All Boys Daydream About Saving Their School from Terrorists
And their crushes from muggers too
I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so I watched a lot of TV.1 I also have children, so I’m still hip on various forms of entertainment made for them. In doing so, I have noticed certain rules of storytelling, which I’ve written about here and here, and I’ve also noticed that there is far more empowering and encouraging stuff made for girls than for boys.
This is such a great revelation in the Year of Our Lord 2024 I’m sure you just nearly choked on your own saliva in disbelief. Please stay tuned for my show on Daily Wire where I tell you all about how WOKE Hollywood is!
My point isn’t to lambast wokeness2 or whatever, but to discuss the entertainment options that we had as boys a million years ago when corporations a) still cared enough about us to sell us stuff that catered to our tastes and desires, and b) still had the talent to create good works that oftentimes still hold up today. Above all, I want to describe what I think entertainment for boys should have and currently doesn’t, at least based on my observations.3
Before the harridan brigade descends, let me get a few things explained out front:
I have a daughter as well as a son, so I for one am glad they there’s a lot of opportunity for her and fewer barriers to her doing what she wants to do with her life.
I am in no way advocating the removal of female-centric entertainment. If you’re an overly emotional binary thinker blinded by politics, you might think I am, but that’s a you problem.
I just want to write about what boys like and respond to. I’m speaking from my experience having been a boy, and having a boy of my own.
Got it? Good.
Boys
Boys are not failed girls. There, I said it. What a brave truth-teller I am.
Boys and girls are different, with different wants, needs, and desires and yes, functions in society. Only women can be mothers, after all. It doesn’t get any more unique than that.
So what about men?
Obviously, men cannot be mothers, and that this is likely to be the most controversial statement in this post, which is a sad sign of the times.
Men have a different function that even all of our technology and modern ideologies and pieties can’t destroy, which is that of protector and provider. It was understood that this is why boys’ natural rowdiness and other instincts needed to be channeled into socially beneficial directions, just like how girls’ natural instincts needed to be channeled.
We’re still channeling now, but often into medication and being told to sit still. And as girls have been channeled into once-traditionally male spaces, it’s displaced boys, as boys, like men, neither have a similar incantation to invade the other sex’s spaces, nor are boys particularly welcome in women’s spaces. This is a phenomenon that has been going on since, what, the 1970s? And we still haven’t figured out any good solutions that don’t cause animosity between the sexes? I find this very disconcerting.4
I speak about the “men in women’s sports” only as an example of this: if women wanted to play in the NFL, men would be considered sexist pigs for being against it, but not if a trans woman wants to, say, join the LPGA or do UFC fighting against women. Naturally, for most people who are not professional athletes, this is seen mostly in fields like medicine, law, academia, and finance.
The same goes for entertainment. Boys don’t want boy Barbie. They want He-Man.
I Have the Power
Remember He-Man? The show, as nerds will tell you, was actually called Masters of the Universe . . . which is a bad-ass name. It conjures up images of power, mastery, conquest, all on an unimaginably large scale. I mean, the universe! And there are masters of it—plural! As in, more than one! Can I get in on the action too?5
The cartoon was developed to sell toys, fine, it was crass consumerism at its child-targeting finest. But toy company Mattel was keen to figure out what kids—in particular boys—wanted out of a toy line. Remember: girls had had the wildly successful Barbie doll for a few decades by the 1980s, and while boys had had toys like the original G.I. Joe, there was nothing like the runaway success of Barbie’s for the male-half of the toy-playing public. So Mattel did some research:
The first step to unlocking the power of success was to determine what children dreamed of most. So, Mattel turned to its marketing teams to conduct research and unlock the secrets of the 1980s child. Their marketing specialists pulled in children ranging from ages 5 through 10 and then presented images of various genres of heroes. With the choices of heroes like policemen, astronauts, fantasy fighters, and many more, the answer began to take shape.
At the same time, barbarians like Conan the Barbarian were becoming popular. While these characters were far from new, the genre was growing to prominence in the early 80s. Likewise, the children’s preference toward a barbarian fantasy fighter became evident in Mattel’s market research.
This research also taught Mattel that children loved the idea of having power and being in charge. Since these children often felt bossed around by their parents, they dreamed of having power for themselves. With this knowledge, Mattel knew that they needed a toy line that would inspire self-worth and empowerment. Moreover, the research taught Mattel that children loved knowing who was on the good side and who was bad.
Wouldn’t you know it, Mattel also put serious thought into making sure the accompanying advertisement/cartoon was actually good by employing talented writers; read more about that here. Suffice it to say, what did boys like? Distilled, I see three main points:
Mastery.
Control over their own destiny.
Beating the bad guys and saving the day.
Pretty simple stuff that had been a part of storytelling for millennia, but is moderns like to rediscover the past, don’t we?6
Some readers may notice that this list bears a striking similarity to what writer John Eldridge says all males want in his seminal work Wild at Heart:7
A battle to fight,
An adventure to live, and
A beauty to rescue.
Keep this third point in mind.8
Backwards in High Heels, Etc.
Life doesn’t have to be zero-sum. Elevating one group does not have to mean denigrating another. But we see that time and time again in both real life and our entertainment.
I don’t need to repost the statistics9 showing that females are outperforming males in school achievement, educational attainment, new jobs, and increasingly wages. We’re always told that this is a good thing, progress, and that any men issues are men’s fault and they need to step out of the way and let women take charge, because women are also just biologically, mentally, and emotionally better at all things required by the modern world10—every single one—yet men’s lack of achievement is also bad, not for men, but for women. Guys can’t win.
What does this have to do with anything? Glad you asked.
If you watch kid’s TV, much—no, not all, but a statistically significant portion—share many common features:
Female protagonists are the action heroes as well as the smart, driven ones. Also, they’re often depicted as being really, supernaturally good at everything, from inventing stuff to swordfighting and martial arts.
A male will be a sidekick at best, and a lazy, venal, entitled slob trying to skate his way through life at the worst.
The female protagonist has to teach the male character some lesson or another, either in nut-cuttingly humiliating fashion or in therapeutic HR-lady speak.
Male characters are allowed to be more competent if they’re not white, but only slightly, and race is a tangential issue here.
If a female character faces hardship, it’s never due to any character flaw, but from others, typically male, not seeing and believing in her inherent greatness. If a male character faces hardship, it’s nine-times-out-of-ten due to a character flaw, the aforementioned laziness, venality, entitlement, etc.
And lastly: NO ROMANCE WHATSOEVER.
Example: if a swashbuckling archeologist type shows up in a kid’s cartoon or show, and they’re female, they’ll be über-competent and accomplished. If it’s a male, he’ll be an obnoxious, arrogant jerk and a total fraud who gets his comeuppance at the hands of the protagonists, most likely the female one.
The same goes for sitcoms and other shows aimed at adults too. The term “sitcom dad” is a meme. As are the dads, and men generally, in commercials, especially if they’re white: depicted as total doofuses. What gets me is that America has zero concern for improving the lots of both men and women. We’re locked, by the powers-that-be, into a zero-sum game that nobody truly wins except for the powers-that-be.
You know I’m right. I know I’m right. Let’s move on.
What Works
The stories I remember resonating with me as a young boy weren’t always stories featuring young boys as the protagonists. I didn’t need a ten-year-old hero, nor did the hero have to be male, but I idenfitied more with male heroes.
I also, like most boys do, daydreamed about saving the day, even at great personal costs. In these daydreams, there was no coercing me to be a hero, or having to overcome my venal greed and laziness to be a hero, or having some sassy ballbreaker spur me into action—I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to, as Eldridge writes, prove that I had what it took.
And yes, I liked stories where there was some romance. Where there was romantic tension between the male character and a female character. Maybe they were rivals at something who grew closer. Maybe their shared adventures brought them closer. Maybe she didn’t reciprocate his advances, but he kept trying because he actually cared for her. Maybe it was a star-crossed love—the most dramatic kind—where all sorts of things got in the way. Whatever. The point is, I liked romance when I was younger and I still do. Boys are far more romantic than given credit for.11
But the end result isn’t that girls are icky and should never be anywhere near children’s entertainment or action/adventure stories. It’s that boys just like when male characters aren’t always borderline retarded, or arrogant snobs who need to be taken down a peg or three by some estrogen-fueled girlboss.
He-Man did the right thing because it was the right thing to do, and his love triangle with Teela and his own alter-ego, Prince Adam, created some rudimentary frisson. Batman, Zorro, Spider-Man . . . these characters were driven to help the innocent because it was the right thing to do and because they had the capacity to do it. On the video game front, and I’m really showing my age here, Link doesn’t save Zelda from Ganon because he’s sexist and she’s incapable, but because Zelda is the key to Ganon achieving ultimate power and only Link, who recovered the Triforce that she hid from Ganon before her capture, can stop him. And so on.
These weren’t reluctant heroes or slacker ne’er do wells who needed a swift high-heeled kick in the butt to do great things. They did great things because they needed to get done.
These are simple concepts that aren’t really difficult to pull off. I’d like to see more of them. The cartoons Big City Greens and Bluey hit a sweet spot, with an emphasis on the word “sweet.” I remember my son enjoying Ninjago, another toy commercial disguised as a TV show, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, both of which were shockingly well-written and 100 percent would have appealed to me when I was his age. It explains why comic books used to be like catnip for young boys—their intended audience—and aren’t attracting the same audience now that they’re just another bit of gray slop on the menu of adult entertainment.
This stuff matters because America has no high culture, and unless you’re a member of a dwindling minority, religion doesn’t matter. Pop culture is the only culture we’ve got, and these messages resonate, especially with kids, but also with adults.
Boys matter just as much as girls. It’d be nice to see entertainment geared towards boys’ tastes coexisting with entertainment geared towards girls’ tastes. Maybe there’s great new stuff out there that I’m missing. If there is, I’d love to hear all about it.
- Alexander
Thank you for reading. I am going to be crass and point out that I tried to adhere to these principles with my sci-fi trilogy, The Swordbringer. You can check it out on Amazon, and toss a few drachmas into the tip jar over at Buy Me A Coffee. Thank you and God bless.
Parents and grandparents of kids of my generation grew up in eras where you didn’t really need to worry about what was on children’s TV. It was nigh unfathomable that weirdos would push weird or political stuff onto your kids. We all know better now.
Spare me “Wokeness isn’t even a thing! You can’t define wokeness!” Shut up.
It’s obvious I might have missed something here or there.
We should be natural allies, but human nature being what it is, we allow ourselves to be pitted against each other. God knew this would happen but we did, and do, it anyway. Both misogyny and misandry are a waste of time and go against the Lord’s wishes.
The show has also been an unbelievably fertile wellspring of meme material.
Let me tell you, my son was about five when he discovered my old He-Man toys in the basement. He took an instant shining to them and their backstories, and got into the cartoon and the action figures. The whole He-Man aesthetic is perfect for boys.
Contra the haters of all things masculine, the “save the princess” trope of old video games is neither outdated nor sexist, but hard-coded into men. And thank God it is. We remove this impulse, and worse, punish boys and men for it, and wonder where chivalry went.
But here’s an article celebrating this phenomenon if you’re so inclined.
I heard this message from grade school all the way up to law school and business school.
On average, women are more pragmatic in mate-selection than men.
"...and as girls have been channeled into once-traditionally male spaces, it’s displaced boys, as boys, like men, neither have a similar incantation to invade the other sex’s spaces, nor are boys particularly welcome in women’s spaces." - what is also true, is that by and large, boys are not particularly interested in most women's spaces (male cheerleader discussion for later), so there's neither a push nor pull function going on there. But I will die on the hill of "Yes, there should be women's only spaces, but there must also be men's only spaces" - you ever notice that even conservative, Christian, right-leaning women choke on the second part a lot?
Not a new show, but the original Speed Racer hits a great sweet spot of adventure, heroism, romance, cartoon zaniness, and artistry. The show is a mood.