Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
As we all know, gay guys can be pretty masculine -- hypermasculine, even; and so it has been for thousands of years. So there's really no shortage of acceptable reasons to form a pansexual front against the latest attempt to assassinate men:
Bad news from Teen Vogue: The season's hottest accessory [...] needs special attention and maintenance and extra careful selection -- more so even than a Pomeranian. If you thought the old "gay best friend" hat went out when "Sex and the City's" Stanford got hitched, think again. This week, the magazine has proposed that he's "the new must-have accessory for girls."
The idea's not exactly hot off the runway, author Lindsay Talbot concedes. It dates -- practically prehistorically -- to such vintage cultural touchstones as "Clueless" and "Will and Grace." But [...] now look! He's everywhere. On "Gossip Girl," "Ugly Betty" and "Glee"! He's even IRL -- in the hallways of American high schools, like the one in California where, "A few years ago, all the popular, pretty girls were walking hand in hand with a preppy jock. Now you'll see them in hallways with a Mulberry bag on one arm and a Johnny Weir look-alike on the other."
No, I don't know what IRL means. My will to hip expired somewhere between OMG and ZOMG. But I am still fashion-conscious enough to know that, even if the teen GBF was an organic development in certain TGBF-prone areas of the country (more on which later), certain actual people are responsible for transforming this parochial happening into that most powerful of weapons, the official trend. It should be obvious -- I'm talking to you here, Rob -- that the guilty parties are America's Screenwriters, an even smaller and more clustered population than any aboriginal TGBFs, and one even less capable of showing us real manliness in any of its guises. Who was the last fully-developed male hero on TV or at the movies? Batman? Jack Bauer? Simon Cowell? These are answers from the wrong planet. Our live-action screenwriters, dead to manliness as they seem to be, cannot begin to speak a word to today's male predicaments. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to Pixar...
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Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
IRL = in real life.
May '10
Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
GBFs exist to provide male companionship to young women without any male ickiness - clumsy attempt to ask them out on a date, love for sporting events, fart jokes, looking at other women. They give young women sage advice on fashion and gossip, have no problem shopping for hours with them, will pour out on them all the "you go girl!" affirmation Hollywood thinks women want all the time and never require anything in return.
They're like having a mincing version of Jiminy Cricket around, minus all the talk of conscience.
May '10
Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
Bear Grylls.
Jun '10
Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
One of the hidden benefits (for a teenage girl) is probably that old Dad steers clear when the gay male friend is around. Dad's not going to try to be pals with this friend, and embarrass you (any more than he already does by just living in the same house.)
Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
Very clever. But now dads will adapt.
Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
Somewhere there's a script writer working on the Sound of Music remake. He just got an email asking if maybe Uncle Max could be Maria's GBF.
May '10
Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
When you asked about a fully developed male hero character on TV, the first thing to come to mind was NCIS. It is the only show I watch with any regularity and the only show my husband and I watch together. We decided what makes the central cast of the show work so well, besides writing and good acting, is that they are an updated A-Team of sorts. What do you expect from the folks that brought you Magnum P. I.?Mark Harman's character has particular appeal as the classic quiet man/tough guy. He gets my vote for best male hero on TV. What's strange to me is why more people don't love it. As an aside, NCIS: Los Angeles blows. That needs to get cancelled. What are they doing in LA, anyway? It should at least be in San Diego.
Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
What do screenwriters know about manliness? We're all pale and hunched, sitting in coffee shops and worrying about "character motivation."
May '10
Re: Assassinating Men, One Script At a Time
With deference to Rob and Andrew, actors and writers make good liberals because it is the one profession where you are actually encouraged to make up your own reality.
It does, of course, have its limits. That's why they keep returning to the '50's blacklist era as a storyline. They know nobody is going to buy the idea of a liberal being a victim in today's Hollywood.
But, Mr. Poulos, might the question really be posed as, "Who was the last fully-developed male hero in America?" Our soldiers fill that role well but we refuse to actually tell their stories. The media only likes two types of soldiers, the dead and the broken. The man who plays the role his grandfather did in WWII, quietly heroic and self-effacing, is ignored. Where's the drama in that? Where's our Ernie Pyle?