Why do so many movies and TV shows depict men and boys as dumb or clueless idiots?

_WutzInAName_ · 2026-01-26T20:44:29+00:00

They’re responding to demand from misandrist women and the silence of men who won’t stand up to it.

So don’t tolerate it. Complain to the producers of misandrist content loud and often. Write negative reviews. Stop giving them money.

This can work and has worked, notably against Disney and Gillette, among others.

And reward the content creators who treat men and boys more fairly.

Simplement_thrown · 2026-01-26T20:58:35+00:00

Misandry has been normalized.

YourEnemiesDefineYou · 2026-01-26T20:43:17+00:00

Because it's an easy way to make the women and girls look better in comparison, much easier than writing great female characters that outshine the men.

Same reason that She Hulk disrespected Hulk in that terrible marvel show recently. The writers thought the best way to make her look good was to cut the balls off Hulk, make it seem as though struggling with the Hulk rage was nothing for a woman that was used to being cat called. I mean it's not like the Hulk has tried to kill himself from despair/self hate is it?...

Also sometimes the script needs someone to be dumb, if you make a man look dumb no one will care (apart from us) but make a woman look dumb and you're perpetuating the patriarchy or clearly just plain hate women. Script writers make the safer choice.

Full_Marx747 · 2026-01-26T19:38:57+00:00

Because women are better consumers and can't take criticism

Yuppiesgotohell · 2026-01-26T21:47:29+00:00

It was kinda crazy to see how it turned out. Watching Gladiator, Band of Brothers, Place Beyond the Pines, Master and Commander, etc… and thinking “man, I can’t even imagine how good movies will be in 20 years!” And now here we are getting excited for anything that just isn’t dog shit. Idk if losing those characters, but they definitely started neglecting incredible stories in favor of trying to “balance” things out. Even when they try to balance things out they don’t even pick good stories to do so, or they fuck up stories were good. You wanna make a movie about a cross dressing woman? Make a movie about Joan of Arc, a 17 girl actually jumped into medieval combat and made a name for herself and that story barely gets touched on. Since biblical times there’s been one time that all of Arabia united together and it was because a British dude acted out the real life plot to dune, bring that story back into the public eye. People hate nazis? How bout the real life story of Douglas Bader, the dude without legs that hated nazis so much he refused to be denied from the RAF and then progressed to ace and wing leader. People know about Jim Bowie from the Alamo, but before the Alamo, Bowie and a party of about 10 others were attacked by a raiding party of over 100. They held off the attackers for a full day and the following morning flew a battle flag to let the raiders know they were ready for round 2. There’s the story of Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen, which is such an awesome legend about honor and respect for your adversary, the most literal depiction of the saying “iron sharpens iron”. There’s so many way better stories they could choose to follow that they just don’t, idk why, I think it’s kinda described in the honey boo boo episode of South Park. Where they’re talking about the bar being so low… the bar genuinely is so low now.

Even the kids movies are whack, they used to be about simple qualities of good morality. Like sticking by your friends, telling the truth, being brave stuff like that. Now they’re about really complex issues that most adults aren’t even informed enough to comprehend. I’m not saying those inside out movies weren’t don’t with good intentions. But now idiots see that in a kids movie and assume it’s something they should obviously comprehend, but in reality it’s stuff they need a PhD to be able to comprehend. So then they spew their misunderstanding and then it gets too murky. There’s definitely a layer to that in misandry, in that misinterpretations, or opinions on psychological terms gets weaponized against men. I think maybe only 10% of the population actually knows the definition of “gaslighting”. People listen to a few true crime podcasts about literally serial killers and think they’re suddenly qualified to diagnose the entire population. Idiots man:(

Icy-Friendship1163 · 2026-01-26T21:10:07+00:00

Its intentional .

Different-Product-91 · 2026-01-26T22:23:38+00:00

To make the equally dumb female characters or persons seem brighter.

SidewaysGiraffe · 2026-01-26T20:35:09+00:00

Because modern writers are trained to be writers, and generally have no real depth of experience beyond that.

Prizrak95 · 2026-01-26T23:31:31+00:00

Duh, ofc, because they want to project that into us. Take a good look at most fathers from Nick, CN and Disney oldschool cartoons. They're always dumb.

Soulful_Sadist · 2026-01-27T08:32:00+00:00

feminism.

Short_King_13 · 2026-01-27T01:37:15+00:00

You saw the new top gun movie with Tom Cruise who brreaked 1b? Movies like that are rare that's why I checked out watching new movies so I stick to old movies, all new movies, media and games are compromised.

Additional_Insect_44 · 2026-01-27T06:09:21+00:00

Men are emasculated in the West.

BigSexy1534 · 2026-01-27T02:41:09+00:00

Because women gravitate towards media that portrays us as such

Unique_Magician6323 · 2026-01-26T20:47:27+00:00

Because it's fun. Men are the new whipping boy of society.

TwentyLetterUzername · 2026-01-27T00:34:16+00:00

Ironically, I hadn’t seen this post until now, but I just asked a similar question, lol

IaMtHel00phole · 2026-01-27T11:04:02+00:00

Go watch the trailer the breadwinner. No guy is that stupid. It is absolutely ridiculous how hard they try at trying to make the dad look stupid.

BhryaenDagger · 2026-01-27T17:15:32+00:00

Simplest answer is also 100% accurate: sexist bigotry. Slightly more complicated: contemporary feminism is misandrist in its orientation and tendencies, and the entertainment industry has become overwhelmingly feminist.

But why is that bigotry so prevalent in entertainment? Well, feminists weren't going to push to massively displace men in jobs like public sanitation, dangerous tradeswork, the military, etc. They also weren't going to massively displace men in more demanding disciplines like science and engineering (without undermining science and engineering standards to do so). They prefer (and feel entitled to) the easier, high-paid, overseer type jobs- management, offices, and art, among others. The former two have their means to antagonize men, but the latter had the extra advantage of enabling sociopaths to antagonize men in massive unsuspecting audiences, destroying the canon of men's celebrated franchises w anti-male messaging while simultaneously being paid by an overwhelmingly male audience to do so. For over a decade that's been working, albeit that men are finally tuning out of movies, shows, and games that serve largely as humiliation rituals for men. It's only recently that misandrist portrayals of men have started to result in poor sales and lost profits.

A further note is that the entertainment industry has largely (not entirely) been dominated by the Left. This wasn't necessarily a problem when the Left's rhetoric was all about working class interests, social equality, etc. Way better than turning everything into a Christian sales pitch that labeled anything else as Devil-worship. But the Left changed- largely spearheaded by feminism- and by the 2010s has been overwhelmed by clueless political hacks that are now deadset against social equality- for straights, whites, and men- and want nothing to do w working people who are overwhelmingly straight and men. That bigotry has employed job discrimination to remove straight white guys from their positions and replace them w non-straightwhiteguy bigots- particularly in the entertainment industry, but also academia and other institutions/industries where feminists have insinuated themselves. "Affirmative action" that was meant for social equality was replaced w DEI that essentially gave a green flag to sociopaths intending to subvert social equality. The result within little over a decade is an entrenched entertainment industry "art team" of once-talented Leftists who've sacrificed talent to drink the bigot Koolaid, surrounded by all their "diversity" hires brought in specifically to perpetuate the bigotry and cultivate paid careers in bigotry.

The Left made entertainment what it was... and then the Left ruined it... and I'm not sure how the Left can recover, not without some pretty heavy, public disavowals of its bigotry. But given the decisive pivot of the Left away from its "traditional" (1940s-2000s) rhetoric, there may be nothing left to recover: they're a new entity now w bigotry apologism as their trusty sidekick.

Keep in mind that Jim Crow was institutionalized bigotry. The current man-hating version is the same. It's not just "that one show" that depicts all the men as mockable characters. It's as generally applied across the entertainment industry as bigotry is applied across targeted demographics. I first noticed it in Doctor Who where one "Christmas Special" featured a Dalek that went around brutally killing men in onscreen deaths while women were either spared or died offscreen- a feminist evildoer monster. That was my wakeup call about what contemptibility the entertainment industry was going to be peddling thereafter.

There's a further depth that shows the economic trend that made the Left pivot away from the working class and into what amounts to class antagonism, the politics of divide-and-conquer employed by the increasingly hostile rich, pitting us against each other as Western economies have transferred historic levels of wealth to the rich and away from the rest of us... But suffice it to say that "man bad" is bad.

RobertoJ37 · 2026-01-27T22:20:16+00:00

Look at the data. Men have been pushed out of publishing and writing lol. The money up top just wants to see the money come in, but since it’s just men being silently gatekept they don’t hear about it. Meanwhile the little workerbees down below get to shape film and literature for a generation.

And there’s a reason both have been bad for many years now.

Val-kilmore · 2026-01-28T02:15:15+00:00

Because they are

Emmy-Ebel7851 · 2026-01-27T01:53:31+00:00

Call me ‘crazy’ but I actually have a theory for this. In the best case, and by ‘best case’ I mean ‘less misandrist’ case, they’re leaning into the old and sometimes overlooked stereotype of “girls are meant to be the brain and boys are meant to be the force”.

In the worst case, the writers were simply feeling a bit too misandrist that particular day. Place your bets, I'm betting on the second option.

Title	Why do so many movies and TV shows depict men and boys as dumb or clueless idiots?
Author	Secret_Bug_9795
Upvotes	209
Comments	24
Date	January 26, 2026 5:38 PM UTC (5 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1qnmv8g/why_do_so_many_movies_and_tv_shows_depict_men_and/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/why-do-so-many-movies-and-tv-shows-depict-men-and.1572008 https://theredarchive.com/post/1572008

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