News Flash! Real Men Are Cowboys! Who Drive Cars! And Use Cell Phones! Laugh, Dammit!
I have a love/hate relationship with the comic strip For Better or for Worse. In some ways, it's great because it's pretty open-minded and liberal. They've dealt with a gay character (though I have to say I don't know what happened to him) who was going through some coming-out stuff in high school, if I remember, in a relatively positive way. You see much more of the mom dealing with her business than you do of the father, who is a dentist.
At any rate, I think it sometimes delves beneath the surface of family/friends stuff. But then sometimes it just gets smarmy as heck. And last week's strips made me cringe. It was like seeing a whole slew of comedians whose whole acts were "Isn't it funny how men do X and women do Y?" But I even have mixed feelings about them, because there's a sense in which the girls are making fun of the men--but they're not making fun of them to question the masculinity involved with, in this case, liking cars a lot, but rather with a sort of 'well, boys will be boys' attitude; a wink and a nudge.
It all starts with "men are cowboys and cars are their horses":
Next, men are cowboys and phones are thier guns:
See, don't those men look funny! With their phones all ringing! Because, y'know, women don't have cell phones.
Next up, making fun of the men for how they use their guns...er, cell phones:
See, it's funny because men use their cell phones in that irritating way!
Eventually, the dad in the comic (who has a new sportscar!) gets a ticket for speeding in his new, "manly" car, (which, frankly, looks like a gremlin or something to me), and lays the old 'do as I say not as I do" schpeil on his daughter:
Because, you know, men can do that sort of thing, if only to set poor examples for the women around them.
And isn't it funny?!
Ech.
Filed under:
Comics as Life, Feminism and Masculinities
I have a love/hate relationship with the comic strip For Better or for Worse. In some ways, it's great because it's pretty open-minded and liberal. They've dealt with a gay character (though I have to say I don't know what happened to him) who was going through some coming-out stuff in high school, if I remember, in a relatively positive way. You see much more of the mom dealing with her business than you do of the father, who is a dentist.
At any rate, I think it sometimes delves beneath the surface of family/friends stuff. But then sometimes it just gets smarmy as heck. And last week's strips made me cringe. It was like seeing a whole slew of comedians whose whole acts were "Isn't it funny how men do X and women do Y?" But I even have mixed feelings about them, because there's a sense in which the girls are making fun of the men--but they're not making fun of them to question the masculinity involved with, in this case, liking cars a lot, but rather with a sort of 'well, boys will be boys' attitude; a wink and a nudge.
It all starts with "men are cowboys and cars are their horses":
Next, men are cowboys and phones are thier guns:
See, don't those men look funny! With their phones all ringing! Because, y'know, women don't have cell phones.Next up, making fun of the men for how they use their guns...er, cell phones:
See, it's funny because men use their cell phones in that irritating way!Eventually, the dad in the comic (who has a new sportscar!) gets a ticket for speeding in his new, "manly" car, (which, frankly, looks like a gremlin or something to me), and lays the old 'do as I say not as I do" schpeil on his daughter:
Because, you know, men can do that sort of thing, if only to set poor examples for the women around them. And isn't it funny?!
Ech.
Filed under:
Comics as Life, Feminism and Masculinities
posted by Jeff Pollet at 8:43 AM
1 Comments:
I hadn't seen this before so I've been looking through the archives. Visually it's quite attractive and accessable, and the characters are often likeable and interesting, but it always seems to go for the easy cliche and the superficial platitude. So much of the time it uses the punchline to state the obvious as though it were some witty insight.
But I've yet to see such an example of bigotry as the recent one. At least it is equal opportunity sexism; the women here with their embarassingly unfair and patronising attitudes come off at least as bad as the men they are making fun of. Possibly worse.
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