Oct 25, 2018 05:02 AM
(This post was last modified: Oct 25, 2018 04:59 PM by C C.
Edit Reason: added italics
)
The very meme of "what women want" (and also "what men want", for that matter) is derisive of their potential as individuals with their own variable, particular interests. Many if not most ideological movements share something in common from the standpoint of packaging their members in a homogeneous manner. They have to be portrayed like some kind of hive-mind with the same end-goals to be achieved in order to accomplish the latter. But in the course of that the personal preferences and psychological differences get gobbled-up under grand generalizations, too. Additionally, as people age their preferences, inclinations, and concerns change -- the individual is not a static identity.
https://www.good.is/articles/timothee-ch...od-new-man
EXCERPT (Rachel Reilich): Who better to circle the pending death of #MeToo than Vulture? In a recent puff piece—“Timothée Chalamet is the Perfect Star for 2018”—the magazine conspires with an “assortment of Hollywood hands” to quietly poison the movement it pretends to champion.
The trouble begins with the headline itself, which chalks up the young actor’s appeal to good timing. The so-called “Year of the Woman” hasn’t generated a cultural shift—it’s kicked off a trend. Just as the bullet bra delivered the perfect breast for the atomic age, Chalamet delivers “the perfect star”: a skinny man-shape for our female-empowered world. [...]
And who are the doe-eyed patsies buying these nylons and movie tickets? Women. Of course.
Like Don Draper, you get the sense this producer doesn’t believe in the thing he sells. The “new male” is a fantasy—not an actual good guy, but the idea of one. Hollywood producers like him (and there are a lot like him) aren’t adapting to the women’s movement because they’re woke. They’re responding to a marketplace. Repackaging an old product and claiming it’s new.
But actors like Chalamet—young, beautiful, soulful, delicate—are not, in the words of our hit-making producer, “redefining what it means to be a man.” They’ve been around since the dawn of cinema. As far back as 1926—that’s almost one hundred years ago—an unsigned editorial in the Chicago Tribune blamed leading man Rudolph Valentino for America’s “degeneration into effeminacy....”
MORE: https://www.good.is/articles/timothee-ch...od-new-man
https://www.good.is/articles/timothee-ch...od-new-man
EXCERPT (Rachel Reilich): Who better to circle the pending death of #MeToo than Vulture? In a recent puff piece—“Timothée Chalamet is the Perfect Star for 2018”—the magazine conspires with an “assortment of Hollywood hands” to quietly poison the movement it pretends to champion.
The trouble begins with the headline itself, which chalks up the young actor’s appeal to good timing. The so-called “Year of the Woman” hasn’t generated a cultural shift—it’s kicked off a trend. Just as the bullet bra delivered the perfect breast for the atomic age, Chalamet delivers “the perfect star”: a skinny man-shape for our female-empowered world. [...]
“Girls love him now because I don’t think they’re scared of him,” the producer adds. “They’re falling in love with the idea of a good guy. And audiences support that. That’s why Tom Hanks is so great. He’s always the good guy. You’re selling the new male.”
[...] Never mind the vacation from logic required to describe [Timothée] Chalamet as the “new male” and in the same breath compare him to “old male” Tom Hanks. Here we have one man talking to another man about how best to hawk men to women. Gross! The whole notion of “selling the new male” is staggeringly cynical, an echo of Don Draper’s indelible line: “love was invented by guys like me—to sell nylons.” In this version: “sensitive men were invented by guys like me—to sell movie tickets.”And who are the doe-eyed patsies buying these nylons and movie tickets? Women. Of course.
Like Don Draper, you get the sense this producer doesn’t believe in the thing he sells. The “new male” is a fantasy—not an actual good guy, but the idea of one. Hollywood producers like him (and there are a lot like him) aren’t adapting to the women’s movement because they’re woke. They’re responding to a marketplace. Repackaging an old product and claiming it’s new.
But actors like Chalamet—young, beautiful, soulful, delicate—are not, in the words of our hit-making producer, “redefining what it means to be a man.” They’ve been around since the dawn of cinema. As far back as 1926—that’s almost one hundred years ago—an unsigned editorial in the Chicago Tribune blamed leading man Rudolph Valentino for America’s “degeneration into effeminacy....”
MORE: https://www.good.is/articles/timothee-ch...od-new-man
