By Rebecca Traister
When you turn on your television this fall, you'll be watching more
women kick more ass than you can possibly imagine-physically,
economically and sexually. Hard-bodied and smart, rich and aggressive,
confident and independent, the chicks who populate the prime-time
lineup are being cast in roles that once belonged almost exclusively
to men. These broads are cops and lawyers and masters of the business
universe. Hollywood doyennes like Kyra Sedgwick, Mary-Louise Parker
and Holly Hunter have already found midlife career solace (and good
writing) on cable. This year, Julianna Margulies will star as a nasty
Nancy Grace knockoff, Angie Harmon as a police lieutenant, Lucy Liu as
a publishing executive, and Patricia Heaton as a news anchor; there's
a new "Bionic Woman" and a whole show about the world's leading
incubator of the future, "The Terminator's" Sarah Connor. The flinty
Cagneys, Laceys, Murphys and Buffys of yore aren't the exceptions in
the new TV season; they rule. So what happened to the men? Nothing
good, that's for sure. Here, for instance, is what happens when Lucy
Liu's character, Mia, on ABC's "Cashmere Mafia," wins a work contest,
and big promotion, over her boyfriend and colleague Richard: He breaks
up with her, tail between his legs. "I thought I'd win and buy us a
place and take care of you," he explains. "And now that it's reversed
I just can't see us ... I'm 40 next month. I want someone to come home
to. I'm going to want kids, and we're just going in opposite
directions." Yup. Welcome to the new world on television, where the
women are strong, and the men are cavemen. Literally. ABC's "Cavemen,"
based on the Geico ad campaign character, is about a trio of
Cro-Magnons with low self-esteem and a little hair-growth problem.
Small-screen heroes who aren't actually dragging their knuckles behave
even worse. In the face of professional and sexual equality between
the televised sexes, these fictional guys are cowed, angry and
generally emasculated by the successes of their female counterparts.
It can't all be coincidence that this season is coming at the end of a
summer in which the biggest movie hits have featured dopey,
ill-groomed, irresponsible boys who score beautiful high-achieving
women and then have no idea what to do once they land them. That's
right, we're in Apatowland, baby, where the idea of a male romantic
lead now begins with a water bong and ends with a fart joke
Among the degradations about to be heaped on television's men? There
are guys whose wives cheat on them, whose girlfriends get promoted
over them, whose mates make more money than they do; guys who get left
out of baby-making, who date women with penises and at least one who
gets anally raped by a monkey.
Seriously.
It's tough to know where to start in explaining how bad these boys
have it, but the monkey rape seems as good a place as any. It takes
place in the debut episode of the Farrelly brothers' half-hour comedy
"The Rules for Starting Over," which premieres on Fox in spring 2008,
about Gator (Craig Bierko), a menschy guy tossed back into the dating
market after his wife leaves him for a Cirque de Soleil performer.
Gator, who hasn't been on a date since his 20s, is mystified by women,
and startled to be invited up to the apartment of an attractive
naturalist who shows him tapes of the gorillas she's studied. She
informs him that "in the world of primates, the female always
initiates," pulling him onto the floor on top of her to demonstrate.
That's when the woman's pet baboon takes Gator from behind. Gator's
buddies do nickname the monkey "bi-curious George"-the only funny line
of the episode-but otherwise are a lamentable bunch. They include a
heavily accented Indian doctor, also recently divorced, and so lonely
and stupid that he invites an escort to his birthday dinner (at "Thank
God It Is Friday's"-think of how hilarious that is in an Indian
accent!) and proposes to her. As if getting ditched for a circus
acrobat isn't emblematic enough of the clownish powerlessness of
modern man, the show's lone female star is dating a short man who
works for the Celtics-as the team's bouncy mascot, Lucky the
Leprechaun!
At least the guys on "The Secrets of Starting Over" have met women.
Geeky schlubs Sheldon and Leonard (Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki) on
CBS' "Big Bang Theory" are socially hobbled physicists whose only
sexual activity involves donating to a high-IQ sperm bank, so that
woman can get pregnant by them without actually having to touch them!
The guys meet a cute neighbor and by the end of the half-hour have had
their pants removed by her brawny ex. "It wasn't my first pantsing,
and it won't be my last," says a defeated Sheldon. Going pantsless is
one of the weirdly repeated themes of the new season, turning up again
in ABC's bone-chillingly bad comedy "Carpoolers."
The idea behind "Carpoolers," voiced several times during its pilot,
is that daily trips to and from work are the only escape for these
four miserable men, who have nothing in common except a barely
disguised antipathy for the women in their lives. Aubrey's wife has
him by the balls: He waits on her, cooks and cares for the kids while
she watches television and takes his money. Laird (Jerry O'Connell),
the carpool's founder, has been dumped by his wife, who cheated and
left him with nothing but an ass-print on the sliding glass door.
Gracen (Fred Goss) is married to Leila (Faith Ford), a woman he seems
to care for, but whose real estate "hobby" has recently become
lucrative. The pilot revolves around the carpool's suspicion that
Leila is making more money than her husband. The decline of
masculinity is further embodied by Gracen and Leila's subliterate
adult son Marmaduke, who inexplicably prances around the house without
trousers and miraculously lands a job at which he, too, will be making
more money than his father.
The fury and confusion about shifting gender roles as expressed on
"Carpoolers" is scary in its nakedness. At one point, Laird suggests
to Gracen that he talk to his wife about how she's spending his money.
"My money? Ha ha, no," says Gracen. "All the money I make is our
money; it always has been. The money she's making now is her money."
Aubrey chimes in, "Well at least you have your money. My wife gets my
checks; I don't even know how much I make!" To which Laird says, "My
wife and I have it all worked out out. She gets everything. Her lawyer
saw to that."
Ha ha ha ha!
Later Laird stokes Gracen's fear by explaining that "men go off to
war; women shop; if we don't provide for our women, do they really
need us?" Part of the horror of this show is how it-and not the
specter of the high-earning wife-is actually stripping its heroes of
anything resembling self-respect or masculine dignity. Gracen squirms
around about Leila's income like a spineless nelly; he curls in a
fetal position when he hears how much she has in her account; he can
only have sex with her after he realizes it's all been a
misunderstanding-of course she's not wealthier than he is!
"Carpoolers" does more to impugn the American male than any
high-earning spouse could ever do. But if this sitcom is any
measure-and god willing it is not-the American female is fucked. There
is no mode of femininity that satisfies these guys: The wife who is
too successful makes her husband feel unmanly; the wife who doesn't
work makes her husband bake; the wife who leaves is a bitch who takes
the furniture
At least the barely sublimated aggression is played for laughs in the
sitcoms. When it comes to the dramas, the female triumphs are that
much more potent, and the resulting arrested machismo of the men is
that much more ... not potent. On ABC's "Women's Murder Club," Angie
Harmon is police Lt. Lindsay Boxer-recently promoted over her older
male colleague-who solves murders with the support of her best female
confidants, a reporter, a medical examiner and a D.A. (brunet, blond,
African-American, natch). They're such a successful clique that they
even have a wannabe (Asian!) member, who begs to become a part of
their club, which she sees as "women teaming up to level the playing
field in a man's world."
The only area in which these women show any weakness is their love
lives, but it's made clear that that has a lot to do with male
discomfort with their power. As Lindsay says about her failed
marriage, "Before he left, I kept promising that I would change. That
I would put him over the job and that I would be at home more.
Eventually he just stopped believing me, and he was right." But even
without the husband, she shows no interest in changing. When it's
pointed out that Lindsay hasn't had sex in two years, she says
defensively, "I'm picky. And busy." Medical examiner Claire (Paula
Newsome) has a more successful relationship. When she goes home to
cuddle with her husband, we understand him to be a man comfortable
with his wife's power as soon as she sits in his lap ... in his
wheelchair.
Set on an opposite coast and a professional world apart, ABC's
"Cashmere Mafia" strikes amazingly similar notes to "Women's Murder
Club." "Mafia" is Darren Starr's attempt to plunder the "Sex and the
City" audience, before the mid-season debut of NBC's "Lipstick
Jungle," based on a book by the original Carrie, Candace Bushnell.
"Mafia" begins with a shot of New York amazons (brunet, blond,
red-headed, Asian!) striding down a Gotham street. "This is a story
about four friends who were taught from childhood that through hard
work and smart choices they could have it all," the efficient
voice-over tells us. Zoe (Frances O'Connor) is a Wall Street macher
with a great family and stay-at-home- dad husband so devoted that he
turns down a play-group mom's offer for strings-free sex. Juliet
(Miranda Otto) is a hotel chain executive; Caitlin (Bonnie Somerville)
is a marketing executive for a cosmetics company who, according to the
intro, "says she lives for work because work never tells her that he's
just not that into her." But her imperviousness to men may not be
simply attitudinal; she's also a budding lesbian. After her first kiss
with a woman, the pilot's soundtrack plays "You Make Me Feel Like a
Natural Woman." That's right, boys. Want to know what makes this
beautiful woman feel like a woman? A woman! Suck it! Like the Murder
Club ladies, these women are utterly self-sufficient professionally,
except insomuch as they rely on each other for detailed
four-way-phone- call advice
On "Big Shots," "Cashmere Mafia's" corollary about a bunch of
classically red-blooded businessmen, the four friends sit around a
swimming pool taking a schvitz like the girls on "Sisters" used to do.
"Look at us," says Brody, played by Christopher Titus, as a man so
devoted to his wife that he spends the whole episode micromanaging the
catering for her birthday party, "We're supposed to be these alpha
males, right? But now James' wife is sleeping around on him and Karl
can't control his crazy mistress and I'm so whipped that I can't tell
my wife that the delivery company can't seem to find her shipment of
Napoleans." Duncan (Dylan McDermott) replies flatly, "Men, we're the
new women," just before Brody gets a phone call that he answers, "Oh,
what fresh hell ... What do you mean the pastry filling won't clear
customs?"
"Big Shots" is one of the two-two! -- new dramas so befuddled by
gender arrangements that in their pilots, they have their muscular
male leads-McDermott on "Big Shots" and William Baldwin on ABC's
"Dirty Sexy Money"-engaging in sex with transvestites. What better
symbol could there be of the emasculation of television's men and the
chicks-with- dicks attitude toward its women? As "Dirty Sexy Money"
lead Peter Krause taunts Baldwin's character: "Is she more of a man
than you are?"
Yes. She is more of a man than he is. All of television's women are,
apparently. You know you're in trouble when Julianna Margulies' tough
lawyer character on Fox's "Canterbury's Law," which premieres
midseason, walks in on her male junior colleague in the pisser, and
when he asks her to leave, she merely turns on the water to hurry
things along.
Rather than seeing their opportunities for interaction with women
expand, these men have instead curled into fetal positions like Gracen
on "Carpoolers." Is it simply impossible for the televised heroes of
yesteryear to go gracefully into their new world order? It's
understandable and honest to express some befuddlement with shifting
expectations. But these are characters whose discomfort makes them
unattractive, or silly-looking. They are whipped, flummoxed and
helpless without the power to make the calls-in the bedroom or the
boardroom. They can't just be normal nice guys who are no longer
entirely in control, who do childcare or play a subordinate role at
work but who do so in a way that is still sexy, still powerful,
instead of in a way that is marked as submissive, beaten down or
pansy-assed. Nope, they must be buffoons, caricatures, dopes or just
angry, neutered bastards.
It's discomfiting for women, too, to see television's idea of what a
feminized man is, since it is a reflection of what television
considers feminine to begin with. If these men are "the new women,"
then what does that say about what they take women for? Do they think
we have hissy fits when we discover how much our husbands have in
their bank accounts? That we flip out when a man comes on to us? That
when we get passed over for promotions we walk out of relationships in
defeat? If these are supposed to be girly-men, then the notion of what
girly looks like is simply ghastly, an insult not only to the men, but
to the women whose habits they are supposedly aping. Little wonder
that many of these programs include plotlines in which women and men
turn in on their own gender to fulfill their social, professional and
sexual needs.
http://www.ihr.org/ http://www.natvan.com
http://www.thebirdman.org http://www.nsm88.com/
http://wsi.matriots.com/jews.html
