Allow me to defend the beta male. Of course, he’s perfectly capable of defending himself, but he probably won’t – we love that about the beta – because he’s too relaxed and good-natured, or busy writing a song while reading a novel and cooking dinner, to care about the insult to his good name that is Seth Rogen.
Blame Judd Apatow. The American writer-director-producer-zeitgeist-definer behind movies such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express and so on has created a new comedy archetype, the man-child. Often played and written by Vancouver’s Seth Rogen, the Apatowian hero is a pop-culture-hoovering, semi-employed, bong-fisted good guy reluctantly forced into adulthood by movieland circumstances (a romance or angry pot dealers). These guys lack ambition and openly admit their emotional retardation. Thus, it wasn’t exactly flattering to women when critic Lisa Schwarzbaum, reflecting on the Apatow trend in Entertainment Weekly, asked, “[Are] movie guys the new girls?”
As a filmgoer, I appreciate Rogen and his cohorts for imbuing the modern comedy with a new, loose, improvisational style; I haven’t seen these guys onscreen before. Their highly human doughy physiques and open emotional wounds – witness the protagonist in Forgetting Sarah Marshall hysterically weeping through a breakup – make them a long-overdue counterpoint to untenably masculine movie stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney. The sensation that someone onscreen is “real” is so very rare (Matthew McConaughey is surely some kind of basement experiment made of latex and titanium) that it’s easy to confuse the Apatowian guys with something that exists. In fact, the real-life beta male is smarter, sexier and without a taint of loserdom.
In the animal kingdom, the alpha male is the dominant member of the community. He’s like a cartoon caveman, commanding deference. The betas are wingmen, collaborative and conciliatory. In human terms, betas make the best mates. They do more in the house, and probably in the bedroom, because they know how to hasten the greater good. The beta has poetry in him, and a touch of youthful idealism. He’s sure of who he is, and not constantly trying to prove his value in materialistic terms. (Alpha: Your expensive car doesn’t make you interesting.) The beta can earn a lot of money, or a little, but the money’s not the thing; he profits because he works well with others.
 |
