The appearance of Jason Segel’s genitalia in the romcom Forgetting Sarah
Marshall had American critics crowing about how the film has courageously
broken one of the last taboos in mainstream cinema. Yet Segel’s flaccid
member looks pathetic and laughable, especially because it’s attached to a
body that is doughy and pallid. It can’t seriously be accused of being
capable of anything, let alone of breaking a taboo. So obviously devoid of
sexual intent, it symbolises not so much his character’s abject emotional
condition at his girlfriend’s rejection of him, but the sorry state of
masculinity in American movies today.
Films such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up and Superbad - all from
the production stable of Judd Apatow - show that the young male box-office
stars of today’s romantic comedies are goofy schlubs and nerds. As unlikely
as it seems, actors such as Segel (Sarah Marshall), Seth Rogen (Knocked Up)
and Michael Cera and Jonah Hill (Superbad) now define the paradigm of a
Hollywood romantic lead. Cary Grant they are not. They’re not even Hugh
Grant. They may know the appeal of sex, but they have no sex appeal.
Yet this is Hollywood, and these pathetic, if well-meaning, losers inevitably
end up with the hottest chicks. This is not altogether fanciful, given that
the über-schlubby Judd Apatow, who originated this new breed in the
short-lived television series Freaks and Geeks, is married to the stunningly
beautiful actress Leslie Mann. They represent a kind of wish fulfilment for
most men, who can’t imagine scoring so high.
The triumph of the schlub wouldn’t be so significant if the young actors
Hollywood is now pushing in dramas and action movies had anything like the
masculine heft we have come to expect from our celluloid heroes. It’s hard
to think of a male find under 40 who has the innate, old-fashioned ability
to project “manliness” as a natural quality without the aid of
steroid-boosted biceps. Where are today’s equivalents of the actors
Hollywood once offered as symbols of effortless masculinity - John Wayne,
Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Steve McQueen,
Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood? Who even is there to step into the shoes of
Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis? Neither of the two male stars
most touted as their successors, Brad Pitt and George Clooney (whom Time
magazine recently anointed “The Last Movie Star”), seem to connect with mass
audiences. Clooney’s recent period comedy Leatherheads has been a financial
disappointment, while Pitt’s last film, The Assassination of Jesse James,
barely got out of the starting blocks. Russell Crowe is still flying a lone
flag for the macho hero, though he hasn’t had a truly square-cut role since
Master and Commander; and Heath Ledger, the great white hope to project
complex, Brando-like masculinity, is gone.
Instead, the Hollywood studios are pushing a new generation of actors who are
often chosen to star in films in which they are not meant to be the main
attraction. Three of last year’s biggest hits were Spider-Man 3,
Transformers and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but the main
draw of these films was the subject, not Tobey Maguire (who perfectly
epitomises the geek as superhero), Shia LaBeouf or Daniel Radcliffe. It’s
symptomatic of the state of masculinity in Hollywood that the scrawny
LaBeouf, who plays the young newcomer in the latest Indiana Jones movie, is
being groomed by Steven Spielberg to take over the series from Harrison
Ford. If you want old-style beefcake, you have to look to “cartoon” movies
such as 300 and Beowulf.
Hollywood has been forced to champion these young actors in part because the
slightly older actors touted a few years ago as leading men, including Josh
Hartnett, Orlando Bloom, Emile Hirsch, Hayden Christensen, even Leonardo
DiCaprio and Keanu Reeves, haven’t maintained their early box-office
promise. “They’re all pretty boys,” says one leading talent agent. “They’re
kind of safe, not that masculine.”
Of course, the celluloid images of masculinity offered by Hollywood have
always been affected by wider social and cultural factors. It wasn’t
surprising that the late Charlton Heston - righteous, upstanding,
iron-jawed, steel-framed - became such an important screen icon during the
early years of the cold war, or that the steroid-enhanced musculature of
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone defined masculinity as the cold
war was coming to a close. As Robert Griswold, author of The Flabby
American, says: “Cold wars could not be fought with soft bodies.”
So, what do modern Hollywood’s images of masculinity tell us about maleness
today? Some suggest it is a belated response to feminism. Ted Friedman,
author of Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture, suggests that the
emergence of the schlub and geek as heroes “has to do with the rising
influence of technology”, whereas, he says, “when I was in high school, to
be a nerd or a geek was just shameful and not valued”.
Not everyone bemoans the evident lack of masculinity of the emerging stars.
“Even Segel’s physique is refreshing,” says Dana Stevens, of the online
magazine Slate. “He’s the first leading man in recent memory who’s actually
built like most men I know.”
But do we really want our Hollywood movie stars to be like anyone we know?
Where have all the real men gone?
Emile Hirsch Hirsch is one of those young actors who hasn’t yet had a
big hit, but who everyone in the Hollywood loop expects will be a big star.
He’s believable as a young teen heart-throb in The Girl Next Door, playing
an ambitious guy who discovers the girl he likes is a porn star. But Hirsch,
23, is also seen as a serious actor, and made a big impression last year
playing the adventurer Christopher McCandless in the critically acclaimed
drama Into the Wild, winning a best-actor nomination from the Screen Actors
Guild. The 5ft 7in actor lost 41lb playing the part. Next month, he’ll be
plastered everywhere as the lead in what is sure to be one of the summer’s
biggest hits, Speed Racer, a live-action version of a 1960s animated
Japanese series. He’ll follow that with a role in Milk, Gus Van Sant’s
biopic of Harvey Milk, the gay supervisor of San Francisco who was murdered
in 1978. Hirsch plays a gay-rights activist, while Sean Penn, who directed
him in Into the Wild, plays Milk.
Seth Rogen The bearded, bearlike 26-year-old became last summer’s
unlikeliest romantic star with the success of Knocked Up, in which he gets
the beautiful Katherine Heigl pregnant. Rogen is one of the core members of
the Judd Apatow stable, working both as an actor and writer. He got his
first break when Apatow hired him for his TV series Freaks and Geeks. After
Knocked Up, Rogen wrote the comedy Superbad; later this year, he’ll be seen
in Pineapple Express, which he also wrote and co-produced.
Shia LaBeouf LaBeouf has become a big box-office draw in the past
couple of years, to the amazement of some. They can’t understand how “the
scrappy kid next door”, who looks like a young Dustin Hoffman, could become
a Hollywood leading man. Others, however, feel he has the appeal of a
younger John Cusack. “I’m not an Adonis, that’s for damn sure,” he admits.
“I’ve never really thought of myself that way, and it doesn’t matter to me.”
LaBeouf’s biggest supporter has been no less a figure than Steven Spielberg,
who was instrumental in getting him cast in his two biggest hits to date:
the teen thriller Disturbia and the science-fiction adventure Transformers.
The 21-year-old, who grew up in the rougher part of east LA, is set to
become an international star next month with the release of Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, directed by Spielberg. LaBeouf plays
Mutt Williams, Indy’s motorbike-riding young sidekick. Spielberg sees him as
the next Tom Hanks, an everyman who can appeal to everyone.
Jonah Hill If roly-poly, frizzy-haired Hill looks like Seth Rogen’s
younger brother, that’s a good part of the reason the 24-year-old was cast
as a character called Seth in Superbad, which Rogen wrote. Seth is an
academically challenged horndog on the prowl for sex, even if he has to get
a girl drunk to make it happen. “The way Michael Cera and I talk in the
movie is vulgar,” Hill says. “But, whether people realise it or not, this is
how 17-year-old kids talk today.” Like many of the Apatow troupe, Hill is
also a writer; as a child, his dream was to join the writing team of The
Simpsons. Two scripts he’s written are set to go into production in the next
few months, with one to be directed by Harold Ramis. It’s indicative of his
star status as lovable schlub who can pull the hot chicks that, a month ago,
he got to host Saturday Night Live - with Mariah Carey. Hill attributes much
of his success to his looks. “It’s harder to be funny if you’re handsome
than if you’re very normal-looking,” he says.
Michael Cera Most people in the UK know the 19-year-old as Paulie
Bleeker, the sweet but hapless cause of Ellen Page’s pregnancy in the comedy
hit Juno. In America, however, Cera is better known for the cult television
comedy series Arrested Development, in which he plays George-Michael Bluth,
the engagingly naive, awkward, goofy kid who becomes inappropriately
infatuated with his beautiful and manipulative young cousin, Maeby. The
Canadian-born actor also became a big Hollywood name last year as one of the
leads in the hilarious and filthy teen comedy Superbad, produced, naturally,
by Apatow. Cera played the socially inept Evan, who tries to find enough
alcohol to get off the geek list and into bed with some “ladies”. Cera has
film projects in the pipeline, including a movie of Arrested Development.
Jason Segel Another longtime member of the Apatow comedy team, Segel,
28, got his start on Freaks and Geeks. His big break comes with Forgetting
Sarah Marshall, which he wrote and stars in. Not an obvious romantic lead,
Segel says his unlikely appeal is because he has “some sort of strange
ability to remain likeable while getting extremely close to creepy and
pathetic”. He wanted to be an actor, but Apatow told him the only way he’d
get to star in a film was if he wrote it.
