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“Be a Man”

Clients, Uncategorized, Writing

My write-up on Ray Harrington’s award-winning documentary, “Be a Man,” from long-time client Stand Up! Records:

American universities are increasingly offering courses in masculinity—the ways it’s culturally and socially constructed, the ways its boundaries are policed, and the ways its constraints and contradictions put basically everyone on edge. But studying masculinity is different from trying, at an individual level, to define and achieve manhood. What does it mean to be a man? Who is that man? Ray Harrington has charmingly, brilliantly, and with utter vulnerability chronicled his journey to find out.

As he seeks his signature manly cocktail, discovers his dream car isn’t a half-million dollar phallic symbol, and maniacally gets into a boxing ring with a professional fighter, Harrington gathers his collaborators for a film that’s part love letter, part personal journey, part support group, and part road trip movie. Like any movie worth the popcorn, there are fast cars and fashion montages, dreamy landscapes and a lewd joke or two. Mostly, though, there’s an earnest rumination on modern manhood and how we all get by with a little help from our friends.

Featuring fellow stand-up comedians Kyle Kinane, Tom Wilson, April Macie, Doug Stanhope, Steve Rannazzisi, Robert Kelly, and Kurt Metzger, “Be a Man” boasts Grammy-winning Dan Schlissel as co-executive producer alongside Ray Harrington, who, despite a little razor burn and wrinkled linen, is, without a doubt, both a man and a “ten.”

About Letta Page

I am a disarmingly earnest editor, translator of academia, nonfiction revisionary, and domesticated roustabout. More professionally, I might say: I am the senior managing editor of Contexts, founding associate editor and producer of The Society Pages, and a sociology editor, jargon-slayer, and “book doula” for hire. My specialty is in helping authors identify and hone their arguments in ways their target audiences can both understand and use. In this way, I’m a translator, consultant, writing coach, and editor all in one. The senior managing editor of Contexts magazine (the public outreach journal of the American Sociological Association), I have more than two decades’ experience in academic editing across a range of disciplines. I’ve edited and written copy for publications from Oxford University Press, Routledge, Taylor & Francis, W.W. Norton, the University of Chicago Press, Cambridge University Press, Stanford University Press, and many others, including dozens of journals. Today, I specialize in sociology and, as a sort of fun “palate cleanser” (trust me, when you’re editing books on neoliberalism and genocide, it’s always good to have a fallback), I write copy for organizations like Stand Up! Records. I also have a background in the visual arts and was a founder of First Amendment Arts (now Co-Exhibitions) in Minneapolis, MN. I hold degrees in history and classical studies from Boston University and an art degree from the University of Minnesota, and I enjoy most of the things you can imagine Rose from The Golden Girls counts among her hobbies. I received the University of Minnesota’s Public Sociology Award, for outstanding contributions to the discipline and public conversation, in 2019. My truly lovely husband, Josh Page, is a professor of sociology and law at the University of Minnesota, as well as a food writer and founder of Meal magazine. He’s a great writer, and I’m so happy to work alongside him in print and in life.