"Why do my son's books tell him all men are useless?"

Daran at Feminist Critics has just posted a link to a London Daily Mail article by William Leath, titled Why do my son's books tell him all men are useless?

Some excerpts:

Why is the dad in [Zoo, by Anthony Browne], about a family trip to the zoo, such an idiot? Not just an idiot, but a grumpy, overweight idiot who tries to make jokes, but is never funny and, what's more, is always on the verge of ruining things for everybody else. He's a greedy slob, just like Homer Simpson. He's more childish than his children, even though he has hair sprouting from his ears.

Then there's the dad in Into The Forest, another book by this author. This one's about a dad who goes missing. He is clearly a weakling. He walks out of the family home and goes to stay with his mum.

A recent academic study confirmed that men - particularly fathers - are under-represented in almost all children's books. And when they do appear, like the fathers in Gorilla [also by Browne] and Zoo, they are often withdrawn, or obsessed with themselves, or just utterly ineffectual.

...

in another of our favourites, Benedict Blathwayt's The Runaway Train, the driver is called Duffy. And what does he do? He gets out of the train, forgetting to put the brake on, and the train rolls off without him. A driverless train - what a powerful symbol of male inadequacy! Yet this seems quite normal. We sit on the sofa and laugh.

'Why does Duffy forget the brake?' my son asked me. Why? Stories require fall-guys. They need some people to be malign or foolish or weak. And it just so happens that these people, in these stories, are male. It just so happens that it wouldn't seem right, to me, if these malign, foolish or weak people were female. Somehow, they have to be male. And symbols of male inadequacy are so deeply embedded in other parts of our culture. So much so, in fact, that nobody notices it any more.

For years, I've laughed at hopeless Homer Simpson and his dangerous son Bart, and the attempts of the female characters in the family to clean up after them.

...

For years, men in our stories - not just for children, but adults, too - have been losing their authority. Not just years - decades. It's crept up on us and now it's everywhere. Remember when movie stars were strong and decisive? That was a long time ago now: John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn.

Then came a new, softer type - Cary Grant and James Stewart were strong, yes, but against a background of self-doubt. And then came Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, Bill Murray, Kevin Spacey - neurotic, bumbling, deeply flawed anti-heroes.

Think of Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. The deadbeat dad, smoking dope in the garage because he can't take the pressure of family life. For a long time now, something has been happening to the way we portray men.

And wherever you look, things seem to be getting worse for guys. In a survey of 1,000 TV adverts, made by writer Frederic Hayward, he points out that: '100 per cent of the jerks singled out in male-female relationships were male.'

So does this mean that there is something wrong with the way we portray men? Or - much more seriously - is there some deep trouble with men themselves? I can't bear to have that thought. Can you?

Yet that's certainly what our culture seems to be telling us. And it's what certain feminist writers seem to be telling us, too.

And predictably, at this point, he goes on to attack Susan Faludi and feminism in general.

But until he commences blaming women (which you knew was coming, right?)--I thought he made some good points.

However, those last few paragraphs got me thinking. I very much prefer Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, Bill Murray, and Kevin Spacey to the Big Dumb Hollywood He-Men he named. I found them to be far more human, authentic, complex and 'thinking' protagonists. (I'd add Gene Hackman to that list, my all-time favorite actor.)

I loved Kevin Spacey smoking dope in the garage; he was trying to figure out what to do with his life rather than mindlessly charging ahead and continuing his unhappiness. Deadbeat Dad? He was present and accounted for in his child's life, she just didn't want anything to do with him. (And why do you suppose that was?) The pressures of family life? How about, the fact that his family was falling apart? His daughter was lying to him, he developed an obsession with a young friend of his daughter's and his wife was having an affair.

I guess John Wayne would have just pretended everything was okay and carried on anyway?

Some of us think that brand of male behavior was THE PROBLEM, not any kind of solution.

On the other hand, I don't want children to grow up expecting males not to do their share, which is how I read a lot of this fiction: Men usually screw up anyway, so don't be upset that your father has abandoned you.

If fathers are not represented in fiction, perhaps it's because fathers have been abandoning their role in real life? And this fictional presentation of male bumbling is possibly an effort to explain away the lack of men in children's lives?

How else could one explain it?

Any opinions?