Gawker Declares The Year of Awkward Posts
Gawker/Defamer declares leading men dead in The Year of Awkward Young Men, saying “Leading men are dead. Who are the symbols of movie male virility in 2009? Gentle, sensitive, geeky male outsiders with a love of Lou Reed and snug hoodies!”
The films they cite as examples? Away We Go, Adventureland, 500 Days of Summer, Adam, Paper Heart and Taking Woodstock. Why they left out I Love You Beth Cooper, I’ll never know (seriously, I’ll never know because they turned my comment privileges off.) They then use this premise to pontificate about how, with these milquetoasts, it’s no surpise audiences are turning to Twilight’s frigid vampires because “These awkward young men are so soft, so emotionally naive that its clear that any one woman with a penchant for a couple cocktails and hair pulling would shatter these precious, cutesywutesy little boys.”
First, way to offend your sponsors, like 500 Days of Summer and the current (!) Paper Heart (on a throwaway piece of garbage post no less). Second, it’s hard to see this as “the summer” of these guys when the combined take of all the films mentioned totals only about $43 million, including Beth Cooper (with Adam and Paper Heart out in the coming weeks but sure to do little.) That means that audiences aren’t “turning” to anything because they aren’t watching these movies to begin with. But, playing along: compare that $43 million total to the middlingly-received 17 Again with Twilight-like High-School-Musicaler Zack Effron, which took in $64 million since May.
Further, this summer has Mr. Scarlett Johanson in The Proposal, Chris Pine in Star Trek and Paul Walker in Fast & Furious and Rodrigo Santoro in Post Grad, all fitting the ” leave a couple of marks on you after a romp!” requirement.
Also, the piece ties these (straight) effette stars in with Morissey for some reason: “But now ladies in their twenties are stuck with these infants in Morissey onesies as our leading men.” This just proves to me that Morrisey is right to semi-despise his fans, especially the ones in their 20s.
The thing is, Vargas-Cooper has done some spectacular coverage of the Jesse James Hollywood trial at The Awl.