I Am Upset with Hollywood. Again.

Is anyone else tired of being surrounded by bumbling idiots?

Perhaps, more accurately, I am still upset with Hollywood, but now for an additional reason.

When I say “Hollywood” I am using it as a catch-all term to describe everyone that conspires together to bring us television and movies.

I used the term “conspire” very purposefully above because there is a conspiracy of thought about what sells movie and TV ideas to the masses. Us.

I previously wrote about how one conspiratorial tool that Hollywood uses to entertain us is sensationalism. And while it sells movies, sensationalism makes us collectively dumber. You can read that here if you like:

The other massive way that Hollywood is failing us is in the presentation of male figures in families.

What brought this bubbling to the surface for me today was the show “Sex Education”. A series on Netflix. It may or may not be your cup of tea in terms of entertainment, but my wife and I find it witty and enchanting, particularly because the main characters have a great deal of depth and you can see them develop in very human ways through the story. It’s quite charming.

Except for one role. Perhaps you guessed it; the primary male role in a family setting.

I won’t get too deep into the story, but there is a family dinner scene where the people filling the other roles in the family are caught up in a climactic story point. The dinner is a defining moment for this major plot theme, and while the other characters are too keyed up to eat because of the tension in the air, the male head-of-household figure is busy cramming food in his gullet like a Neanderthal. Completely disengaged from the dynamic in every way.

This family unit has only recently developed in the story. Prior, this particular male figure had depth and some mystique. He was interesting and caring.

Once he was rolled into the family dynamic, however, his character becomes a lumbering dolt. No more depth, any hint of compassion, or understanding on an emotional level is preserved. Only the dummy.

Clearly this model brings viewers. You only need to look as far as any popular sitcom such as King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, Home Improvement, or even the Simpsons and Family Guy. They have all enjoyed long runs on television, it’s clear that a lot of people watch these shows.

The women in all these are intelligent, charming, attractive, caring, certainly long-suffering and just generally deeper and more complex than their partner. The dolt. Forever clueless and bumbling, the male role adds only comic relief to the show and almost nothing to the relationship dynamic.

All of us see life through different filters. Perhaps if you have watched these shows you identify with the poor wife or kids that have to live with the idiot.

Alythia Brown wrote a fantastic story about why her mom forbade her and her siblings from watching the Simpsons as a child. You should definitely read her article, but the very short reason is because her mother did not want the kids to view Marge, the female head-of-household character, as any sort of role model. I can completely understand that point of view.

But when I watch these shows, all I see is the other role model that shouldn’t exist. The idiot male lead character.

Perhaps the television and movie writers see this as a comedic exaggeration of the male/female relationship dynamic. Or, maybe it is the other way around and this on-screen depiction has created scenarios like this in real life. Cart? Horse? Either way, it seems to have been normalized in our television and movie viewing.

I understand that lampooning is a time-proven method of creating discussion and facilitating change. Maybe that is what these shows set out to do in the beginning, particularly the Simpsons and Family Guy because it is easier to believe that a cartoon is incongruent with reality.

But once we are inundated with an idea from multiple sources, we begin to believe it to be true. Even if we know that the intent was to ridicule the concept.

Redundancy normalizes deviant behavior over time.

I really don’t like to express any sort of political bias, nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder whether there is some causal link between what we see depicted in television and movies as a traditional father-figure role model and who sits in our Oval Office today.

There is an obvious remedy. Please, Hollywood, give us some understanding, compassionate, intelligent, capable and just generally role-model worthy male characters in family-based stories.

We are all human and make mistakes. We all do stupid things sometimes. It’s fun, and I think quite acceptable, to use our human foibles as fodder for comedy. If nothing else, we can garner a sense of community when we see others are subject to the same pratfalls and missteps that we make ourselves.

But can we make these comedic blunders an occasional idiosyncrasy of our male role model characters and not their entire essence?

It seems to me it can be even funnier when a complex and well-developed character makes mistakes occasionally. Certainly, it is more relatable.

Hollywood does it with their female head-of-household roles and it works great. Now, let’s get men up on that same plane.

Relationships are difficult. Kids add a profound complexity to those dynamics.

Wouldn’t it be great if all around us we saw depictions of people getting it right? Like, most of the time?

Redundancy doesn’t just normalize deviant behavior. It works just as well to model ideal behavior too.

Come on Hollywood. Help us out here. Give us some male family heads that we can all look up to and learn from.

We need it now more than ever.

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. Now moving forward to writing and consulting. For more articles like this, join the mail list.