The Northern Light

CBS' new series "Love Monkey" is "Sex in the City" with a few mutations and one X chromosome traded in for a Y. The show follows Tom, an Indie-record label hipster. The first-person narration of the modern search for love by a single New Yorker in his early 30s and three same-gender friends is a familiar species.

"Love Monkey" is fashioned from the rib, but not cloned. Watching "Sex in the City" rarely felt like sitting through a lecture about how men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Watching "Love Monkey" often does.

Bran, Tom's best female friend, insists, "A woman saying she doesn't believe in marriage is like a guy saying he's not into sex," and, "For a woman, now is the future. Too late is just around the corner."

Although the Census Bureau records increasing numbers of women choosing to stay unmarried every decade, Bran believes that every now and future uterus comes equipped with a panic button that automatically goes off at age thirty.

To be fair, "Sex in the City" had less need to enforce gender roles. There's nothing radical about females getting together and talking about relationships. "Love Monkey" contains the implicit belief that a group of males congregating to do the same raises a specter of undermined masculinity. Putting this ghost to rest consumes much of the script's effort.

"Love Monkey" employs multiple strategies in this direction, the most obvious being the script's repetition of sexist stereotypes. This re-entrenches a gender line that is otherwise obscured by the male characters' display of a traditionally feminine behavior (gabbing about love life). In tandem with this strategy is one that keeps the male characters safely distant from anything female by having them ridicule feminine behavior. These are both straightforward examples of shoring up a threatened masculinity by resorting to misogyny.

The third strategy for salvaging the main characters' dude-ness relies on two of our cultural archetypes: that of the libidinous, misogynistic black male and the emotionally aware female.

Many commentators have noted that black hip-hop artists are the conduits through which white male consumers express violent and sexist fantasies. Hip-hop's largest consumer base never appears responsible for its own desires, which are socially ascribed to black males.

"Love Monkey's" gang of friends consists of three white males: Tom, the main character, Jake and Mike; and one black male, Shooter. Like "Sex in the City's" Samantha, Shooter is promiscuous. Unlike her, he is an archetype responsible for enforcing gender roles. Whereas Samantha owned her behavior, Shooter explains his as a consequence of being male. His theories on the biological inevitability of men's promiscuity and objectification of women tend to exonerate all the males on the show, but they are only spoken by Shooter. The white male characters (and audience) benefit from the misogynistic ideas that are inserted into the show by the black male character, but only he appears responsible for them.

Bran also shares Shooter's task of enforcing gender roles. She functions as Tom's emotional processor, saving him from performing this traditionally female work. Bran perceives and verbalizes Tom's feelings for him. To secure her position, Bran expresses notions of strict gender difference while reminding Tom that he isn't very good at navigating romantic relationships.

"Love Monkey" distinguishes itself from its fore-mother more creatively when it comes to Tom's job, which is used to various levels of detriment and success. The show stumbles on the issue of Wayne, a young singer-songwriter who is Tom's latest project. Expert recommendation from Tom and popular recommendation from Wayne's television audiences both characterize Wayne's music as great. The emperor's clothes trick doesn't help Wayne. His sound is plainly mediocre and imitative, not brilliant and ground-breaking.

One successful use of Tom's employment in the music industry is the exploration of an issue unique to "Love Monkey's" demographic: the phenomenon of the extended adolescence. Many of us wait to have kids or won't ever have any. We use our extended adolescence to screw around, but we're afforded more time to figure out who we are and what we want. We need charisma and creativity to survive in our fast-paced urban communities. We're sandwiched between an older generation of "suits" and a younger generation of teeny-boppers, and must define ourselves against both. Tom's career especially suits him to confront these challenges. With the aid of complementary characters, he does so with intelligence and honesty.

"Love Monkey" represents a new phase of masculine identity in which men are allowed to talk together about relationships. However, it relies on regressive cultural archetypes and ideas in order to gain this new ground as it protects a privileged white male identity from vulnerability. As the show explores what adulthood means for Americans in their 20s and 30s, maybe it could develop an independence from racist and sexist stereotypes along the way.

Now that would be really clever.

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