Figure Out What This Guy’s Standard for Real Masculinity in Movie Actors Actually Is and I’ll Give You $5
Published by Lisa Kansas April 30th, 2008 in Movies, Cock!, Looks like someone needs an intervention, CultureI’ve read the article twice now and it appears to be a mishmash of confusion and bitter longing for he knows not what, except that it has something to do with erect penises. Help me out here..!
Don’t feel like you gotta be subtle, man, just tell us how you really feel.
The appearance of Jason Segel’s genitalia in the romcom Forgetting Sarah Marshall had American critics crowing about how the film has courageously broken one of the last taboos in mainstream cinema. Yet Segel’s flaccid member looks pathetic and laughable, especially because it’s attached to a body that is doughy and pallid. It can’t seriously be accused of being capable of anything, let alone of breaking a taboo. So obviously devoid of sexual intent, it symbolises not so much his character’s abject emotional condition at his girlfriend’s rejection of him, but the sorry state of masculinity in American movies today.
Goodness. What little we women know about what it is to be a man. So, do you guys have to shoot by the bathroom mirror in a flat-out sprint on your way to the shower every morning so you don’t catch a glimpse of your pitiful limp wanker? Is every time you hit the urinal like a knife through the heart, having to touch that sluggish tube of flesh? Do you ever scream YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUSLY ACCUSED OF BEING CAPABLE OF AAAAANYTHING!! at it in a paroxysm of shame and bitter mockery? Do you ever give it a few points for at least being the conduit of pee from your body?
.
As unlikely as it seems, actors such as Segel (Sarah Marshall), Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) and Michael Cera and Jonah Hill (Superbad) now define the paradigm of a Hollywood romantic lead. Cary Grant they are not. They’re not even Hugh Grant. They may know the appeal of sex, but they have no sex appeal.
Yet this is Hollywood, and these pathetic, if well-meaning, losers inevitably end up with the hottest chicks. This is not altogether fanciful, given that the über-schlubby Judd Apatow, who originated this new breed in the short-lived television series Freaks and Geeks, is married to the stunningly beautiful actress Leslie Mann. They represent a kind of wish fulfilment for most men, who can’t imagine scoring so high.
Enlightenment! If your penis isn’t ready to fuck at all times, you are a worthless pile of dog poo, and the only meaningful markers in the scoreboard of life are whether or not you can get a hot chick to publicly attach itself to you. Or maybe they’re only for sale in the Manhood Costco and most men don’t know the secret penis shake to get in…okay, I admit, I’m not totally clear on how he’s reconciling the pathetic losers thing with the one of them acquiring the trophy woman thing. Maybe it’ll all come clear to me if I read on.
Who even is there to step into the shoes of Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis?
Well. Ignoring the fact that they all might be a little surprised to find they’ve left empty shoes to step in, given they’re all still around making blockbuster monster-budget action movies…what shoes are we talking about here? Are their penises always erect in their movies? Heh. Okay, I’m being deliberately obtuse, now. I know what he means..where are the actors ready to step into roles requiring little to no talent but an ability to realistically project contempt and/or indifference toward at least 99% of the female characters in the movie and your own receding hairline? Or maybe it’s the offscreen reputation of being anywhere on the spectrum from consistent asshole to clinically insane?
Russell Crowe is still flying a lone flag for the macho hero
Damn straight, pal! He’s got ALL that shit covered!
Instead, the Hollywood studios are pushing a new generation of actors who are often chosen to star in films in which they are not meant to be the main attraction. Three of last year’s biggest hits were Spider-Man 3, Transformers and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but the main draw of these films was the subject, not Tobey Maguire (who perfectly epitomises the geek as superhero), Shia LaBeouf or Daniel Radcliffe.
I KNOW, what’s going ON with these FILMMAKERS, it’s like they’re trying to tell a GOOD STORY rather than sell the erect penises of their lead male actor!
Hollywood has been forced to champion these young actors in part because the slightly older actors touted a few years ago as leading men, including Josh Hartnett, Orlando Bloom, Emile Hirsch, Hayden Christensen, even Leonardo DiCaprio and Keanu Reeves, haven’t maintained their early box-office promise. “They’re all pretty boys,” says one leading talent agent. “They’re kind of safe, not that masculine.”
Ya know, I am totally bewildered at this point. The majority of these dudes can’t act, have decent-to-buff bodies (so we’ll just award them a continuously erect penis by default–no doughy pallid physiques here) and have been in plenty of movies where they treated the majority of female roles with contempt and/or indifference. They dodge explosions and kill people and stuff, even. They get DIRTY! UNSHAVEN! c’MON, WHAT IS THE SECRET???
So, what do modern Hollywood’s images of masculinity tell us about maleness today? Some suggest it is a belated response to feminism.
YES! Finally a possible explanation! The Feminist Conspiracy(tm) is at it again. Apparently unsatisfied with causing 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, these minions of Satan are now sabotaging the entertainment industry. Could this be the answer..?
Ted Friedman, author of Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture, suggests that the emergence of the schlub and geek as heroes “has to do with the rising influence of technology”, whereas, he says, “when I was in high school, to be a nerd or a geek was just shameful and not valued”.
Still isn’t. I’d stick with the feminism angle if I were you.
Not everyone bemoans the evident lack of masculinity of the emerging stars. “Even Segel’s physique is refreshing,” says Dana Stevens, of the online magazine Slate. “He’s the first leading man in recent memory who’s actually built like most men I know.”
You know, I can’t even mock this anymore. “Evident lack of masculinity” = “built like most men”? How the heck do you define masculinity as something most men don’t have..?
Yeah, it’s a shame folks like like Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson can’t find roles in Hollywood any more.
Men built like real men? Women built like real women? But what will become of MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY? They just admitted right there that those two concepts are, in a word or two, phony baloney. Don’t you think gender roles would correspond with the average man and the average woman, if the concept held any water?
So, this guy’s upset because American film finally showed some full frontal male nudity, but it didn’t come in the form of Bruce Willis slapping someone down with his erect cock.
Subtle. Real subtle.
I guess High Jackmen is disqualified because of “The Boy from Oz”. This guy must not see many movies, Eric Bana anyone? Clive Owen?
I guess when he sees the list of side effects in Cialis commercials, and they say “erections lasting more than four hours…” his brain says “ARE A SIGN OF REAL MANHOOD. I gotta get me some of that!”
He has a point with the schlubby guys ending up with hot women. When we start seeing schlubby women in lead roles, I’ll think someone’s being catered to other than guys who think, “Yeah, I’m a loser and I suck, and you should love me anyway, because only women should have to be attractive to be loved.” It’s stupid to blame feminism for the fact that so many men are disgusted with themselves, and lockjawed “masculine” heroes are hardly the solution, but he has noticed a real phenomenon.
Didn’t Viggo have a nude peen scene in Eastern Promises? And he played a tattoo’d killer in that movie, so I think that qualifies him for “Masculine Macho Man” status, even if he was in those gay movies about elves and shit.
June: I don’t think Viggo’s penis was sufficiently engorged in the shower scene to be called masculine. I mean, yeah, he killed two guys bare-handed and naked, but he didn’t have a foot-long hard on doing it.
DAMN IT! This guy wants to do for men what hollywood already does for women! I don’t want movie who are chiseled out of wood, persistently glazed with a glowing sort of sweat and freakishly attractive, that’s not a realistic standard, just as unrealistic as hollywood’s concepts of attractive women! I’m doughy and flabby and lazy, and I want my favorite characters to be people I can identify with! Why can’t we all just have that?
Regarding image, there are some days when I wake up from my zombie-esque state in the middle of my shower and think “I like being me, I like the way I look naked”, either erect or not, and there are other days, some erect some not, when I wish I looked better, maybe didn’t have so much of a gut etc. Really, I think most people are sometimes fine with themselves and sometimes not. Isn’t that a sign of mental health?
At last, a woman with real insights into men!
I think Vin has made a movie where he actually appeared to like a woman at some point who he wasn’t trying to have sex with. DISqualified! That goes double for Hugh Jackman.
Yep, I do believe Kyso nailed it. I now officially owe her 5 bucks.
Junk science–yeah, but that phenomena has been around for DECADES–it just used to be that the guys were outright assholes as well as being physically unattractive and having loser lives. Think “Al Bundy.” Apparently his objection isn’t that phenomenon really, it’s that some of them now actually are showing signs of being nice to women sometimes. Apparently that’s really the bottom of the barrel.
Firefalluk: Ha!
It’s a British article though. That’s significant. A British guy saying that Hollywood men aren’t “real men” anymore. Now, isn’t there this American prejudice that Englishmen are soft-spoken, polite, civilized, prone to homosexuality… not really “men’s men”? And now this guy, an Englishman, is talking about how there aren’t any “men’s men” in Hollywood movies anymore? So, my guess is that this guy really enjoyed writing that actors nowadays aren’t even as masculine as Hugh Grant. Purely in a sense of “…not that I’m so hung up about masculinity myself, mind you, but for a nation who takes so much pride in its machismo… tsk tsk. Poor show.”
Moreover, it isn’t entirely unheard-of for an Englishman to adopt a point of view that isn’t entirely his own, merely for the sake of the debate.
Mmm…just read the other two articles by him on the Times Online…here’s hoping he’s *not* a good representation of your everyday Englishman. (I’ve never actually been personally acquainted with any British men, though I have been with a few Irish men.)