NPR – September 29, 2011
Tonight, CBS premieres How To Be A Gentleman, a brainless buddy comedy presenting a dichotomy in which men can be either delicate, ineffectual, sexless weaklings or ill-mannered but physically powerful meatheads. Says this show — over and over, in both its marketing and in its actual dialogue — there are gentlemen, and there are real men, and each might need to be a little more like the other.
Yes, yes, it’s a sitcom, and caricatures are common, and on its own, this wouldn’t make much of an impression. But this is not just any season. It’s a season that also brings Tim Allen whining about what ever happened to “real men” in Last Man Standing, three guys lost in a universe of “pomegranate body wash” in Man Up, and — sometime in midseason, unless the universe blissfully swallows us all before then — two men in drag in Work It trying to overcome the entirely female-driven economy in which they literally cannot support themselves without dressing as women.
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Some of the discussions surrounding the wealth of woman centered shows on TV this fall has been about this. As though one cannot have both strong men and strong women on TV at the same time. I think sometimes this is the idea that hetero relationships must have some sort of power hierarchy so if the woman “wears the pants” the man must be weak and sniveling. The idea that men and women could be equally complex characters seems beyond their ability to comprehend. It is a sad state of affairs.