ESPN’s 10-part docuseries on Michael Jordan’s final championship run is both a candid and an apologetic take on one of the greatest athletes of all time. While endlessly entertaining, “The Last Dance” also demonstrates over and over again just how integral and invaluable traditional masculinity and male role models were for Jordan’s unprecedented success. And it does so almost by accident.
Unfortunately, we live in a day and age where masculine ideals have been marginalized to fatiguing degrees. At best, they’re viewed as antiquated norms to be discouraged in boys and young men. Increasingly though, they’re now discarded and vilified. Anything that might qualify as traditionally masculine outside of superficialities is often derided as toxic by the media and mainstream culture.
.png)
.png)
