I wonder if the comedy cliché of attractive woman/ unattractive man isn’t wish fulfillment but rather speaks to men’s deep-seated insecurities about their own attractiveness and self-worth. I’m reminded of the WW2-era made for the Army cartoons starring Private Snafu. Snafu is as sad a sack of s*** as they come; and yet THIS red-hot momma is his stateside girlfriend Sally Lou:
Fine, guilty as charged on the fat shaming.
But I called Ralph a loser not because of his job, but mostly because of the horrible way he treats his wife. That video clip Stranger posted upthread was difficult to watch. It’s hard to believe that level of verbal abuse once passed as comedy.
Also, it’s been a long time since I watched the show with any regularity, but I remember his constant get rich quick schemes that would always fail and leave them in worse financial shape. And I don’t have anything against an entrepreneurial spirit and trying to better oneself, but if I recall, his schemes were always ridiculous and very poorly thought out. So yeah, capital ‘L’ Loser.
True - but to me at least it seemsxto be the defining example
YMMV but one reason I usually dislike romcoms is I never find the leading man attractive. Usually I like it in spite of its leading man, not because of. Actually handsome men are in action movies or quirky dramas.
But assuming these men are objectively handsome and my eyeballs are somehow broken, there are romcoms that deliberately play with this trope, such as Must Love Dogs, where a plain woman sends a hot woman in her place to woo the man of her dreams.
When I see Kevin James with his actual wife, seeing him with Leah Remini doesn’t seem farfetched.
Nm ….
I can think of a few better examples, but let’s end the hijack here.
ITYM The Truth About Cats and Dogs.
But there’s nothing plain about Janeane Garofalo; the leads in that movie were hot and Hollywood-consensus-hotter.
Even funnier when you realize that one of the main characters in “Here Come the Brides” was played by Mark Lenard, who played Spock’s father Sarek. It’s been a long time since I’ve read “Ishmael,” but IIRC that could well have been the inspiration for it.
There was a long running storyline on the 80s British kids “drama” Grange Hill in the 80s, at the height of the “just say no” era, about a heroin addicted pupil at the eponymous London secondary school in which the show is set. The thing that stands out watching clips decades later as an adult is WTF were they thinking? Zammo’s junkie friends were cool (the fact I didn’t have to Google the name of the junkie on Grange Hill shows how influential the storyline was). While all main characters were keeny nerds who cared a whole lot about the school play or the sports day. Zammo’s junkie friends were these cool, dangerous punks who had piercings and cool band tv shirts.
About the whole hot wife/fat husband dichotomy:
There are plenty of cultures around the world where married women are supposed to be proud of the fact that their husbands are heavy-set. It means that their wives are feeding them well - and the implication is that they’re happy and contended, and not vain playboys out cruising for women.
Naturally, that attitude does not go both ways.
Rhe funniest part is this
I knew MUCH less then about how licensing worked, but I wrote to the editor of the new Trek line explaining that it was a cross-over, and saying that I could easily and cheerfully re-write it in a generic Western milieu – a cow-town in the 1870s, I think.
I’m glad I kept a carbon of that letter. (This was slightly before the days when photocopying was easy and cheap). The editor (the second one of the line already – the Star Trek line at Pocket went through four or five editors during the time I worked with them) told me, “I checked with the Legal Department and they say there isn’t enough of a similarity for us to worry about.” I was surprised, but very pleased.
Almost a year after the book appeared (and there was yet another editor in charge of the Trek line), I received a phone call. “Hi. We’re the Simon and Schuster Legal Department. Who told you you could do that?”
I said, “The editor.” I think I offered to send them a copy of the original, I’ll-rewrite-it letter I’d sent to Editor #1. They said, “Thank you,” and hung up.
Yes, that’s it!
Since as an evil personal New Years Eve tradition, I’m watching the (Riffed, thank god) version of the Star Wars Christmas Special. And while the show as a whole is a terrible example of late 70s variety TV and thus not quite up to the thread (by a wookie hair only), the transpecies Voyeur VR Porn with Grandpa Wookie DOES.
If I’ve forced you to look this up, I officially apologize.
Stuff You Should Know recently did a podcast on the Star Wars Christmas Special, which I’ve heard was really bad, but they lovingly detail how bad it actually was, including this part, and I am just gobsmacked. It’s one of those things that is so bad it strains credulity. Like who greenlighted this?
Check out “A Disturbance in the Force” if you can find it. It’s a documentary about the making of the special. Short version, it was a combination of an unfinished Lucas idea at his most Lucas-y moments, plus a huge disconnect between “old TV” and “new TV”, not to mention TV execs not knowing what to do with the new marketing, while anyone actually involved in making Star Wars (Lucas et al) being elsewhere actually working on Empire prep.
And drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
Oh, that is pure irony-watch gold. It’s like a distillation of everything that was bad and weird about the 70s, and nothing good.
I watched the non-Riffed version first, then the Riffed version. If I recall, the Riffed version, though I love RiffTrax, was almost superfluous because the Star Wars Holiday Special is such a parody of itself already.
“What are you, tobacco?!”
Actually, you’re correct, you don’t need the riffing, but it’s worthwhile to have the (virtual) feeling of others suffering through it as well.
I have not seen this documentary but I have read about it and listened to a segment about it on NPR and the one fact about “The Star Wars Holiday Special” is something I’ve known for a long time: In terms of awfulness, it didn’t even stand out in 1978. It wasn’t all that different from all the other cheesy variety shows and specials that were on TV at that time. Within a few years, variety shows and specials were all but extinct on American television, and “The Star Wars Holiday Special” is just one of many examples of why that happened.