Draw near, culture warriors, for the launch of an occasional new feature: Crazy Like a Fox News Expert. Needless to say, Rupert Murdoch’s US news network has long been a no-go area for anyone playing with a full deck. In fact, to give you a sense of the scale of the annexation, there are more non-Muslims in Birmingham than there are non-certifiable talking heads on the network. Non-crazies just simply don’t go in.
Anyway, today’s featured player is one Peggy Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America – whose name and organisation both sound freshly minted by the Random American Wingnut Generator.
Peggy, pictured, was a guest on Fox & Friends the other day, and it turned out her host was not happy about Frozen. Not happy at all. Having delineated what he called “the Frozen effect”, he asked if Peggy concurred that the movie was “turning our men into fools and villains”.
Peggy did more than concur. In fact, she put this reading of identity politics in Arendelle into context. “Hollywood in general has often sent a message that men are superfluous,” she explained, “that they’re stupid, that they’re in the way, and if they contribute anything to the family, it’s a paycheck.”
Say what, Peggy? Actually, let’s see that again: “Hollywood in general has often sent a message that men are superfluous, that they’re stupid, that they’re in the way, and if they contribute anything to the family, it’s a paycheck.”
So there you have it, Hollywood. I’m begging you – we’re all begging you – to have the courage to take Peggy Nance’s advice on board. Stop treating half the world as superfluous. Consider making some movies with men in them. Stop treating men in movies as some box-ticking, window-dressing exercise when they could be so much more than that. Stop limiting them to roles such as hero lovers, hero fighters, hero scientists, hero presidents, hero rights leaders, hero artists, hero doctors, hero homeless people, antihero homicidal geniuses, accidental heroes – and all the other kind of heroes – and setting an upper age limit of around 110 when they may as well just shut up shop because no one’s writing parts for them any more.
You can’t ride this one out, movie-makers. It’s not enough to just carry on as you are, or maybe just affecting to take these issues seriously by siphoning off a token, minuscule percentage of your profits to fund Concerned People With an IQ Over 70 for Peggy Nance. We demand you greenlight something – anything – that doesn’t cast the only guy in the picture as a peripheral clock-punching dullard who dies of boringness in the first reel. The clock is ticking.
