching Stand By Me has always carried a local weight for me. It’s not just a story set in another place and time. It feels close.
As I watched, I found myself doing something I never did when I was younger. I was analyzing the boys on screen. Who they were. How they showed up for each other. What they were teaching, without ever knowing it, about what it means to be a man.
That pulled me back to my own childhood. I grew up in a small town in the woods of Maine. Our driveway was a quarter mile long, and we didn’t have cable. Just NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, and eventually Fox. My parents didn’t get a satellite dish until I was in college. So, in the long winter evenings, my sister and I watched the same stack of VHS tapes over and over again.
Those movies shaped me. They taught me about toughness and tenderness, about belonging and rejection, about when to fight and when to care. At the time, I didn’t realize they were giving me a picture of manhood. Now, looking back, I can see how much those stories mattered.
Stand By Me was just one of them. There were others I watched so many times the VHS tapes started to wear thin. Rocky and Rambo. The Karate Kid. Footloose. Can’t Buy Me Love. Adventures in Babysitting. Softer ones like Savannah Smiles. And then later in high school, Dazed and Confused.
Each of those movies carried different messages about what it meant to be a man. Some were obvious: strength, grit, standing up to bullies. Others were quieter: friendship, loyalty, crying when the weight of life cracked you open. Together they formed a collage of masculinity that I absorbed without even knowing it.
These characters were not perfect models. They were messy, sometimes fear-driven, sometimes love-driven. But they gave me a map, however incomplete, of what being a man might look like.
When I think about Stand By Me, Chris Chambers stands out most. River Phoenix played him with this mix of toughness and tenderness that I did not have language for when I was young. He was the leader of the group, the one who knew how to act tough, but he was also the one who cried. He carried shame from his family’s reputation, yet he still dreamed of a different future. Chris showed me that being strong and being emotional were not opposites. They could exist together.
The Rocky and Rambo movies were on constant rotation in my house. Looking back, I realize how complicated those characters actually were. Rocky Balboa fought like hell in the ring and life, but he was tender with Adrian. He cried when he lost, when he won, when he was overwhelmed. Rambo was painted as the ultimate fighter, yet the most unforgettable scene is when he breaks down, sobbing about the pain of war and rejection. These were not men without feelings. They were men consumed by them, trying to find a way to survive.
The Karate Kid gave me a different lesson. Daniel LaRusso was the underdog, beaten down by Cobra Kai bullies, desperate to prove himself. Mr. Miyagi showed him another way. Strength wasn’t just about force. It was about patience, balance, and self-respect. The image of Daniel learning discipline through painting fences and waxing cars still sticks with me. What looked pointless on the surface was actually a new kind of power.
Footloose brought its own version of rebellion. Ren McCormack, the outsider, fought an entire town’s fear-driven need for control by insisting on joy. His dancing was not just about defiance; it was about life. He showed that rebellion can be an act of love when it opens space for people to feel, celebrate, and move.
Can’t Buy Me Love carried a different kind of message. Donald, the awkward kid who pays his way into popularity, revealed the desperation many boys feel for belonging. He betrays his true friend and even himself along the way, only to realize that love and loyalty were what mattered most. That movie showed me the quiet truth that masculinity is shaped as much by the fear of rejection as it is by the push to be tough.
Adventures in Babysitting flipped the script. Elisabeth Shue’s character was the one holding it all together, while the boys stumbled through the chaos. I remember how different it felt to see boys not as the leaders, but as the ones learning to trust someone else. It planted a seed that maybe masculinity did not always mean being in charge. Sometimes it meant admitting fear and following.
Then there was Savannah Smiles. Two small-time criminals suddenly found themselves caring for a runaway girl. The harder they tried to hold onto their rough edges, the more she softened them. By the end, their toughness cracked wide open into tenderness. That movie taught me that even the hardest men could be transformed by love.
And finally, Dazed and Confused. Wooderson in his Bob Marley shirt and Pink refusing to sign the pledge. They were stoners, slackers, athletes, rebels. But they also stepped in to protect the vulnerable. They showed that even when you don’t have life figured out, you can still act with care and integrity.
Taken together, these movies gave me a map of masculinity that was messy, contradictory, and alive. Some moments were rooted in fear, others in love. They showed men who fought, cried, danced, betrayed, protected, and softened. None of them had it all figured out. And maybe that was the real lesson.
Looking back, I can see how those movies were more than just entertainment. They were my teachers. They offered me a script for what it meant to be a man. Sometimes that script was rooted in fear, sometimes in love. They showed me toughness and tenderness, rebellion and responsibility, stoicism and uncontrollable emotions.
I didn’t always know how to reconcile those contradictions. I grew up in a culture soaked in fear-based ideas of manhood. It told me to hide softness, to armor up, to lead with control. But I also caught glimpses of something different. In my family. In nature. And yes, even in the movies. Moments where men protected instead of dominated. Where they cried instead of closing down. Where they let love lead.
I want to be clear that this is just my experience. These are the stories that shaped me. I know other people grew up on very different movies, very different lessons. And I also know that using the word “masculinity” can be risky, because there isn’t one masculinity. There are masculinities. They exist on a spectrum, much like gender itself.
That tension has never left me. Over the years I’ve come to believe that being a man is not about choosing toughness over tenderness, or rebellion over responsibility. For me, it’s about holding both. It’s about bringing heart and hardcore into the same breath.
Maybe that is why these stories still matter to me. They remind me that manhood has always been more complicated than the cultural script admits. And they remind me that what shaped me is still shaping me.
So, I wonder: what movies made you? What characters taught you about manhood, for better or worse? What stories did you absorb on those long nights when the VHS tape was rewinding, ready to be played again next weekend?