inkbluesky

So Jeffery Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere writes about the trend in movies where nerdy scruffy guys get the beautiful woman,

Taking their place are guys who look like real guys, which means almost never slender or buffed, and frequently chunky, overweight or obese. And usually with roundish faces with half-hearted beard growth, hair on their backs, man-boobs with tit hairs, blemishes, and always horribly dressed — open-collared plaid dress shirts, low-thread-count T-shirts with lame-ass slogans or promotions on the chest, long shorts and sandals (or flip-flops), monkey feet, unpedicured toenails.

Jim Emerson at Scanners points out one obvious problem. Neatly bundled up with Well’s suposed cocern with attractive women not getting as attracive men as they deserve or middle of the road guys getting more then nature intended is a mentality we’ve seen before,

So, Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis are too beautiful for Jason Segel and Katherine Heigl is too beautiful for Seth Rogen and Catherine Keener is too beautiful for Steve Carell. Is that really a serious movie problem? (Judd Apatow is married to Leslie Mann. All he’s doing is writing, producing, directing what he knows.) Why is Wells so upset? He sounds like a Dixieland racist spouting off about miscegenation in the 1950s. It’s an outrage, a threat to the species!

First a h/t to Cinematical for the links. Well’s piece is one of those slightly over the top rants that I suspect was written in a way to get attention on the web where there are millions of bloggers and professional writers are vying for reader eye balls. Elsewhere Well’s does make a point worth thinking about, that we seldom see the reverse situation where the, let’s call them the non-Katherine Heigls get the hansome charming guy. There have been exceptions, Bridget Jones Diary (1&2) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding come to mind. It is mistaken to go off on writer/director Judd Apatow. This phenomenon has been going on since Danny Kaye won over Virginia Mayo in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947). Kaye, at least to me was something of the goofball of his generation actors, a Seth Rogan who could dance. Then again there is something more fundamental at work then what Hollywood is producing and that is what we, people are buying tickets to. If Knocked Up or The 40 Year Old Virgin wouldn’t have sold tickets this new take or new sub-genre of movies would died a quick death. Another problem is that Well’s assume like too many people, the general population is possessed by the monkey see monkey do syndrome. There’s a saying that Hollywood both reflects society and affects it. The reality is that its pretty lopsided . More like ninety percent reflects. George Clooney has said it well stating that movies are better at asking questions and getting the conversation going then answering questions. While true for serious movies like Michael Clayton, it is also true for lighter movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Movies are movies, the place where people pretend to be other people with the assistance of screen writers, directors, make-up and cinematographers. People may feel moved by them, they may even feel that movies as a form of popular art make their lives fuller, but most people don’t confuse movies with real life. Looks or beauty is not solely a physical quality in the view of most men or women, Physical Beauty Involves More Than Good Looks

“In each case, non-physical traits known only to familiars, such as how much the person was liked, respected and contributed to shared goals, had a large effect on the perception of physical attractiveness that was invisible to the strangers,” says Wilson.

Each study provided an illustrative example of this finding. For instance, one middle-aged subject who had not seen the familiar person photographed in the yearbook for decades responded with absolute disgust when she recalled the person’s character and described that person as ugly. In the sports team study, team members considered the slacker to be ugly and one of the leaders to be physically attractive, while strangers, blind to the members’ relative contributions, rated them as equally attractive on the basis of photographs. And, after six weeks of working together on an archaeological dig, students’ perception of physical attractiveness changed based on interactions during the course.

In a world where people are bombarded with messages about physical attractiveness from magazines, television and advertisements, the researchers say their results point to the influence of other traits on people’s perception of physical beauty. Kniffin adds that he hopes these findings may encourage the consumers of this information to rethink the value of cosmetic surgery, especially if it involves risk.

The participants in the study have probably seen thousands if not tens of thousands of hours of TV and movies yet when they knew the subject their perceptions of attractiveness changed not based on glossy media prescriptions, but on personality traits. At the end of the day the majority of people are still having relationship with people that are approximately equal in looks and that have a family resemblance. Investigating an imprinting-like phenomenon in humans: Partners and opposite-sex parents have similar hair and eye colour

Research has shown that human partners are more similar than expected by chance on a variety of traits. Studies examining hair and eye colour show some evidence of positive assortment. Positive assortment may reflect attraction to self-similar characteristics but is also consistent with attraction to parental traits. Here, we examine self-reported partner hair and eye colour and the influence that own and parental colour characteristics have on these variables. Parental characteristics were found to correlate positively with actual partner characteristics for both men and women.

On a cultural level many people, myself included would like to see films that mixed up the ingredients as far as physical traits. It just makes the story resonate a little more. Men in flip-flops? Wells is definitely on to something there. Between the shower and the bedroom only.

There is name used by cultural anthropologists to describe the general tendency ( yes we all know of some exceptions) for men and women to have relationship with people that are about equal in looks and I can’t find the exact term today. I remember that it is mentioned in the novel Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd. It has been a while since I read the book, but at one point I think Hope Clearwater describes herself in comparison to her lover as being mismatched in appearance. Great book, too bad it was never adapted into a movie.

clear cut.