Balls equal busted?
Posted by Dan
November 16th, 2007 at 12:34pm
In All Things TV
Yesterday, the Boston Globe had an article, with the cringe-worthy title “On TV, men are the new weaker sex,” stating that ABC’s Thursday night line-up has a playground of whipped men and overpowering women. It’s a bit of an uncomfortable read — full of gender-based assumptions — but it does have its point. ABC is appealing to a demographic of women who enjoy empowered female characters to the point where the women are horrible (Meredith Grey, Izzie Stevens) and the men are pansified pushovers.
It has become a night of emasculated men and emasculating women. If the classic male pinup was the strong, silent, unattainable type, tonight’s TV dream man is addled and fawning. And the empowered woman - once a happy departure from older stereotypes - has become not just self-sufficient, but kind of mean.
On that note, let’s put it all out there. Below, you’ll find a graph of TV men the macho and the sensitive compared with the annoying and the tolerable. Let’s see how it all plays out.
Wow. What an asshole of a title.
Dan, I love your flair for perceptual maps. Just one of the great things a minor in business gives you.
There is no way a character outscored JD from Scrubs on the annoying scale…
How on earth does Logan Echolls rank slightly higher than Sgt Doakes on the macho scale? Sure, he punches anyone who threatens Veronica, but he is also shown crying in bed for weeks after their breakup. Doakes, on the other hand, is a badass (though I am in complete agreement with his place on the annoying scale).