Revenge of the dorks

Traditionally, a man in a movie has been portrayed as a hyper-masculine archetypical male, who, at the last possible moment, darts onscreen to save the day and then saves his love from near-certain demise, all the while looking impossibly handsome and glossy.

Sure, this is attractive, but in the way Britney Spears in her new music video is attractive: It works in fantasy world, but would never work in real life.

Recently, there has been a surge of lovable dorks in the media.

Michael Cera has built a career on it, and whose heart doesn’t just break for those “Beauty and the Geek” guys? It’s not really a secret anymore: Chicks dig geeks. (That’s not to say guys don’t love geeks – we just don’t see that quite as often.)

All right, I’ll admit it, this column was inspired by my personal love for Mr. Cera, but when we really look deeper into the trend, it’s true.

Maybe it’s the fact that people are getting more and more cynical. Maybe it’s just the fact that we as a society are ready for a change, but the popularity of dorks is something that cannot be denied.

And Cera isn’t the only guy out there milking his dorkiness. Superbad was based on three characters who are irreversibly dorky but somehow end up getting their girls, and there wasn’t a moment that I loved any guy more than when Christopher Mintz-Plasse uttered that infamous, “I am McLovin” line. Genius.

And let’s not forget the “Beauty and the Geek” guys.

It’s no coincidence that almost every season there is a least one romance on the show. Even those girls who could (theoretically) get any guy they wanted end up with the geeky guys.

Sure, there might be some underlying reasons – daddy issues, etc. – these girls have, but I’d like to think it’s because they just like those lovably dorky guys.

Who could forget Steve Carell as the perfect dork in The 40-Year-Old Virgin? All of those action figures, the bike with the mirrors and the fact that your heart ached until the very end: again, genius. He is the perfect dork.

I don’t know what it is, but dorks are suddenly en vogue these days. Maybe it’s just the ’80s rearing its shoulder-padded head again. And to go along with American Apparel’s inexplicably lame bodysuits, we see Anthony Michael Hall’s geek being reincarnated as well.

Oh well, whatever the reason for the current popularity of dorks, I’m pretty sure it’s here to stay. And that’s fine by me.