European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 25, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse Regarding movies male roles enough to make you weepy Peter Rainer los Angeles times the male Weepie a newly minted genre for the Post Yuppie Era is in full flood. Consider in regarding Henry a crass Hotshot lawyer played by Harrison Ford is wounded in the head suffers almost total amnesia and in his new life realizes the error of his anything for Success ways. He and his family end up making the supreme downwardly Mobile sacrifice they Trade the upper West Side for Greenwich Village. William Hurt s crass Hotshot doctor in the doctor literally gets a taste of his own Medicine when he comes Down with cancer of the Larynx. His suffering is meant to tenderize him to the plight of others and make him a better healer. In dying Young a Well to do highly educated cancer patient played by Campbell Scott finds True love in a Seaside idyll with Quot his Down to Earth working class nurse Julia Robertson City slickers which is ostensibly a comedy a Trio of male friends led by Billy Crystal go on a cattle drive vacation that turns into a conscious Ness Raiser on the Prairie. Then there Are the movies that while not strictly speaking weepies still turn the spigot a Mel Brooks life stinks and the new Michael j. Fox comedy Doc Hollywood. Even the terminator is weepy these Days. In terminator 2 judgment Day our austrian accented cyborg sacrifices himself and the last words spoken about him have the ring of Benediction a if a terminator can learn the meaning of a human life we can for a while it looked like the Only men making a grand scale impression in the movies were the psychos a like the Wise Guys in Good fellas or or. Lecter from the silence of the lambs. The men in the new male weepies Are the reverse image of the psychos they implode not from rage but from we be been primed for these men for a while now. Awakenings was essentially a male Weepie. Dances with wolves was one too. It had Many of the requisite requirements including a martyred Central male figure who chucks the cruelties of civilization for a the simpler Kevin Costner set. Dunbar was a selfless sufferer a and we got to witness his selflessness in by rough estimate 469 adoring close ups. Raging narcissism is the Keystone of the male Weepie. The major precursor is probably big where Tom Hanks played an 8-year-old in a grown ups body. The films measured Ungo Oty style clued us in that it Wasny to just a Romp a it was a parable. It stumped for the spiritual benefits of being a child again. The new male weepies keying into the current pop psych speak Are big on a locating the child within yourself a though most male execs done to seem to have any trouble locating that child. Its the humane adult they can to find. In a male Weepie like regarding Henry or t2, the hero is led by a child to discover his innocence and in effect becomes a child himself. The alternative to the hard driving Power mongering breadwinner is a kind of stunted baffled sexless creature. We be gone from rambo to rain Man. Like most movie trends the male Weepie is a delayed reaction to Long term rumblings in Socie. Paramount pict iras Francois duh Mol Harrison Ford buddy in regarding Henry. To. Its actually a step behind in popular culture now the Malc sensitivity training represented by these films has been muscled aside by the likes of Robert by author of Iron John and Sam keen fire in the belly on being a Man patriarch worshippers who sponsor retreats where Middle class achievers huddle in Tepee grab their Tom Toms and get All atavistic. Sometimes what a churning up the country never makes it into the movies at All. The studios which thrive on formula Are scared off by anything they can to digest. Hollywood conspicuously ignored feminist outrage in the �?T70s and �?T80s, in much the same Way that Vietnam was ignored for Many years. But in this age of the recession the downturn of the Well to do has a depression Cra sentimentality that Hollywood and Many film critics find irresistible. These movies give everyone a Chance to plump their virtue. Hollywood is never so much Hollywood As when its thumping for the simple humane life a for everything it Isnit. May one presume that the producers of these films will follow the advice of their movies and devote the remainder of their lives to Good works since most of the big breadwinner roles still go to male actors it makes sense that Many of these actors would mainline the new sentimentality by sucking in their checks and looking bereft. How aptly named is William Hurt its the kind of socially conscious Star trip that actors and Oscar voters adore. The male Weepie shares Many of the same defining qualities As the female Weepie and it has the added commercial advantage these Days of attracting a sizable female audience. Both genres Are intimately keyed into Middle class values. Despair is usually recorded As a fall from affluence the Sanctity of Home and Hearth is nostalgically rendered romantic transgressions Are punished with a Puritan vigor. The tone of these films is often subdued and dewy for that All important a prestige Quot effect. Repeated close ups of the trembling suffering hero or heroine Are Stock of should come As no great Surprise that the women in these new movies Are really no More invigorating or three dimensional than in the usual Hollywood fare. Since the male Weepie is essentially about the heroes narcissism the wives and girlfriends appear primarily As helpers. They broker their menus new found sensitivity. Its significant that few of the male Lemale relationships in these films have a sexual Edge. The women a ministrations Are essentially Motherly As befitting their infantile cd men. If the female Weepie with its cult of sacrifice often reinforced the female audiences most masochistic Side the male we Pic tells men not to worry if they fall. Someone will still be there to tuck them in at night. The dream of chucking it All for a simpler life is rampant among superannuated yuppies but the simple life in these movies still looks pretty flashy. No one takes a real financial Bath. That downgrade from West Side Penthouse to Village townhouse in regarding Henry is about As bad As it gets. This have your cake and eat it too Falla Skyland Quality is typical of the male Weepie. Just As what befalls the hero is often a a accidental an unexpected afflictions is the Resolution equally fortuitous the illness is stayed the memory creeps Back Justice prevails. The social background for these movies is rooted in Reagan Era greed is Good malfeasance but the movies themselves have no social reality. Weepies rarely do. And so it s probably irrelevant to Point out that fancy apartments in the Village Cost a Fortune or that famous surgeons arc not Likely to get routine patient treatment in their own Hospital. The heroes loss of traditional career related Power in these films is acc Pledas a virtue. That a because Power As defined in movies like the doctor and regarding Henry is perceived As a disease separating these men from their own Best and most tender selves. The disaffection for Power in these movies is deliberately and offensively simplistic. The implication in these movies is that in the professional Arena absolute Power corrupts absolutely. Its a convenient fantasy for a downwardly Mobile Era. The psychosexual subtext of the greed is Good �?T80s was that riches equated virility. Lucre was the emollient of the soul. We passed through that decade As we might pass through a radioactive Cloud and now the most irradiated and soul sick of its moneyed survivors a the Shell shocked fallen on hard times careerists a Are starting to crowd our screens. In the new recessionary climate the same Hollywood that used to glorify Money and Macho now glorifies their absence. In �?T80s terms the men in these movies have been emasculated but that a not How we re meant to View them. Instead their weep Ness is sugarcoated in moral superiority. In the Guise of a new sensitivity the male weepies Are simply Glamor izing the loss of Power. Its heroes have the Glossy martyred look of sainthood. August 25. 1991 sunday a
