I don’t watch much television anymore, even sports.
Not much stomach for the idiot box, but I realized thinking about what I have watched that the way men are in television, not just their behavior, but what defines them is now is their relationships with women.
It used to be that the men were heroes, women may or may not be their love interest, they may rescue the woman, they may stop the bad guy (or gal, like in the old Maverick television show more often than not the villain was a woman), but they were not defined by their relationship with a woman. Women were there, but they were not the primary drive for the hero.
There is the Disney Princess/Father fantasy. Something that has been around a long time, even Nancy Drew had her father all to herself. Almost all the Disney princess movies from the Little Mermaid on have single fathers with their daughters. Some times the father is a bumbling lovable figure that needs to be rescued (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast). Sometimes the father figure is stern and commanding (Pocahontas, Little Mermaid) but having the father all to themselves appears to be a strong female fantasy.
Hannah Montana and Buffy have that meme too. Women have whatever they call the female version of the Oedipal urge as a central part of their desire and fantasies or this theme would not be so prevalent in the female dominated entertainment industry.
On the male side, men are wholly defined by the women in their life now. From Fox Mulder’s quest to discover what happened to his sister, to all the married men in the comedies that are married to a smarter, more attractive wife (contrast that with a Comedy in the eighties like Cosby were the father had a wife and she was important, yet most of the interactions involved the children, to now where the children are a distant second) to the slaves in Spartacus. It is the loss of a female love one that often propels them, or a desire to protect a female love one, or their broken relationships with women that propel them, or their failure to protect a female that propels them, or they are the pawns of scheming women that propels them.
The relationships, and particularly a relationship with a woman is what is central and all-consuming for these men now, either because of love, tragedy or simply the power the woman has over the man.
The message that gets re-enforced to boys is that their entire existence is dependent upon women, is defined by women. All that is important is the women in their lives.
