Succession and On Cinema combat toxic masculinity

This should be a growing season for Tim Heidecker About cinema in the cinema. With subscriptions financed by the HEI network and supported by his loving wife Toni, Heidecker unveiled one huge plan after another – there were Hei Points, which Heidecker described as “the US dollar 2.0”, Hei-lot season, in which his various friends make pilots for the network, and perhaps the grandest of them all, the Hei Ranch, which currently comprises 25 acres of sand but will be a fully functioning company on a 10-year plan.

Over time, Tim’s plans are ruined. Until the last episode of the season, supposedly a review of American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story, Tim is a sprawling mess that can barely put two words together. Even the only light in his life, a recent appearance by his late doctor that Tim believes is an angel, has stopped visiting.

Stone by stone, In the cinema Viewers watch Tim’s life being destroyed for reasons both within and beyond his control. It’s a decline this year only surpassed by one other accomplishment: Jeremy Strong’s Kendall Roy on Succession.

Heidecker mocks variants of masculinity In the cinema for years between a vengeful king like Logan Roy of Brian Cox and a righteous, crazy, eternal loser like Kendall. Between the two shows, a vicious rating of masculinity shines through at the heart of the American media.

At first glance, the shows may not have much in common. Succession is the definition of Prestige TV, an HBO show with big budgets for expensive wardrobes, the Twitter (Shiv’s blue dress!) It deals with the life of the Roys, zero-point-zero-zero-one-percent that one Run an empire made up of everything from cable news to theme parks to cruise lines.

In the cinema actually started much more modestly, as a podcast between Heidecker and Gregg Turkington, both of whom play twisted versions of themselves in an alleged film review show. Once partially funded by Adult Swim and a Patreon, In the cinema is now fully funded by crowdfunding. And the basic premise of the show is simple: one of the presenters, Tim, doesn’t really care about movies, while the other, Gregg, is only interested in movies. As a result, the two have developed a complex mythology with quacks, a deadly EDM festival and two Italians who love rock and roll.

The plots of In the cinema Often revolving around Tim’s various plans, ranging from alternative medical vaping to founding the rock group Dekkar. But if the University network emerged, the comedy focused on a new destination: Joe Rogan, NewsmaxTV, OANN and the growing number of right echo chambers. As a trader eager to sell his own currency and health shake, Heidecker, the character, wants to undress his audience for every last dollar with a song and a smile.

The show starts anew every season, so to speak, with Heidecker adopting new forms of masculinity in its changing forms. There’s one season Tim moves to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and embraces motorcycling, the simple life, and the pro-life – until his partner has an abortion and he realizes that his Jackson Hole friends were white racists.

Tim becomes a rock guy and forms a band with the Italians Axion and Manuel Dekkar, which eventually turns into an EDM act called DKR. He becomes an entrepreneur and opens a cinema called Six Bags Cinema. He founds the Electric Sun Desert Music Festival, where children die. He’s running a Trumpian for the district attorney. Each of these trips ends in total shame, only to find it sink lower and in turn come out with a brand new messianic high.

Where In the cinema is scattered, Succession is direct. It’s an association of families with media empires, but most clearly it’s the Murdochs of Fox. Her fictional network ATN is clearly a parody of Fox News, with jokes about aging viewers and news anchors enraged at the abandon culture; one of this season best jokes takes place in the opening credits, with a message chyron that reads: “I smiled at you at the photocopier – now I’m facing chemical castration.”

Logan is just trying to conquer, which is easy enough if you are willing to follow suit Mr. Burns’ advice: “Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you have to kill if you are to be successful in business. ”Add that you are ignoring a massive sexual abuse scandal in the cruise line. Kendall tries to rule through a mixture of fear and love and ends up getting neither. It’s no surprise they ruined their relationship and yet they are stuck together, just like the host of a movie review show and the only movie buff he knows.

The two shows started with the same question: what is at the heart of the people who make some of the most popular media outlets today? Your answers include delusions, anger, and a growing isolation from everyone you love. Therapists for Billionaires has confirmed that Succession Hits nearby, and right-wing streamers passed the year Push deworming for horses as a COVID cure. Satire isn’t far from reality in either of the shows.

But while the waking nightmare of modern life has no real ending in 2021, the narrative insists on it. Jesse Armstrong, Succession‘s Schöpfer and Tim Heidecker seem to agree: if these things end, they will end badly. SuccessionThe brutal finale highlighted the hopes of the three main Roy children decimated by one of their spouses, you name it Successor III: Rise of the Wambsgans. Despite their respective horrors, it was hard not to feel sorry for the cruel Shiv, the creeping fascist novel, and the selfish Kendall.

In In the cinema, Heidecker moves seamlessly between the perpetrator and the abused. Mark Proksch (better known today as What we do in the shadows outstanding Colin Robinson) spends season after season the victim of Tim’s physical and verbal abuse – at one point during a trial, Tim declares, “I have the right to hit you!” He regularly destroys Gregg’s collection of VHS tapes, either by magnetization or arson .

“I grew up near car dealerships in Pennsylvania, these German, stoic men of the WWII generation, serious men, and the manliness was very strong and there were just boring tendencies to watch sports and drink beer,” said Heidecker The believer in 2019. “I’ve seen everything around me. Downtrodden men get very angry. ”While staring at Twitter and stock prices instead of sports, the men perk up Succession are not much different.

All Tim is missing is the Roys’ endless money. If only he could get so rich, if everyone converted their dollars into Hei Points, he believes he would be fine. But Kendall and Logan show what a lie that would be. If you definitely want to conquer, then the world looks like a permanent battlefield. When Kendall rightly points out to Logan that he doesn’t need the money from the Waystar sale, Logan agrees. Except that it doesn’t matter. Only the next victory is important.

The question hovers over Tim, Gregg, the Roys and anyone unlucky enough to be drawn into their circles – why can’t they leave? Why do they insist on hating the people who are closest to them, accepting the worst aspects of their humanity for money they don’t even need to do a show about movies where they don’t even talk about movies?

The closest thing to an answer is that they don’t know anything else. They somehow started making money like that and can’t stop now because the fall would be even worse than anything in front of them. So you have convinced yourself that this is a real way to go. All they can do, all they want to do, all they have to do, is what they have done over and over again.