We’ve had a lot of conversations recently about how men are represented in pop culture these days, so I’ve been spending some of my time at the Television Critics Association asking some questions about new male characters that will form a series of posts over the next couple of days.

Shonda Rhimes’ new show Scandal stars a women: Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, a fictional version of Washington, DC fixer Judy Smith (she represented Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy’s family), who is an executive producer on the show. But it’s also about that woman’s relationship with a powerful man, in fact, the powerful man. Olivia’s former boss is the president of the United States, and apparently he’s a single man, who isn’t quite ready to let her go even though she’s returned to private practice. In real life, it’s impossible to imagine a president of the United States who isn’t married. It’s difficult to believe that a man who had never been married or a single divorced man would be able to get over questions around his personal life, though a widower might manage it. But I asked Rhimes if she thought that despite that conception, Americans long for a sexier vision of the president.

” I don’t know if America wants a sexier president” in the real world, she said. “I know when I was working on the show, it was delightful to have a sexier president, to imagine the president as a man as well as a leader of the free world.” She noted later that she hoped the show wouldn’t be pigeon-holed, noting, “I don’t think this is a show about relationships.”

It’s a dichotomy that raises some interesting issues. I don’t know that we’re always very good at letting men express yearning or desire in popular culture, even though we’re at a place where we’re getting more comfortable watching women objectify men on-screen, and presenting men to be objectified by women in the audience. I wonder if it has something to do with a dynamic we see play out repeatedly in American politics, where we constantly downgrade a politician’s power (particularly the president) any time he compromises or doesn’t get everything he wants. Of course, we accept the inevitability of compromise and disappointment in ordinary people’s lives. But it’s hard to imagine someone being both a forceful chief executive and not getting the girl, or getting the girl and then getting dumped. It’s why action stars never have interesting romances: the only outcomes are success, the hero leaving the girl, or the girl dying through the machinations of the villain.

I really wanted to like this little documentary about Disney movies and masculinity, because it’s absolutely true that Disney movie men (unless they’re lions) are generally as stereotypical as Disney movie ladies:

But I think this documentary’s substantially off in its discussion of the messages male watchers get about female objectification, especially from the second Golden Age on. Beauty and the Beast makes incredibly clear that Gaston’s fixation on Belle is gross, has nothing to do with her inner person, and presents in a way that’s predatory. Beast, by contrast, gives Belle a library, hangs out with her, saves her from wolves, and has snowball fights with her. By the end of the movie, there is precisely zero doubt that Gaston as a person, and Gaston’s way of picking out a wife is disgusting and undesirable, and not to be emulated unless you want to get tossed off a roof.

Mulan is much subtler, but has essentially the same message. The wife-finding methodology of “A Girl Worth Fighting For” is essentially dismissed in favor of a norm where men and women work together, get to like each other as people, and then give the whole romance thing a shot. And, of course, the whole point of the “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” number the documentary cites is that the traits it describes aren’t actually specific to men — and that you can exhibit strength whether you’re rocking armor or a dress:

Now, it’s absolutely true that Disney movie characters tend to have essentially identical body types (again, unless they’re non-human, or aging superhero Bob Parr in The Incredibles) and to end in fights, which is basically a prerequisite for adventure movies. And while there are clever parodies of hypermasculine ideals, like the Toy Story movies, which emphasize collaboration and equal participation by the genders, robots, and adorable rubber aliens, it’s true that Disney movies don’t have an exceptionally wide aperture on masculinity. That’s not an uncommon problem, and at least Disney doesn’t insist that for women to do better, men have to lose out, as Bill Bennett does in a Fox News column this week. But the studio’s done a nice job of broadening the spectrum of emotions they include within their standard adventure stories. They could consider broadening the kinds of stories they tell — and as a result, the kinds of characters, men and women alike, they include in them — too.

This post contains spoilers through “Day 2″ of Neal Stephenson’s Reamde. Feel free to spoil beyond that, but please label comments as such. For next week, lets read “Day 3″ and “Day 4.”

One of the things that I like best about this book, which, though I think so far is definitely not Stephenson’s best or most audacious, and in fact, really feels like a parody of Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum (which is a really fun, useful thing to do, but not what I’d expected), I’m enjoying in a propulsive kind of way, is how it handles relationships between the genders. It’s not so much that they’re realistic, or even aggressively subversive. But I really appreciate — even though it may be as much a fantasy for me as the Frat Pack movies are for men — that the main object of a great deal of chivalry is a nerdy Eritrean refugee who knows more about video games that her ex-boyfriend and builds realistic Eritrean deserts in a fictional world.

First, there’s Sokolov’s entrance, which I’ll get back to in a minute and from his perspective:

Over Zula, he made a bit of a fuss, because he was that kind of guy. It didn’t matter why he was here, what sort of business he had come to transact. Women just had to be treated in an altogether different way from men; the presence of a single woman in the room changed everything. He kissed her hand. He apologized for the trouble. He exclaimed over her beauty. He insisted that she make herself comfortable. He inquired, several times, whether the temperature in the room was not too chilly for a “beautiful African” and whether he might send one of his minions out to fetch her some hot coffee. All of this with meaningful glances at Peter, whose manners came off quite poorly by comparison.

This is all sort of funny and horrible and slightly off as well as being charming, because Sokolov is in the midst of an operation that is murdering someone Zula’s been working with, calling her a “beautiful African” is kind of creepy and reductionist, and part of this chivalry ends up being a ploy to drug Zula and put her on a private jet bound for China. But at the same time, there’s something genuine to it, something that’s not exclusive to Sokolov. We already know that Richard has gone to extreme lengths to keep Zula protected. Peter’s gotten them into this horrible mess because he wants to hang on Zula. Sokolov brings her flowers along with the coffee, which is totally unnecessary. And then, they’re joined by a hunky but vulnerable Hungarian who, when he meets Zula, who goes in for a handshake, “bent forward and kissed it, not in an arch way, but as if hand kissing were a wholly routine procedure for him.”
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I’ve been so focused on this fall’s crop of television shows about women that I haven’t spent that much time checking out the roster of shows about How to Man Correctly. The always-excellent Linda Holmes at NPR makes a persuasive argument that for once, television is actually handling men worse than it’s handling women. So if you don’t want to watch How to be a Gentleman but do to think about masculinity, try one of these currently airing shows — or watch them with a new focus.

1. Parks and Recreation: I give this show infinite props for its awesome feminism, but it’s actually a stealthily terrific show about what it means to be a man. From Tom, who thinks the road to happiness lies through the achievement of a particular lifestyle; to Ben who’s trying to prove that he’s worthy of responsibility after a burst of teenage arrogance; to Andy’s maturation from unemployed lump to husband, the show is all about how to be a grown-up man without any resort to extreme violence or Pickup Artist-style womanizing. And that doesn’t even get us to the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness:

The only thing that even comes close is Jack Donaghy’s video for his unborn son. But on 30 Rock, Jack’s really the only man, so there isn’t much of a conversation about masculinity.

2. Breaking Bad: I sort of assume everyone here is watching Breaking Bad already, but in a way, it’s a perfect dramatic counterpoint to Parks and Recreation. Walter White’s journey from decent cancer victim to monstrously pathetic wannabe kingpin is fundamentally steered by a toxic conception of masculinity: that he should be willing to do everything to provide for his family. That rationale’s evolved from a motivation for Walt to cross a previously unthinkable line to an excuse for him to behave terribly. As Skyler, Walter’s wife told him this season, “someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family.”
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