In their article, The Male Consumer as Loser, Michael Messner and Jeffrey Montez de Oca try to explain the recent rash of advertising featuring mediocre men. These ads, and their film and television counterparts, skip the hunky-manly-hunk-dude in favor of less hunky men: young, heterosexual, usually white males who are short on cash, low on maturity, and have a penchant for irresponsibility. They dominate Judd Apatow “bromances” (e.g., Knocked Up), frequent TV sitcoms (e.g., The Drew Carey Show), and are used to sell everything from Mike’s Hard Lemonade to Twix candy bars. These are not studs. They are moderately good-looking, but small, skinny, chubby, or otherwise uncool compared to real hunks.
On the face of it, the mediocre man is a self-deprecating character who undermines idealized masculinity by being likeable despite being decidedly non-ideal. Messner and Montez de Oca, however, show that the mediocre man, nevertheless, reproduces notions of men’s superiority over women. The women in these narratives tend to be of two types: “sexy fantasy women” and “real women.” The men bond over the unattainability of the sexy fantasy women and the burden of maintaining relationships with real women, their girlfriends, wives, and mothers. The “real women’ are usually portrayed as bitches, harpies, and nags, while the “sexy fantasy women,” upon interaction, often turn out to be just as bad.
The viewers are meant to identify with the mediocre men, who revel in each others’ company, happy to be dudes free from the clutches of the women in their lives, even if they aren’t sleeping with supermodels. The mediocre man may be kind of a loser, indeed, but he can thank God he’s a man. P.S.: Women suck.
Dmitriy T.M. sent in an example of the “mediocre man” narrative, the trailer from the movie, Hall Pass:
(Probably in the end they realize they love their naggy wives, but whatevs.)
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 49
larrycwilson — January 22, 2011
Just another boring movie meant for teenagers.
Robyn — January 22, 2011
I've been thinking about this with the Miller Lite commercials, which feature men in bars being humiliated, always by a very attractive female bartender or waitress (here's the thong version, one of many: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq0ZPNWYrxM). I don't know if I agree that were supposed to see these women as really bitches, though. To me these Miller Lite commercials seem to be thinly disguised warnings to me, carefully patrolling the boundaries of masculinity. Like the Brut slap commercials. Here's what is not acceptable as masculinity and women will laugh at you or you will get slapped if you violate that.
fizzygood — January 22, 2011
God's honest truth? That chloroform line might work on me. It was the one thing in the trailer I laughed at.
Owly — January 22, 2011
Holy crap, that might be one of the most misogynistic movie trailers I've ever seen. Which is REALLY saying something.
akeeyu — January 22, 2011
I'm surprised more men aren't offended by these movies, frankly.
My husband is always annoyed by the "Dad as incompetant doof" trope.
You know the one:
Ha ha, Daddy can't change a diaper! Ha ha, Daddy doesn't know how to do laundry! Ha ha, Daddy doesn't know how to feed his own children! Ha ha, Daddy isn't a REAL parent, he's just another child in the family, only taller, and with a license to drive!
It's in commercials, sitcoms, hell, it's the premise for entire movies.
These movies are misogynistic as hell, yes, but they're certainly not portraying men in an especially good light, either. Hey, look, men are immature idiots following their dicks through life and unable to function in society! Ha ha!
Ugh.
At the risk of sounding 90, I really miss leading men like Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart.
xxxo — January 22, 2011
i'd like to add that although the "sexy fantasy women" remain unattainable to the mediocre man, he often gets the chance to hook up with one of these due to alcoholization or just because he's lucky, cause you know, he's a guy.
it is also very often the point when the "sexy fantasy woman" loses her actual superiority (she's much more attractive, mature and successful than the man) because she's drunk and shows a crazy/freaky/overly emotional behaviour or turns out to have stigmatizing body features. to sum up if you're a woman you're either a)really sexy but mentally unstable or b) attractive but a nagging bitch or c) just plain ugly.
i also agree with akeeyu.
Linkspam of the week (17th to 23rd January) « Sinistre and Destre’s noumenal realm — January 22, 2011
[...] Wade at Sociological Images unpacks the phenomena of Seth Rogen the Mediocre Male which has been opted toward a cultural and commercial [...]
ElkBallet — January 22, 2011
Ah yes, I forgot that I either have be a crazy bitch who's sexy, or a nagging bitch who's ugly. Is there some option in there where I'm not a [blank] bitch? No, there isn't. It's always astounding the entitlement shown in these shows and ads that less-than-ideal men are somehow entitled to ridiculously hot and perfect women, and anything less (even if equally matched in intellect and hotness) is settling. And that gives them free reign to feel morally wronged in some way and to treat their not-supermodel-hot wife/girlfriend badly. Where's the female entitlement to super hot men?
Samantha C — January 22, 2011
ugh....what a horrible trailer. Why are these men married if they jump so high at the opportunity to completely ditch their relationships? They just have no regard whatsoever for their wives' feelings? That's a healthy marriage.
Anonymous — January 22, 2011
I think viewers are just more sophisticated than they used to be. You can no longer show a cool person doing cool things with your product and expect people to buy on the premise that the product will make them cool and allow them to do cool things.
After decades of relentless advertising, viewers know they're being bullshitted nowadays. My understanding is that advertisers/film-makers have stumbled on the mediocre man in four different ways.
1.) They're building bonds through schadenfreude, and not direct flattery. We laugh at the main character rather than identify with him/her.
2.) It used to be that we were meant to identify with glamorous people doing glamorous things in ads. Now, that sense of identity is no longer with the character in the ad, but rather with the other viewers of the ad that are sophisticated enough to know that identifying with glamorous people in ads is stupid. It's a two-step process: The viewer is made to feel like a sophisticated consumer of advertising, and then that sophisticated consumers of advertising choose Brand X. Making the leap from the first step to the second step is what makes advertising difficult.
3.) The growth of niche markets and subcultures facilitated by the internet has forced advertisers/film-makers to create the illusion that only particular niches and subcultures are capable of appreciating their product. People want to feel more like punks, and less like starting quarterbacks.
4.) Copycatting. Large, commercial movie producers are taking the financially successful trope of the mediocre man found in smaller, less commercial films and trying to cram that trope into the type of film they know how to make. The growth of nerd culture on the internet and the cult following formed around film-makers like Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers has convinced larger producers that there's money to be made over there. Once it catches on, everyone wants in.
md — January 22, 2011
It's interesting that one of the wives in this movie, if I'm not mistaken, is played by Christina Applegate, who 20 years ago would have been one of the "unatainable fantasy women". In 20 more years she'll be playing the over-bearing/shrewish mother-in-law.
The thing is, I think it's women who really buy-in to this whole thing. I suppose there is some comfort in imagining that, although your husband is attracted to other women, he really can't live without you.
I believe there was an episode of the Simpsons in which, after Marg throws him out of the house, Homer moves into the treehouse and basically deteriorates at a very rapid rate. In the end, Marg falls back in love with him because he needs her so much. In order to win Marg back, Homer exclaims: "I know now what i can offer you that no one else can: complete & utter dependence!" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_a_Successful_Marriage
mercurianferret — January 23, 2011
lisa, you seem to have glossed over the major conclusion of Michael Messner and Jeffrey Montez de Oca's paper (from page 1906):
This would then imply that if the film characters did return at the end to their wives (i.e., your "whatevs" throwaway comment at the end, which actually made me go get and skim through the paper), their return to their wives is likely a return to one of the following broad options:
A) Shrew women who have already ensared them (which is merely a return to the status quo of the beginning),
B) Their shrew wives end up becoming a gestalt character of women who humiliate them as well as the shrew who will limit their freedom (and possibly the wider, scarier, emasculating world has forced them to sheepishly return to their wives, admitting their shrew-wives were correct and abrogating their last vestiges of manhood),
C) A return to their wives, who they actually realize (through some massive plot contrivance) are really good women, or
D) A return to their wives, but with the whole hall-pass plan having turned out to actually have backfired on their wives (i.e., either their mediocre-ness actually triumphed, they have built up a level of self-assurance and masculinity and they return to their wives as "real men" OR they find women who really like them and are just "one of the guys", so who needs those wife-shrews now?)
The first two are extrapolations of the paper's conclusions about the relationship that the white mediocre man has with women. The second pair are extrapolations based on other horrible films with similarly shallow (both in emotion and narrative) tropes.
As a man, I truly wish that all of these depictions of men stop. They are not helpful for men, the are not - by extending the psychology they instill - not helpful for women, and they always make for horrible plots. These films also seem to usually makes the pro-gender-equality man out to be effeminate, emasculated, hen-pecked, or gay (i.e., "he couldn't know"); i.e., someone even worse off than the mediocre man.
Instead of celebrating the average man, these films (and ads) seek to exploit (and instill) a sexual angst that many men felt during puberty in order to keep men infatilized and unable to mature emotionally beyond that stage. I watch these films and I just want to shout at the screen: "HOW IS THIS FUNNY?!?!"
These films (and the types of ads cited in the Michael Messner and Jeffrey Montez de Oca paper) have been the major reason as to why I no longer watch TV or frequent the local movie theater.
As a side thought: Messner and de Oca's paper dealt heavily with beer and alcohol commercials in the context of masculine sport. I wonder if anyone has done any analysis on the (to me) odd juxtaposition of an NFL that wishes to increase their female viewership (more viewers = more money, right?) with the hypermacho attitudes (football = a "real man's" sport) that have been expressed in many of the past years' Superbowl ads (and many watch ads as intently as the bowl game itself).
macon d — January 23, 2011
I used to think of "Election" (with Matthew Broderick) as a smart and funny movie, until I started thinking of it in basically this way. "Sideways" too, come to think of it. Maybe even "About Schmidt."
Seems also like a pretty thoroughly "white" masculinity at play here.
ali — January 24, 2011
hi...is there any girl or woman as a friend for me???i am male/20 and i am nice and i come from iran..plz!!
Doctorjay — January 24, 2011
The applebees part of the trailer made me laugh. These guys want some great, nsa hookup, but all there is to do is go to these prepackaged suburban chain restaurants.
xxxo — January 24, 2011
one black man? "the black dude"..really??isn't something so worn out a bit too obvious in 2011?
pg — January 24, 2011
"I agree we live in a rape-friendly culture, but I also know friends in my immediate circle wouldn’t rape anyone, which is why I don’t trust anyone else with these sorts of jokes." - ernie
It's nice that none of your friends are rapists. Are you equally sure none of your friends are rape victims? They wouldn't be likely to tell someone that makes rape jokes, so how would you be sure?
Niki — January 26, 2011
Even the "real women" in these films are still beautiful, thin, etc. In the past five years or so, I think we've seen a real upsurge in female comedic stars actually getting to do funny stuff. For a long time, in comedies, the guys were the stars and the women were plot devices; either romantic targets or obstacles to overcome in some way. But the really funny stuff was always reserved for the men, the real stars.
Lately, though, there's been an improvement there. Even though the stars are still usually dudes and the plots tend to revolve around the men, at least the women are funny; they're getting to make some of the jokes, not just be the butt of them.
But you can't help but notice a marked difference: Even when they're funny, chicks still have to be conventionally attractive. Who are the big male comedic stars right now? Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, Will Ferrell, those are the names that come to mind as either established stars or up & comers. But the women in comedy? Looking at this movie, we see Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate as the female stars, and then there's Tina Fey, Emma Stone, Rashida Jones, Sarah Silverman. Not a single one of those women could hope to be as successful if she weren't thin, white, and conventionally attractive.
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