House of Eratosthenes

Opposite of a Cuckodox. The stock movie character destined to be paired up with the female central figure by closing-credits; except, unlike James Bond, he isn’t basking in the limelight with her at his side, quite so much as standing at her side while she does the basking. His character has absolutely no depth or definition whatsoever. He is shown knowing how to do very few things competently, what he does know how to do has something to do with sweeping the leading lady off her feet but usually it has very little to do with making a living, or anything else practical.

The one thing that makes his character the most stuffy and boring, is that he has no passion about anything in life except to make his gal whole, healthy and happy. This fulfills all the requirements of making him decent, and none of the requirements that are more concerned with making him bearable to watch. Especially if you’re going to have to be watching him over and over again.

And again. And again. And again and again and again…Yeah we get it, he cares about her, MOVE THE F*!$ ON! (Throw styrofoam brick at television or movie screen.)

I expound further on this point at Cassy’s place…responding to a confession of sorts from the hostess there, that central characters in chick-flicks are somewhat self-absorbed and she’s apparently just coming around to realizing this. What I jotted there, is excerpted blow verbatim, but with some helpful Internet Movie Database links added…

There is this movie about a ditzy girl with a dog-in-a-purse called “Legally Blonde.” There is a character in that movie called “Emmett.” Emmett, I’ve found, is a supreme model caricature, around which nearly all men-in-chick-flicks are built. The ones that came after Emmett, are crudely photocopied from Emmett; the ones that came before Emmett, were simply building up a huge tidal-wave of Emmett-ism, of which Emmett is a cresting.

He’s played by Luke Wilson, who is the only actor on the face of the planet capable of using his eyebrows as nine-foot-wide bookshelves (other than a handful of actors and actresses who appear on “Smallville”). He has no interests in life other than the well-being of whats-her-face. He has no ambition, other than her happiness, even though he’s supposed to be some kind of mega-successful mega-knowledgeable lawyer. He makes no decisions without checking with her. He has no opinions about anything that aren’t either directly dependent upon, or directly conducive to the well-being of, her. In short, as a “character,” he fails because he has none. One gathers the distinct impression that if she came at her dear Emmett with the time-honored womens’ question of “which color dress do you like best” he’d just stand there and stammer, twitching his nine-foot eyebrows, waiting to be interrupted.

I do not cite this mind-numbing snoozefest as a movie to start some kind of list. Believe me, if I did so, I would never have time to fill it out properly. I cite Emmett, because I choose to cite the archetype. Emmett is it. A close second after Emmett is that roly-poly guy in “Fried Green Tomatoes” who had not a single peep of protest to utter when his wife started knocking down walls in the house. After those two, come all the rest.

In the world of chick flicks, men do not have opinions, unless they’re there to be cuckolded like Billy Zane’s character in Titanic. Or, I suppose, there’s always that long-haired guy ripped straight off the cover of a Harlequin Romance Novel, who can ride horses, deliver babies, beat up bad guys, and save a kitty-cat from a tree all at the same time. Sometimes even the no-flaws can-do-anything Adonis isn’t very opinionated; sometimes even he just stands around waiting for her to tell him what to do. Sure, he’ll lunge across the room to throw his body between her and the gun that was just fired at her, to catch the bullet. Or mail her a letter every single day for a year, or build a house for her. Something about her, her, her. Other than that, he takes no initiative about anything whatsoever.

Chick flicks are called chick flicks not so much because the audience is anticipated to possess a certain gender, but a certain mindset. The level of empathy that exists between those who produce the film, and the audience, is so sky-high that there is a thick volume of unspoken but agreed-upon protocol that is in full effect, before a single page of the script is started. And within this unspoken protocol, the male character is already fully developed to the degree desired by the intended audience. That is to say, almost not at all. They DON’T CARE. The Dudley Doo-Right who marries her at the end, and the Snidely Whiplash who tries to marry her right before the end, are both purely “stock” characters. Like the strange-looking guy with the red shirt “beaming down with the landing party” on the old Star Trek…the one that makes you go “Uh Oh!” out loud the first time you see him. Therefore — yes. Of course. Chick flicks ar all about the one-at-the-least, four-at-the-most central female characters around whom the chick flick revolves.

I have to assume you are far more seasoned in watching this genre than I am. So are you saying your experience has been different? Really? How many exceptions to this can you name? I’d really be surprised if you couldn’t count ‘em on one hand.

My incredulous sign-off has to do with Cassy’s belated realization that the female “main” characters of these chick-flicks, tend to be concerned about themselves and what they want, and about nothing else. Silly Cassy! Of course they aren’t concerned with anything else. The audience isn’t.

See, there is a reason for all this, and that reason has to do with why I juxtaposed this with the cuckodox. It’s a simple fable. The fella she was “s’poseda” marry represents tradition, and the other guy who makes her heart really go boom-boom-boom represents a rejection of it. By design, the story is supposed to expose pre-teen and young-teen girls to all the allure and glamour of rebellion, without poisoning their passions by examining the burdens that go along with it. It is therefore an absolute necessity that all the characters, save the conflicted bachelorette and perhaps her mother, be kept paper-thin. Her suitors are metaphorical of real-life-concepts that cannot be scrutinized — this is not about real-life, cause-and-effect, actions-and-consequences. That stuff is all off-topic.

That’s why “Emmett” has little-or-nothing to do with masculinity. Masculinity looks good in the real world, where there are real problems that can only be solved through its implementation. In the world of fantasy, there is nothing bad being done anywhere…except someone has formed some opinion about the central-character female-dingbat that isn’t flattering enough, or someone is threatening to rob her of some kind of “choice” that belongs to her. Perhaps there’s a side plot about a corporation dumping pollutants into a river or a wetland or what-not. Point is, in this fictitious realm it is quite safe to chuck masculinity into the junkpile, so in it goes. “Emmetts” therefore tend, generally, to be effeminate “dreamboat” waifs. Eyes that are cast, and positioned, and illuminated, for maximum appeal to a twelve-year-old dimwit girl buzzed out on candy from the concession stand. The forementioned awning-sized “Smallville” eyebrows over said eyes. Smallville-boy-eyebrows, and Charmed-boy-eyes. Other than those, no prominent features, aside from perhaps some beestung lips to dilute, depress and reduce that threatening machismo even further.

Incredible-Hulk-biceps? Fugettabawdit.

The depthless characters therefore defined to this minimal extent, they are carried over into other girl-movies that do not concern themselves with the heroine-tradition-rebellion love triangle. (Legally Blonde itself, for instance, has something to do with…oh, I dunno, just something else.) And this thing Cassy saw that opened her eyes, I can’t comment on that because I haven’t seen it. It seems to have something to do with a bimbo fighting with another bimbo about weddings.

So the complaint is that men in womens’-movies have no depth, and this becomes tedious quickly when the script calls for those characters to participate actively in more than a handful of scenes. But isn’t that somewhat contrary to what you’d expect? The quitessential “fleeing the orthodoxy to live forever after as a rebel” sequence was — it’s never been defined any better than this — that bunch of climactic scenes at the end of The Graduate, in which the audience was invited to share the insecurities, hopes, fears and revulsions of Dustin Hoffman’s Ben Braddock; no paper-thin character, he. And when Hollywood saw fit to couple up Helen Hunt with Jack Nicholson’s egotistical and eccentric Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets, the paying audiences rewarded Hollywood in a big, big way. The nameless-faceless-judges followed suit: 25 wins, 25 nominations. Lesson taught, right?

Why, then, the persistence in plying the silver screen with these big-eyebrow liferaft-lipped hollow men, even in high-budget, big-ticket, Oscar-trolling vehicle projects? The Good-As-It-Gets formula can’t possibly be any more expensive than the Legally-Blonde one, can it? Take a jackass and reveal something about him to make him adorable. True, Nicholson doesn’t work on the cheap; his talent is formidable; it was relevant to the film’s success. But you don’t have to hire Jack Nicholson for every male character that is interesting to watch.

Nevertheless, Hollywood retains its fascination with monotonous, mass-produced male creampuffs. They stand around, they’re given throwaway lines, perhaps allowed to ask a question already on everybody else’s mind, to provide the starlet with the opening she needs to prove her intellect. They communicate no feeling or emotion about anything other than crying when they found out she’s dorking someone else. And beyond that, nobody cares what they think about anything. Even when this is taken to such an absurd extreme, as to imply that the real star of the film is inflicted with a stultifyingly severe case of narcissism and self-absorption. Who cares if the audience is weakened in the ability to identify with her; so long as it’s kept unable to identify with him. The Emmett is supportive. The Emmett is decent. The Emmett is non-threatening. That is all.

I’m really surprised at Cassy for just figuring this out now. Don’t be hard on her, she’s deservedly known as a very articulate, intelligent, courageous and observant young lady. So much so, that I guess we do need a reminder from time to time that she is a girl. Ah well. I’m reasonably sure she throws a baseball decently.

When you’re right, you’re right. A friend of mine was referring to this syndrome as “Attack of the TV Husbands” 30 years ago.

You’re also right about women profoundly not getting it (good for Cassy, btw). The smartest woman I’ve ever known, who’s 85 now (and younger than all of us) was amazed a year or so ago when I pointed out how few women take responsibility for their own feelings. I was amazed in turn to realize that even she didn’t get it.
- rob | 01/17/2009 @ 19:21
Emmett’s a good paradigm of the type, but I prefer the term himbo. Using a proper name suggests that the character on some level ought actually to have a personality rather than function entirely as an accessory, ambulatory only because he’s too large to fit in the purse alongside the dog; the necessary setting to make the gem that is her shine dazzlingly.
- Kelly | 01/18/2009 @ 14:22
Great points, Kelly. I’ll micro-analyze the urban-dictionary-and-other definitions of himbo and give it a good think. Thanks for the idea.
- mkfreeberg | 01/18/2009 @ 23:58

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