Before we go too far down this American masculinity road, let me offer as a counterexample: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
My father seems much happier and livelier since he retired.
That said, he didn’t retire to just sit and mope around the house. He now has more time to spend with his grandkids and he does a lot more travelling.
If work was the only thing that gave him purpose, then I suppose that retiring could have had that effect.
Sort of get the feeling that he really retired due to finding that being the Pope was a real drag.
I think we’re looking at age a bit differently than we did in the past. In 1982’s Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, William Shatner was 50 and at the time of filming and he was wanting to play Kirk as if he were a bit younger. Part of that might be attributed to Shatner’s vanity, but I think there was a valid concern that audiences would look at Kirk as being too old for space adventures. And aging and the feeling of being put out to pasture was a theme throughout the movie and reviewers at the time noted that the cast was getting older. Contrast that with Patrick Stewart came back to play Picard in a brand new series in his late 70s. I haven’t seen the series, so maybe age is brought up in it, but I don’t recall hearing anyone talking about the aging cast all that much.
It very much is. His age is a key factor in the show.
(Trust me, you didn’t miss anything; the show is dreadful.)
I think it has to do with self-identity and what a person feels internally gives them self-worth, like @Stanislaus says.
Some men’s self worth and identity is so bound up in their careers that once that’s gone, they are rather aimless and don’t have any “purpose” or anything. Which I imagine is very stressful, even if it’s not a series of conscious thoughts.
Others never really do bind their identity and self-worth up with their careers, no matter how much they may enjoy them. These are the ones who transition into retirement and live decades more, as they never really have that aimless time.
Some people do not have the option to pursue other interest outside of work after retirement due to lack of funding for a lifestyle change or insurance to cover medical needs. Its not that they just love their work so much that they work until they die. Some people are forced into retirement early and cannot afford healthcare and then they die. Its not like they wouldn’t rather be hiking in the Rockies or volunteering their time to help people in need.
I just wanted to point out that Eastwood created his own production company, Malpaso, in 1967. No one pays him to make movies, he makes the movies he wants, from within the company, and gets a studio to release and distribute it. With digital cinema, the investment for the studio is not as great as it used to be (making actual physical celluloid prints).
Being self employed is a great way to avoid being forced to retire.
Agree 100%. The arts.
It’s like my son, a professional dancer in NYC. Dance is not what he does. It is what he is.
I think Clint is different from Bear Bryant or JoPa in that his career includes a whole bunch of down time. He can finish making a movie, do nothing for a few months, then start the next one. Football coaches, especially at that level, are moving and working 12 months out of the year. Yeah, maybe a couple of weeks off somewhere, but constant moving.
How funny to see this pop up after my sister and I saw the TV ad for Cry Macho yesterday, and my sister wanted to know if Clint Eastwood ever played a different character ever after Rowdy Yates. I find him incredibly uninteresting as an actor. He’s directed some decent workmanlike movies, though.
I wanted to have a custom bookcase made, and I found a guy through a friend who’d retired from the IT industry. He was in his 70s, but was having a blast doing woodwork. He made an absolutely gorgeous bookcase, and I bought an awesome bowl he turned, as well. He just glowed when he talked about what he was doing. He seemed 20 years younger than his chronological age. He never talked about his tech career!
I’ll give Eastwood the credit for keeping the Western, both historic and contemporary, a viable genre into the 21st C.
As far as an exemplar and commentator on (white) American manhood, he’s way down the list from Sam Shepard, even though the latter did take it into unconscious self-parody at times.
Was it here on the Dope that someone connected Eastwood with Grandpa Simpson?
“Old man argues with chair.”
.
I was afraid I was going to suffer that “Lack of purpose will kill me, or at least bore me to death”. And a month before I retired, I had a full-fledged panic attack because of that.
I mean, as a teacher I had more purpose than I knew what to do with. And I did get a big jolt of pride when I told people what I did.
I remember thinking (while hyperventilating) “As a Christian, I believe that people have worth in and of themselves, and don’t need a job to justify themselves. But shit, I had that Puritan Work Ethic drummed into me for six decades. How am I going to cope?”
Well, turns out I guess I really do believe that I have value based on who I am, not on what I do. And I’m doing fine sitting on my porch (hey, like Clint, in Gran Torino), watching people walk their dogs in the park.
In my case, that “I must be busy and producing” was a not-helpful part of the culture I grew up in (with maybe a touch of testosterone overload, too).
Yeah, I’ve never regarded myself as having any particular purpose in life and I’m looking forward to having even less when I retire 
. I know plenty of “I have to keep myself busy” and “I feel the need to be productive” people in my life. I totally comfortable with folks with that mindset - they certainly accomplish more than I do. But I’m sure not one of them.
My father retired three decades ago after a life in engineering. He’s still powering through in his nineties because he always finds something that he enjoys doing.
Admittedly he’s a bit of a physical dynamo anyway; when he retired he took up teaching windsurfing to people a third his age, and was thrilled to turn 70 because it meant he got free lift tickets at several ski resorts. His skiing days are over but up until lockdown he was at the gym everyday (and doing Zumba classes), walks a couple of miles each day and spends a lot of his time happily gardening (I had to yell at him for hauling a 400-lb lawn roller around at one point - “It’s fine as long as I roll across the slope and not up and downhill”, he replied) or DIY around the house. And to keep up his mental fitness he’s either playing the stock market (a lot more successfully than me) or doing Sudoku daily.
If he had nothing to do he’d probably fade away rapidly, so he finds himself something to do. Eastwood finds making movies keeps him going. It’d be nice if he would make better films, but it’s his time and money and it seems to make him happy, so who are we to begrudge him? No one is forcing us to watch them.
The Purpose of Clint Eastwood will always be to see if you feel lucky. Well… do you, punk?
For the win!
Barring that, his purpose is to have his day made.
If I were making award-winning Hollywood pictures, sure, I would want to keep doing it as long as possible.
If I never got to deliver some ill-conceived IT project for unappreciative corporate douches ever again, I wouldn’t lose a moment of sleep over it (and probably gain a lot back).