Ted Lasso and the Hope of Positive Masculinity
How a Wonky Show Reveals What It Means to be a Man
Ted Lasso ended its run several month ago. And what a run it was. What began as a 30 second commercial promoting professional soccer turned into one of the most beloved and acclaimed shows in recent memory.
If you untangle the pieces of Ted Lasso and lay them on the floor, you might gawk at the appeal. A goofy American football coach who travels overseas to coach in the most prestigious sports league in the world, the Premier League.
The premise is nonsensical. Unrealistic. Why? For starters, we’re talking about soccer here. What self-respecting American coach would abandon the “real” football for its distant relative, twice removed? Soccer is a fine sport. But if you prefer a Saturday afternoon futbol match to one involving pigskin and shoulder pads, you’re in the minority.
Why, then, did Ted Lasso become a surprise hit? Well, you have the humor. Ted and his band of misfits are funny. Really funny. You also have the writing, which is brilliant, and the acting, which is world class.
More than any of these, though, you have the message. And it’s the message of Ted Lasso that attracts the masses.
What is the message? From the opening credits, you find out. As Ted wanders through an empty stadium, he sits down. When he does, his chair and those around him change colors. The cherry red seats surrounding the main character contrast the bland, lifeless blue ones, and the point is clear: Ted’s hopeful optimism is going to overcome the pervasive negativity and cynicism around him.
Now that’s a horse of a different color, as they say. I grew up playing sports. It’s not a culture for the faint of heart. Sure, sports teaches you a lot life lessons. Like the importance of sticking together. Or the inevitability of failure. Or how to work hard for a desired outcome. And so on.
But there’s a cost. And the cost is a hardened shell of unhealthy masculinity. A brand of masculinity that says emotions are bad. That pain is weakness. If you’re hurting, you keep your mouth shut. Suck it up. Pain is weakness, you see. And weakness is the worst of all traits. This brand of masculinity also says winning matters more than your well-being. That violence and dominance are normal, necessary even, to get ahead.
The culture in Ted Lasso is different. In one of the first episodes, Ted says, “For me, success is not about wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.” Trent Crimm, the rugged journalist, responds with, “That’s irresponsible.”
Ted smiles and proceeds to spend the next 30-plus episodes proving him wrong. What you witness is remarkable. Disorienting, even. You see men wrestle with pain and loss. Ted himself deals with panic attacks. Jamie Tart, the uber-talented, but self-consumed prodigy wrestles with an abusive father. Colin struggles with the shame of telling his teammates that he’s gay. And on and on you go.
These are not new struggles. Every man in the history of the world has fought with these demons. That’s not the remarkable part of the show.
This is.
The men in Ted Lasso don’t fight their battles alone. Their teammates don’t belittle their pain. They don’t shame one another for expressing their emotions, or for valuing their well-being more than their performance on the soccer field.
Ted Lasso, you see, isn’t about laughs or entertainment. No, no, friends. The laughs and entertainment are but a cloak, a disguise, to bypass the gatekeepers of the status quo. This show, you see, wants to redefine what means to be a man. It wants to tear down conventional notions of masculinity. This is a tall order. An impossible order, unless you can subvert the conscious mind. This is how Ted Lasso succeeds where most mediums fail. It knows you can’t beat on the doors of the conscious mind and expect to gain entry. You must get creative. You must out-maneuver the gatekeepers.
In other words, you can’t expect a culture built on toxic masculinity to watch a show like Ted Lasso…unless you make its viewers believe the show isn’t trying to dismantle masculinity at all. Unless you cloak it in things that men like. Things like sports and humor and so on.
And herein lies the beauty of such a wonky show. Men who spend the entirety of their lives fighting for power, jockeying for position on the next rung of the ladder, see something different. They see a door that opens to a world they long to inhabit, a world I long to inhabit.
A world where you don’t have to hustle for your worth. A world where you don’t have to suppress your pain. A world where a real man is defined by softness and vulnerability. A world where no one suffers in silence, where winning is defined by who are you, not what you’ve done.
THE CHURCH AND TOXIC MASCULINITY
That’s a message we need, isn’t it? Look around. We have a crisis of masculinity in our culture. And I’m talking about church culture here. The recent documentaries, Shiny, Happy People and The Secrets of Hillsong, expose what has long been the reality among God’s people, that the church is cancered with toxic masculinity. If you haven’t seen those documentaries, you should. You must.
The church was supposed to be a beacon of light, a vehicle of hope in a dark world. We were supposed to use this vehicle to reveal a different way, to show those around us that we don’t have to settle for anything less than wholeness. We don’t have to pretend we’re okay. We don’t have to domineer over our neighbors. We don’t have to resort to violence. We don’t have to use power to subjugate, abuse, oppress. We don’t have to stuff our pain.
And, yet, in many ways, we have done just that. The church has used power to marginalize, to abuse, to suppress, to prop up and enable toxic masculinity, rather than dismantle it.
We’ve preached a Jesus-centered culture, but refused to follow his ways. A man who never wielded a sword and rebuked his followers when they tried to fight for him. A man who had power enough to heal the blind, but chose, in the end, to lay down his life. A man who championed women, who humanized the outcast, who denounced racism. A man who, despite being made in the likeness of God, knew he needed others. As Richard Rohr says, “Christians would rather worship Jesus than follow him.” He’s right. Christians have placed Jesus at the center of our praise, but not the center of our lives.
You see, despite what culture says, there’s no life in toxic masculinity. There’s nothing redemption or restorative. It destroys, not just the man in the mirror, but those in his atmosphere. It leeches joy and hope, and leaves, in its place, fear and loneliness.
THE HOPE OF POSITIVE MASCULINITY
Here’s the reality: we’re all wounded. I’m wounded. You’re wounded. We deny our wounds to the detriment of our souls. We suppress our fears to the detriment of our hearts. We bury our emotions to the detriment of our bodies. Toxic masculinity wants us to believe that a real man is one who navigates the travails of life alone, who pursues peace by eliminating his adversaries, who sees pain as weakness, who values winning above all else.
Tell me, though - and be honest - have these beliefs brought us closer to wholeness? Have they fostered peace and joy, hope and love? Have they made us more empathetic? Have they made us more like Christ?
They haven’t. And we all know it. Our culture’s idea of masculinity has created a culture of lonely, broken, hurting men. And, as a therapist once told me, hurting people hurt people. Why do you think abuse is so rampant in our culture, in our churches? Men can’t pursue wholeness, which fragments their souls. Rather than work towards healing, they dispel their pain onto others. If you don’t find a way to transform your pain, you will always transmit it. I think Richard Rohr said that.
So, I ask again. How does a wonky show like Ted Lasso become an unlikely hit?
The answer, I believe, is that Ted Lasso shows us something different. We want to live in Lasso’s world, where men share struggles, where becoming the best version of ourself matters more than numbers on a scoreboard, where there’s no such thing as good guys and bad guys, where who you are matters more than what you do.
For followers of Christ, we’ve read about this way for years. But sometimes we need a subtle reminder. Our culture’s definition of masculinity isn’t working. We need a new way. The men of Ted Lasso give us a glimmer of hope, even if the glimmer fades quickly.
Grace and peace, friends.
I think you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. What you said about us wanting to worship Jesus rather than live for Him stung. I pray that God continues to give you these powerful insights. ❤️