Marvel Studios
Marvel Cinematic Universe star Anthony Mackie recently bemoaned the “death of masculinity” in America. Mackie is best known via his profession as an actor, with roles in films such as 8 Mile, The Hurt Locker, Pain & Gain, and, of course, a litany of Marvel movies.
While on the promotion tour for his new film Captain America: Brave New World, Anthony Mackie sat down for an hour-long interview with the podcast hosted by former NFL safety and current ESPN analyst Ryan Clark.
During their conversation, Anthony Mackie discussed how he raises his children — he has four sons aged 8 to 15 — and how he tries to raise them to be men. One example Mackie gave of how he’s raising his sons to be men is never buying them a pair of Jordans.
“I keep my boys humble. Like, my boys have never had a pair of Jordans. My boys don’t do all that Internet fly s–. I’m like, you’re kids. I could be the biggest star in the world, do not let me catch you being stupid. My oldest gets it. My 15-year-old, he tells the other ones he’s like, ‘Yo, don’t make dad mad. Cause once you get one that’s right, he going to straighten the other ones out,'” Mackie explained during an interview on Ryan Clark’s The Pivot podcast.
“They will always be men and that’s always since they were two-years-old. Every time I left for a job I’d tell my 15-year-old, ‘You’re the man of the house. You make sure these doors are locked every night, this alarm is on, you text me or you call me every night before you go to bed and you wake up’. Because we’re men,” he continued.
The long-time Marvel Cinematic Universe then expanded the scope of his opinion beyond his own family, as he launched into a diatribe about the “death of the American male.”
According to Mackie, ‘they’ have “killed masculinity,” which he goes on to define as saying ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’, opening doors for women, and providing for their mother. He does not specify who he means by ‘they’ (my own POV — the culprit of the problem Mackie is trying to identify is technology and the luxuries/laziness of the modern world, nothing more).
“In the past 20 years, we’ve been living through the death of the American male. They have literally killed masculinity in our homes and our communities for one reason or the other,” Mackie posited.
“But I raise my boys to be young men… my boys will always be respectful, they will always say yes sir, yes ma’am, no sir, no ma’am. They will always say thank you. They will always open a door for a lady. They will always make sure their mother is taken care and provided for. They will always be men.”
Last month, Mackie headlined Captain America: Brave New World — his first starring role in an MCU film since joining the franchise over a decade ago. Unfortunately for Mackie and the rest of the Brave New World — the cast also featured Harrison ford, Danny Ramirez, Carl Lumbly, Giancarlo Esposito, and Tim Blake Nelson — the movie is the third-worst reviewed in the history of the MCU, ahead of only Eternals and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.