{"id":84937,"date":"2023-04-20T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=84937"},"modified":"2023-04-20T09:42:58","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T14:42:58","slug":"stochastic-terror-part-ii-whitewashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=84937","title":{"rendered":"Stochastic Terror, Part II: Whitewashed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday, we talked about the Five Christians You Meet in the Movies<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it started me thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, I started but didn’t quite <\/em>follow through on a statistical study of race and gender characteristics in TV advertisements, as well as the tone or general sense of stereotype associated with the “Characters”. Spoiler alert: white males are subject to a certain…stereotyping, outside of ads for home improvement<\/em>, sometimes. The numbers were jarringly uniform; there seems to be an unspoken (maybe) pact to portray white males as dim buffoons at best, cads at worst. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while I don’t watch a ton of TV, I see enough to know the parallels are there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are five kinds of men – of all races – visible on television, either programming or advertisement, today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Impotent Buffoon: <\/strong>The most notable example of this “male” is the “boyfriend” on most TV\/streamingt shows aimed at Millennials and younger. Mewling, incompetent, the inevitable inferior in the relationship whether he knows it or not. The first crisis in the plot inevitably shows him to be about as useful as a set of debate notes in front of Lieutenant Governor Flanagan. This is also the “husband” in most TV ads, these days; schlubby, married to a woman who’s waaaaay <\/em>out of his league (and, in many cases, with kids who are made to appear much, much smarter than him). In a recent development, that incompetent male isn’t always white<\/em> anymore (the guy in the “WeBuyAnyCar.com” ad jumps to mind). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Douchebag: <\/strong> These are the people that all the “Jocks” in every John Hughes teensploitation movie grew up to be. The recent simulacrum of this type was the “partner” FBI agent in the (often excellent) Christina Applegate\/Linda Cardellini streamer Dead to Me<\/em>; a youngish man with all the physical symbols of being upper-middle class; he went to a pseudy-Ivy on, of course, a lacrosse scholarship<\/em>, and exudes the casual arrogance that the modern TV viewer has been trained to expect to shortly see torn straight down by his senior partner – a (grabs checklist of modern “virtue” tropes) Latina single mother who worked her way up from a street, uh, FBI agent. (Sub-flavor: The gay douchebag, who usually ends up being the good guy). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old Money: <\/strong>The definitive versions? The senior partners in the arbitrage firm in Trading Places<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Melodrama Villain: <\/strong>Usually middle aged or older, usually coded as American aristocrats. If a show needs an “evil” Macguffin, it’s usually one of these guys. Even in car ads, for crying out loud, the “baddie” usuallyl resembles the “Goldstein” character in the Macintosh “1984” ad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bankable A-Lister: <\/strong> Bankable A-listers are always exempt from all these tropes. Competent, intelligent, hot<\/em>…perfect. The sort of thing that we’re supposed to be moving away from when the character is female. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, on level this is all good critical fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand – remember the complaints of African-Americans to Stepin Fetchit and Amos and Andy, or Natives to a century of movie stereotypes of Indians, or Latinos to decades of “lazy Mexican” tropes, who asked “why should our young people grow up with this vision of themselves all round them in popular culture?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were right<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re a young man today, growing up as a generation of young men that’ve had their boyish “male” traits sanded off or drugged into submission by a feminized school system – and whose very testosterone levels are being eroded by diet or environment or God only knows what? When you look at pop culture around you, what do you see? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The loudest voices in our culture telling you “your type” is impotent, ineffective, useless<\/em>, and if you draw a winning ticket in life’s lottery<\/em>, anything from insufferable to evil?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the proper term isn’t “stochastic terror”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe gaslighting?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grooming for failure and misery? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intergenerational abuse? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more I think about it, I’m talking myself back to “stochastic terror”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we talked about the Five Christians You Meet in the Movies. And it started me thinking. Last year, I started but didn’t quite follow through on a statistical study of race and gender characteristics in TV advertisements, as well as the tone or general sense of stereotype associated with the “Characters”. Spoiler alert: white […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[453,24,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ch-ch-changes-generational-politics","category-culture-war","category-men-and-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84937"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84967,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84937\/revisions\/84967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}