The Bog of Lost Scholars

In his column “That’s Outrageous!” in the January 2003 issue of Reader’s Digest, Tucker Carlson [sp?] points out that men are depicted as incompetent or worse in television and other media — for example, commericals that show men as too stupid to follow simple directions, or a greeting card (aimed at women) suggesting that killing men is okay. At the end of the article, he says that for some reason, men don’t complain about this. (The only person quoted in the article is Christina Hoff Sommers, which does rather reinforce this — couldn’t Carlson find any man besides himself who’s bothered enough to speak up?)

I’m curious, though — who owns the companies making the offensive shows and ads, men or women? Does that greeting card company’s hierarchy have more men or women? It seems highly likely that in these cases, there are men in a position to stop the anti-male messages. So, why aren’t they? (Because they don’t feel threatened by them? Because they don’t want to admit that the messages could be unsettling, since Real Men aren’t bothered by such things? Because they really don’t give a flying leap?)

If men as a class don’t care that they’re being bashed, how are we supposed to fix it? More to the point, if men as a class don’t care enough to do something about it, that leaves women — and why should WOMEN as a class do something about it? If the average man isn’t bothered by the offensive commercials, then why should I spend my time lobbying against those commercials when I could spend my time lobbying against something that affects women (or some other group that I’m a member of, or some other group that does care about how they’re depicted)?

Of course, one could argue that I have a vested interest in males being treated well, because I care about many particular males. Sure. But if I’m out there saying “hey! you’re treating men badly! stop it!” and men, who are the ones directly affected, are just sitting back and letting me talk, you know what the offending company is going to say? “Men aren’t complaining, so we won’t worry about it.”

And maybe the average man really doesn’t care. Maybe the average man is sitting in his average chair with his average remote, thinking, “What a dipshit this character is! But it doesn’t bother me; I’m vastly superior to him.” Actually, that sounds like a plausible explanation — some men don’t complain because they don’t see the character as reflecting on them personally. (Another plausible explanation — many individual men do complain, but the commercials, etc., are earning so much money that it’s about as effective as individual women complaining about particularly obnoxious pornography. The target audience is buying, so who cares?)

But I have to wonder about this popular culture image of the clueless and incompetent man:

If men really are so clueless and incompetent, then why would I (or any other woman) want a relationship with one?

After all, I can financially support myself. I’m already caring for a kid, managing a house, and juggling hobbies and service activities on my own. The hormones may be raging, but on my own I can keep them sufficiently under control that I don’t jump random undergrads. I don’t need a man to live a reasonably happy and productive life. I would greatly benefit from a committed relationship with a pleasant, competent and capable man — but I would absolutely not benefit from one with a helpless twit.

Now, I’m a rare TV watcher and movie goer, and I’m well aware that men, like women, are individuals. So the popular culture image of male as clueless git is probably not going to overly affect how I react to a real-life individual man. (Besides, I’m a misanthrope, not a misandrist! All humans are idiots!) And any man who’s so affected by what he sees on TV that he thinks he can be a twit and get away with it because X character does, is not a man I’d want in the first place. (And from the little TV watching I’ve done recently, I’m not convinced that the female characters are THAT much better — for one thing, if they were so smart and together, they wouldn’t be spending all their time with these stupid git men; they’d go find some men who they could actually like and respect.)

And it’s not as if there aren’t positive images of men out there in the popular culture. Look at Harry Potter. Look at LOTR.

Still. It is, in my opinion, perfectly appropriate for a woman coming out of a nasty breakup to jokingly say to her best friend, “Men. We should drown them all at birth.”, just as it is perfectly appropriate for a man coming out of a nasty breakup to jokingly say to his best friend, “Women. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t shoot ‘em.”

Selling either on a greeting card…is less appropriate.

I read an interesting article last Saturday in the Austin American-Statesman about professional GenX blacks and how they feel about living in Austin. One of the things that surprised me on first reading was how many of them said there were so few blacks in Austin that there ended up not being much of a black cultural life either; the paper corraborated the population statistic. I scratched my head over that for a few minutes — I see plenty of black people every day when I’m walking around my neighborhood or going to the grocery store or riding the bus; are there really that few? (In contrast, I rarely see Asians of any variety except when I’m on campus or at a Chinese or Indian restaurant.)

Then I read the one person’s comment about worrying that if he goes to the “wrong” side of IH-35, the police department will forcibly escort him back, and the penny dropped. Duh. I see black people all the time because I live in the part of town where most of Austin’s blacks live. Obliviousness works in strange ways.

Anyway, the article and the people’s thoughts on why they liked or disliked Austin were extremely interesting. Sounds like the problem of lack of local black culture is a vicious cycle, though — black cultural events don’t come to town because there aren’t many blacks here because there’s not much black culture here and so there aren’t many blacks here…. I’m not sure what the solution is here. Get more complacent whitefolk like me interested in black culture so there’s bigger audiences? Get government or private groups to raise money for black cultural events, so the events can survive until more blacks decide to move to Austin too? Make it easier to afford to live in Austin when one isn’t an engineer (now, there’s one I can definitely get behind)? Accept that fact that Austin is a generic-white and Mexican American city and that outside the university you won’t find much of other ethnic groups? Tell people that if they want X ethnic culture, they can darn well move to Houston?