The return of Entourage, this time in movie form following eight seasons on HBO, seems to herald another comeback. To watch Entourage is to engage with what it represents, which is a very distinctive form of culture, tailor-made for young, materialistically aspirational men, the kind of dude who sees the protagonists and thinks: “I wish I could be them.” There’s a shorthand for this type of guy. They’re bros. And beyond just the Entourage movie, they’re back – in a big way.
You could make a strong argument that the bro never left. Firmly rooted in a hyper-desirable advertising demo – the 18- to 35-year-old male with disposable income – bros are a strong part of the audience that most popular entertainment is trying to ensnare. Entourage just happened to do so more effectively than any show that came before it. Starting in 2004 and for eight seasons after, it was the arbiter of bro culture, sharing that role with at most a handful of other shows. But where those other programs, such as Family Guy, targeted bros as a viewership, Entourage embodied their whole ethos: male friendship, performative luxury, attractive women and lots of dick jokes. When it went off the air in 2011, it felt like the end of the Bro Era; no longer did college students and your high-school friends on Facebook have a show to bond over that was theirs.
For that very reason, the show’s rejuvenation as a film in 2015 announces a sort of renaissance. Even if it’s superficial, the bro appears to be back, with Entourage serving as the starting point. But the concept of the bro has changed since Entourage began over a decade ago.
Following the Entourage movie is Ballers, a show in which Dwayne Johnson plays a football player turned sports agent, and which is to debut on HBO – Entourage’s old network. Ballers has the same sort of raw appeal: there’s the aspiration, the luxury, and the women in bikinis. The main difference between it and its predecessor is that Ballers focuses on sports, whereas Entourage zeroed in on the movie industry. In 2004, we were still in the movie star era; actors were the height of fame and fortune. Now, with our stars getting older and their replacements comic-book characters rather than actors, athletes have established themselves as the alpha males in our society.
Meanwhile, in the film We Are Your Friends, bro avatar Zac Efron embodies the DJ subculture. EDM has become a major aspect of the generalized young-male aesthetic, and We Are Your Friends appears to be positioning itself as the visual anthem of that subset, a sort of Garden State for the Coachella crowd.
Dance music and professional sports are not foreign to the Entourage universe, but they were never the point: they are too active, too substantial of occupations to be truly bro. The most amazing thing about Entourage is that the protagonists never really did anything; it was the luxury, and the pursuit and enjoyment of that luxury by the show’s protagonists, that mattered above all else. The dream of Entourage had more to do with being in the entourage than actually being the star.
The movie comes at a time when it’s never been easier to achieve some kind of fame. There are Vine stars who make a living off of their videos; Snapchat is a thing. In this universe, actually doing something makes a lot more sense, and seems far more accessible, than it used to, meaning that the dream of Entourage is far less necessary, even if it might still be enticing. The new bro belongs to something. That something might be DJ’ing in the most stereotypical manner possible, but it’s still more than being a hanger-on.
• Entourage is released in the US on 3 June and in the UK on 19 June
