Rampant Male-Infantilism and the Birth of the SmurfBoy
Hot on the cracked heels of the declaration of Gay Vague as the new straight and the new gay comes a tirade against "male infantilism" and all the Seth Cohens it has spawned. Writer Matthew Wilder recalls the era of manly men and sheds a tear for what's become of good, clean testosterone:
Where a Scotch-sozzled Big Bruiser once ran onto the fire escape with a roar, rolling up his or her sleeves to challenge the whole U.S. of A. to step outside, now a smallish fellow in a knit cap and woolen sweater sits in the corner with a box of chocolate milk, giggling at his own inadvertent burps. Where Pops built skyscraper-sized mirrors to reflect a metastasizing society, Junior lives in a world we might call Mini-Micro-Narcissus. Son of Big Bruiser, I name you LittleBlue SmurfBoy —after the fetish of your patron saint, Donnie Darko, the most sensitive and martyred of your kind. I take this moment to examine the markings of your race, as evinced by your most applauded manifestations: novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, filmmaker Wes Anderson, and musician Conor Oberst.
Dear God, he got all of our eggs in a basket!
Wilder then goes on to name Oberst as the littlest and most blue SmurfBoy, Wes Andersen the Dean of SmurfBoys, and Jonathan Safran Foer, sadly, as the most reprehensible. Of Foer's latest effort, he notes, "Extremely is old-timey yiddishkeit tear-jerking in hipster garments—it's Tuesdays with Morrie for the yellow Converse set." And that's the nice stuff. Wilder, you are our new best friend — even if we're a little afraid of you.
