On Masculinity: A brief history of the Bromance
Kevin Arnold
Coined in the 1990s by skateboard magazine editor David Carnie, the term “bromance” is an indicatively modern way of understanding deep and intimate friendship between men. And yet despite its very recent history, the type of bond that animates bromance is a much older phenomenon, stretching back for millennia.
In fact, the strength of the bromantic bond underwrites masculinity itself, as well as Western culture and civilization as a whole. History’s first recorded bromance was documented over 5,000 years ago in the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known works of literature. The warriors Gilgamesh and Enkidu were described as inseparable, and when Enkidu is killed in battle during the course of the tale, Gilgamesh is left inconsolable. The death of one meant the death of the other.
The ancient world is rife with these stories of manly affection, where a man’s bond with his male compatriot was the most powerful in his life, from Jonathan and David in the Bible to Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad (whitewashed in the recent film version as “cousins”). There is a common theme between the bonds of brotherhood and the bond that is formed in the crucible of war. In ancient Greece, the Sacred Band of Thebes was comprised entirely of “bromantic” pairs, sets of men who would be willing to fight to the death for each other. Their courage and valor in battle was thought to be derived directly from the strength of their mutual bond.
Not only war, but also the highest expressions of art and culture have been produced through bromantic feelings. Plato can be considered the first philosopher of bromance, basing the entirety of his work on the concept of love and affection between men. Even if the term bromance wouldn’t emerge until thousands of years after Plato’s death, he understood very well the strength of the unique connection that men form with each other, describing it as the most ideal form of love, the “Platonic” friendship.
For centuries, scores of men like St. Paul, Leonardo Da Vinci, and William Shakespeare extolled the virtues of male comradeship. During the nineteenth century, men would write very passionate letters that openly expressed their deep sentiment and feelings for each other. In retrospect, it is easy to interpret these letters as expressing homosexual desire, but historians and literary scholars have demonstrated convincingly that this was not usually the case. The language of courtship was used to describe an intense feeling that did not have a name, prefiguring the “romance” half of the bromance portmanteau.
Since that time, bromance went into hiding. As knowledge and awareness about homosexuality increased, many men felt compelled to abandon these overt displays of affection for fear that they would be misunderstood as sexual in nature. The end of World War II also placed a heavy burden on men to cultivate a strong family life. It was thought that a self-sufficient and autonomous household would rebuild and fortify the nation, leading many men to withdraw from their connections with other men and retreat into the domestic sphere in their private lives.
Over the last few decades, several factors have led men to rediscover their manly bonds, which culminated in the emergence of modern bromance. It seems that feminism may have played a contradictory role in this regard. On the one hand, psychologists argue that men raised by feminist-conscious mothers since the 1970s might be more willing to express their feelings openly, enabling them to more readily form emotional attachments with others. On the other hand, the rise of bromance also seems motivated by a desire to move away from this feminizing influence, motivating men to escape to a more male-centric world with each other.
Similarly, the increased recognition and tolerance of homosexuality also seems to have had a paradoxical effect in the emergence of bromance. It is thought that a weakening of homophobic sentiment leads heterosexual men to fear each other less, allowing them to form strong relationships without social repercussions. At the same time, this recognition of homosexuality also seems to have necessitated the carving out of a unique space that is distinct and separate from homosexuality. In this way, bromance is also a kind of reaction “against” homosexuality, calling for the creation of a distinct language and a specific type of relationship that persists as irreducible to homosexuality.
Similarly, bromance has endured throughout Western culture as a kind of “middle ground,” a space between a man’s romantic feelings for his spouse and his casual acquaintance with other men in daily life. This form of love is unique among men and describes one of the most powerful and compelling social forces in history.
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