Robert Downey Jr.: Short superstar shattering stereotypes

Here is an interesting article from http://isteve.blogspot.com about Hollywood men and their taller women costars. This follows this post  http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com  about the Knoxville Horor. In the meantime, you can read two very interesting books HERE.

Robert Downey Jr.: Short superstar shattering stereotypes


Robert Downey Jr. is currently the biggest box office star in the world, but he's definitely not the tallest. The good obsessives at CelebHeights peg him at 5'8". That sounds about right. Back when Downey was out of prison and out of work about a dozen years ago, I used to see him at our sons' baseball and soccer games at the local park, and he's not tall at all.*



These days, Hollywood casts short leading men with leading ladies who are taller than them (e.g., Gwyneth Paltrow with Downey, Nicole Kidman with Tom Cruise).





In general, leading men are not as disproportionately tall as during Golden Age Hollywood (John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Cary Grant were all close to a half foot taller than the average American man of their time). Overall, I'd say that the decline in bias in Hollywood toward tall role models is a good thing.





Height used to be a pretty good marker of having enjoyed good nurture (e.g, had plenty to eat as a child). The Tory cabinet of prime minister Lord Salisbury in 1895 averaged six feet at a time when that was about a half foot taller than the average British man. From a female husband-hunting perspective, evidence that a man's family provided well for him when he was a child is evidence of a lot of good things. There's no downside to growing up so that you attain close to your genetic maximum of height.





Over time though, the systematic nutritional and health deficits that prevent a youth from a lower class background of attaining the full height of which his genes are capable have diminished. The NBA is full of guys who grew up on welfare. (Although in Downey's case, the kind of heavy drug use from very early age might have knocked an inch off his height.)





So, height is increasingly a measure less of nurture and more of nature. And, as somebody who is 6'4", the genetic advantages and disadvantages of being unusually tall seem like a mixed bag. If people weren't somewhat subjectively biased in favor of tall men like myself, I'd probably say the objective tradeoffs (clumsiness, head-banging, etc.) aren't really worth it. The human body isn't optimized for my height.





So, the continuing prejudice in favor of the tall seems increasingly pointless because it's now mostly a nature difference masquerading as a nurture difference, and there's no terribly good reason to want genes for additional height to be favored. Thus, the fact that Hollywood role models currently come in all heights seems, on the whole, like a good thing.





-------------

* By the way, don't get the impression from this that Downey is some kind of regular guy. I said hello to him and he said hello back, very friendly, but the Charisma Gap was astounding. In a social setting that was blase about minor levels of celebrity -- e.g., the baseball team mom was an Emmy-nominated character actress -- Downey, in disgrace, was the cynosure of all eyes of team parents. Just lounging on the grass watching his kid take infield practice, he's magnetic.





You know those scenes in Iron Man where Tony Stark wakes up from a horrible dream? I suspect Downey's Method Acting technique for this is to tell himself: "Just imagine I had a nightmare that I had to move back to the Valley!"

Anti-Male ABC: Seeking “Affluent Women,” New Netwk Shows Feature “Emasculated Men”

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ about ABC's new shows such as Last Man Standing and Man Up. This follows this post about the television shows Dancing With the Stars and Glee. This follows THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all  follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!

Anti-Male ABC: Seeking “Affluent Women,” New Netwk Shows Feature “Emasculated Men”


By Debbie Schlussel

BLOGGERS NOTE: Show support for her by writing her here writedebbie@gmail.com





Apparently, ABC now stands for “Anti-Male Broadcasting Company.”



Seeking more affluent women for its core audience, the network’s fall line-up, announced Sunday, will feature “emasculated men” and “empowered women.” And America’s men are sitting by and taking it. So, maybe, life imitates crap art. Check out this quote which appeared atop the Life section of yesterday’s USA Today print edition, but is only  available online in this cached syndication:







“The core target audience of affluent women is absolutely critical,” [ABC Entertainment President and programming chief Paul] Lee says. Several new shows will feature “empowered women” (soapy Pan Am, Charlie’s Angels) and emasculated men (comedies Man Up and Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing).



Huh? Dude, where are your testicles?



Can you imagine if ABC had the gall to announce: “Hey, we want wealthy men, and so to attract them, we are gonna show weak, bimbo chicks and men in charge, the way it used to be”? Nah, if ABC did that, Congress and the FCC would immediately haul network execs to testify in their boxer shorts while being cross-examined by the male-repellant Glorias–Allred and Steinem–and being threatened with castration.



ABC programming chief Lee elaborates on ABC’s fall line-up attack on men in another publication:



Women are taking over.



That’s the prevailing theme in many of ABC’s new slate of shows. One of the offerings comes from . . . Tim Allen. The comedian will star in the sitcom “Last Man Standing,” which debuts in October.



The show follows Mike Baxter (Allen), who calls the shots at work but is outnumbered and overruled at home by his wife and three daughters. To make matters more emasculating, Mike’s wife, Vanessa (Nancy Travis, “The Bill Engvall Show”), gets a raise at work and starts making more money than him.



“Tim’s take on it is that he’s really in a world surrounded by women instead of ‘Home Improvement,’ where he was in his own world,” said Paul Lee, ABC’s president of entertainment at a Television Critics Association’s press panel Sunday. “We are a network that’s dominated, and certainly in terms of the value of our sales, with affluent women’s audiences. So to look at men in a women’s world was a very interesting take.”



No, not “very interesting.” More like, very disgusting. And sexist.



The Alphabet Network will also be picking up the sitcom “Man Up,” which follows male friends who are afraid they are soft because they use flavored creamers in their coffee and play video games instead of using their hands and getting dirty. Mather Zickel (“Reno 911″) and Teri Polo (“Meet the Parents” movies) star in “Man Up,” which will premiere in October and air after Allen’s “Last Man Standing.” In the midseason, the cross-dressing comedy “Work It” will debut. It follows two desperate and unemployed men who dress as women to get jobs.



OMG, it’s “Bosom Buddies” on estrogen. G-d Help Us. STAT.



“It’s the job of television, and has been since we started, to look at the plight of men,” Lee said. “And I think we look at it in very different ways. The ‘Man Up’ guys are resentful that they didn’t go to war like their (fathers). They just play ‘Call of Duty.’ It’s our job to create television that questions how people feel in the world.”



Says who? Uh, no, that’s NOT your job, ABC. Your job is to entertain, to provide quality programming suitable for broadcast TV, and to entertain everyone, not just Eleanor Smeal and the winning WNBA team.



Don’t forget that the public broadcast airwaves–including ABC–are owned and regulated by the public. Given that, I’d like to know: where the heck are the cojones of the male half of the American population, and why the heck aren’t they “mad as hell” and “not gonna take it anymore,” a la Howard Beale in “Network?” Like I said, can you imagine if a major network said they would feature women this way? Wouldn’t happen. But the reason it’s happening here is because men are taking it, accepting it. They’re not getting angry, like they should be. There is no more male rage in America. Instead, that’s been subsumed by women. And men are busy holding their wives purses.



I’m thinking of filing my own complaint with the FEC about this, since no men are pursuing it. Maybe a defamation or discrimination lawsuit against ABC is in order. Frankly, I wonder where the men in Congress are. They are still the majority in Congress, but even the so-called “courageous conservatives” really aren’t that courageous. They don’t have the decency to hold hearings and take ABC to task, as they have the power to do. Why not?



Yes, our collapsing economy and physical national security are very important. But so is the threat of America’s dying “strong male.” As I always say, no matriarchy in history ever lasts. Not one matriarchy has even been temporarily great and contributed to civilization. A weakened American male is the ultimate national security problem. And if you think it has no effect on the economy, think again.



Heck, if we actually had real men in Congress and the White House, they’d have had the balls to cut what we needed to, rather than cut their balls off and avoid the spending cuts.



I blame part of ABC’s new line-up on ball-less “male” actors in Hollywood. Tim Allen is selling out his manhood for a paycheck, rather than saying, “Hey, I don’t go for this portrayal of my gender. It’s bad for me, bad for my sons and grandsons, and bad for America.” I cannot imagine John Wayne or Charlton Heston willingly playing roles like Allen is, no matter how many figures are in the paycheck. And Allen is an emblem of many American men. They’ve sold out. Sold out for video games, wives who make more than they do, etc. And they’ve sold their souls with it.



American men, it’s time to man up. Where are you? Why aren’t you fighting back and writing letters to ABC in droves? Why aren’t you demonstrating outside ABC in New York, demanding an end to the sexism?



And why is the only person upset about this a woman–me? That I even have to ask any of these questions shows me the American male is really an extinct species. The younger generations merely have slacker shells born with the “accidental appendage” of a penis.