...watching boy-men find themselves funny for boys and other boy-men to find funny.
Cosigned. I've reached the point where I won't watch anything that relies on the buddy/bromance dynamic. And if at least one of the two main characters is a woman, it's definitely not a "bromance" for all of the reasons you state.
What's more, defining the deep affection and mutual dependence between partners as the purview of men reinforces the stupid "Women = Sex trope that's ruined so many otherwise promising stories.
In fact, the entertainment industry's adoption of the term "bromance" is, to my mind, a convenient sort of end run around the requirement (heternormatively speaking) for some kind of female presence in order to include a sexual/romantic element in the story.
Sex/romance is good! But women are annoying! Bromance preserves the one by leaning more and more heavily on what's coyly known as "subtext" and neatly discards the other without ever having to cross the line into (male) homosexual relationships.
no subject
Cosigned. I've reached the point where I won't watch anything that relies on the buddy/bromance dynamic. And if at least one of the two main characters is a woman, it's definitely not a "bromance" for all of the reasons you state.
What's more, defining the deep affection and mutual dependence between partners as the purview of men reinforces the stupid "Women = Sex trope that's ruined so many otherwise promising stories.
In fact, the entertainment industry's adoption of the term "bromance" is, to my mind, a convenient sort of end run around the requirement (heternormatively speaking) for some kind of female presence in order to include a sexual/romantic element in the story.
Sex/romance is good! But women are annoying! Bromance preserves the one by leaning more and more heavily on what's coyly known as "subtext" and neatly discards the other without ever having to cross the line into (male) homosexual relationships.
See also: brogrammer.
Shorter: What You Said
/rant