Traditionally, males are supposed to be bolder than females.  Girls can go along, following the rules and being general goody-goodies, but boys are expected to be a little more ornery, a little less willing to accept outside authority, a little more inclined to assert their own way.

Today’s movies and TV shows carry forward some elements of this tradition, but the figures that males get to identify with these days aren’t so much bold or independent or self-reliant as they are crude and gross and childish.  They belch freely;  they’re outrageously self-centered;  it’s okay for them to lie or cheat, so long as they do it with childlike ineptitude.

This is the kind of material that people are almost inevitably going to end up choosing, in a consumer-oriented society where the main way that people are allowed to feel they matter is through indulgence of their idful impulses.

It’s also relatively easy for most guys to identify with, in an age of devalued manhood.  They can recognize themselves, laugh about their predicament, and realize it’s not entirely due to personal shortcomings on their part.

And if today’s males get a little angrier and less inclined toward self-mockery, there are video games like Grand Theft Auto that enable them to vicariously take off on mindlessly idful testerone-fueled rampages.