I’ve figured it all out, it’ll be easy! I’ll be a screenwriter for action movies. Sinfest points the way.
All I have to do is write page after page of “I AM HETEROSEXUAL!”. I know, there is also emoting with grunts, but I figure I can let Bruce and Arnold and Sly just ad lib those bits.
Am I the only one doubting the character’s claim? It feels forced.
Falling Down?
Hey, I could do that! Easy peasy, right?
He forgot to say “AND ALSO WHITE!”
PZ, you haven’t seen an action movie for a while have you? Those three geezers you mention are have-beens :)
And yet Willis, Stallone and Schwarzenegger all either just released a movie or have one out soon.
Yet still the yardstick by which all other Patriarchal Movie Stars are judged. Have you eaten a lot of protein and lifted a lot of weights? Do your scalenes erupt from your neck like tumourous protrusions when you clench your teeth? Can you make this happen whilst failing to emote in an appalling accent? Congratulations, you can help perpetuate the myth that borderline personality disorder is an admirably masculine trait via piss-poor big-screen schlock!
You also have to beat people up and kill them, and blow shit up. It’s not so easy after all.
I had lost track of Sinfest recently and hadn’t been following it. Missed this gem a few days ago: Gender Programming.
Shocking!
I seem to recall other things along the same line from him; I wonder if Ishida has idiots jumping down his throat all day long…
I’m pretty sure that a serious and sometimes fatal psychiatric disorder is not what’s portrayed by Patriarchal Movie Stars. I don’t think that diagnosis needs anymore stigmatisation than it already faces to be linked with the caricatures on the big screen.
You can’t miss this ode to manliness.
I disagree. They’re not shouting “I am heterosexual”, they’re shouting “I’M NOT PAINFULLY INSECURE!!!!”
“I’m pretty sure that a serious and sometimes fatal psychiatric disorder is not what’s portrayed by Patriarchal Movie Stars. ” Eh, it actually sounds too on the nose, if anything. The need for argument, the inabillity to relax, the “splitting”.
… the perverse conceptualisation of self and it’s intricate bondage to disorder, the self-destructive impulses, the chaotic interpersonal relationships, the inability to function within the nuances of a civil society without resort to violence…
People living with BPD, and people living with people living with BPD, probably find these symptoms less entertaining than your average cinema-goer, which is unfortunate because a film about a person struggling with BPD would be an interesting thing to watch. Unfortunately that would require a modicum of empathy in the audience and also talented writers able to convey complex issues thoughtfully, so instead we get billboards from big studios desperately trying to convince us that Arnold “Plank” Schwarzenegger is an actor while the man himself chews his way through 180 minutes-worth of scenery before delivering the old “I’LL BE BACK TO SHOOT YOU WITH MY METAL CORDITE-POWERED PHALLUS HEY YOU YEAH YOU THE PROVOCATIVELY-DRESSED AGGREGATION OF ALL TROPES ABOUT WOMEN LET’S GO TO BED AND DO SEX” one-liner.
tl;dr – The film industry is awful and the whole thing should be ashed in a furnace and fed to seagulls. Anyone who loses their job because of this should be made to give back all the money they earned from making shit films and forced to pick oakum forever.
If you are going to do that, I’m going to write parables.
Actually, I’d rather see Chuck Norris in the title role (his acting is a lot better than his writing).
Fred Salvadore….why do you hate seagulls so?
The comic fails in one thing: too many face expressions. The author should learn from poker-face masters, like Steven Seagal.
Also @7:
‘Can you make this happen whilst failing to emote in an appalling accent?‘
Your linguistic chauvinism has been noted.
@17:
Sly Stallone’s accent is not appalling because it is suggestive of ethnicity or cultural background, but because it is flat, dead, and belongs to Sly Stallone. Likewise Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, and the rest of the generic animatronic muscle-suits.
I dunno. Guy seems kinda gay to me. (ducks)
Greta,
Clearly the next panel would have “I’m completely heterosexual” in the speech bubble.
Keanu Reeves is cool. And sad. “Generic animatronic muscle-suit”, I don’t think so.
#21:
We’ll split the difference and call him a generic sad muscle-suit then. This is a man whose performances are sure to ruin every film in which he appears, so I can’t really go any further than that.
I thought he had a speech impediment.
PZ, you have to have lots of American flag waving too.
Try “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” some time if you can find it.
BPD does not equate to violence. People with BPD can be totally functional, just like depressed people, schizophrenics, autistics, etc. and comparing people with BPD to action-movie-stars is insulting to people with BPD.