Let’s Hear it for the Good Guys
Neil MacGregor/Daniel Pett/flickr
I greatly enjoyed Grayson Perry’s recent Great White Males article in the New Statesman and thought he broadly got it right about establishment men, who constitute a tiny minority but who have succeeded in getting their world view to prevail. But there are some men who, despite a surface resemblance to the breed, do not act or speak as though they see life through a GWM lens. They are the good guys – the ones who have the ability to listen, to understand, and to walk in others’ shoes.
Number one has to be Neil MacGregor. Who could be a more archetypal GWM than the director of the British Museum, and yet . . . His choice of a wind-up lamp as the last item in his History of the World in 100 Objects has been described as ‘typically humane’ (it has the capacity to transform the lives of women in the developing world) and the man himself as combining ‘sensitivity with analytical power’. Further evidence of this comes in the superlative Germany: Memories of a Nation on BBC Radio 4. In two recent episodes MacGregor demonstrated a profound insight into women’s creativity and its sources. The first dealt with the artist Käthe Kollwitz, who documented the impact of war and poverty on ordinary people in images suffused with the grief that she felt at losing her son to the First World War. MacGregor explored this grief and how Kollwitz drew on it for her art and for a fierce social activism. In the following episode he dealt with the ceramicist and Bauhaus alumna Grete Marks, who fled Germany when the Nazis had declared her art degenerate. The programme was remarkable for the sensual vividness with which he described the Grete Marks pot the British Museum owns, and for enabling us to listen to the heart-wrenching contribution of her daughter, who did not appreciate her mother’s stature as an artist until after her death, since Marks would never speak of her time in Germany. In his day job MacGregor must spend a lot of time locked in negotiations with suits of all sorts, but it has not dimmed his capacity to appreciate women’s creativity at the deepest level. (And he’s also turned down a knighthood.)
Roger Graef/Scene and heard/flickr
Let’s also hear it for Roger Graef. Anyone whose idea of a good time is dancing around with his family to Nina Simone’s My Baby Just Cares for Me is a good guy in my book. But of course there is an awful lot more to Roger Graef, sometime theatre director, film director, criminologist, authority on planning and architecture, designer of the London bus map . . . how long have you got? He is someone who has had an impact in many different areas. His first film was One of Them is Brett, and it changed the way the medical profession dealt with thalidomide children because it enabled viewers to see past the physical disability to the potential beyond. It was his 1982 fly-on-the-wall documentary about Thames Valley Police, though, that really grabbed the public’s attention. It exposed shockingly the kind of treatment rape victims could expect from the police, and what is so remarkable is that at that stage the police could see nothing wrong with their approach. The film brought about significant improvements in police procedures in dealing with rape allegations. He continues to make films that aim to improve the way we deal with the most vulnerable members of society.
Robert Webb/Damian Everett/flickr
Finally, we come to Robert Webb. It’s clear from his recent articles that he has reflected at length on feminism, masculinity and on how, as a man, he can be a better feminist. (His refreshingly limited participation in the glib sub-lad-fests that pass for panel shows on television probably explains why he has had time to think these things through.) As he says, ‘A man complaining about “anti-male sexism” is the sound of a man crying about lost advantages. Huge, man-made, God-thundering advantages.’ He has also reflected on the wisdom his mature self would have liked to be able to impart to his callow 18-year-old self on the subject of what it means to be a real man, and all of it in a style that avoids charges of moralising. It’s rare to read a man writing with such humility (as opposed to humorous self-deprecation).
Who are your good guys? Send us your nominations, and the reasons for them.
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