What’s Next for TV’s White Guys?
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 2 September 2021
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate TV critic Willa Paskin and Vulture staff writer Kathryn VanArendonk talk about the precarious position of white men on TV this summer. Their conversation, inspired by Kathryn’s recent piece in Vulture, TV's White Guys Are in Crisis, surveys the history of white men on TV, from the good-guy dad to the complex antihero, through to our current moment, where shows like Rutherford Falls and Kevin Can F**k Himself position their white guys as obstacles, and The White Lotus overtly asks, would we prefer white guys to disappear entirely? Willa and Kathryn get into it.
After the break, our hosts contrast these shows to their glaring exception, Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, which allows its white guy lead to be uncomplicatedly beloved. Is his charming take on progressive masculinity too good to be true?
For Slate Plus members, Willa and Kathryn contribute to our regular segment, Gateway Feminism, where they talk about one thing that helped make them feminists. For Willa, it’s the young adult series The Baby-Sitter’s Club, by Ann M. Martin, and for Kathryn it’s the Western TV drama Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
Recommendations
Kathryn recommends three things: Felco garden clippers, the Toniebox, and the TV series What We Do in the Shadows.
Willa thinks you should check out Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory.
Podcast production by Asha Saluja filling in for Cheyna Roth. Editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas.
Send your comments and thoughts about what The Waves should cover to thewaves@slate.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:03.6 | This is the waves. |
| 0:05.5 | This is the waves. |
| 0:06.6 | This is the waves. |
| 0:07.7 | This is the waves. |
| 0:08.4 | This is the waves. |
| 0:10.1 | This is the waves. |
| 0:14.1 | Welcome to the waves Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and today, anyway, white guys on television. |
| 0:23.5 | Every episode, you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing. We cannot get off our minds. |
| 0:27.9 | And today you have me, Slate's TV critic, and the host of the Decoder Ring podcast, Willa Paskin. |
| 0:32.9 | And me, Catherine Van Aerondog. I'm a features writer for Vulture and New York Magazine. |
| 0:36.9 | So we're going to try this episode to critique the position of white guys on television without |
| 0:44.1 | sort of repeating the problem that white guys on television currently present, which is that |
| 0:49.4 | they're not the point. And yet, they're the point. I want to dive in by talking about this great piece that Catherine wrote for Vulture about the crisis that white guys are going through on television right now. |
| 1:01.5 | Maybe it's like it's not really an emergency. |
| 1:03.7 | It's not so bad. |
| 1:05.2 | So white guys are still, of course, all over television as they are in the world. |
| 1:09.0 | But they are on television in a different way |
| 1:12.2 | and certainly in some new shows and they have been in the past. And you can see that in shows |
| 1:16.6 | like Peacock's sitcom Rutherford Falls, AMC's genre bending, Kevin can F himself, and the two |
| 1:22.8 | big hits of summer, HBO's Hotel Drama, The White Lotus, featuring a bevy of white guys who |
| 1:28.5 | are going to get into, and of course, Ted Lassow. Basically, the white guys who used to be TV's |
... |
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