Succession and On Cinema tackle toxic masculinity

Tim Heidecker hoped this would be a period of growth. The Cinema: Cinemas. With subscriptions funded by the HEI Network, and supported by his loving wife Toni, Heidecker unveiled one tremendous plan after another — there were Hei Points, which Heidecker described as “the U.S dollar 2.0,” Hei-lot Season, in which his various friends make pilots to run on the network, and perhaps most grandiose of all, the Hei Ranch, which at the moment is 25 acres of sand but will, after a 10-year plan, be a fully functioning society.

Over time, Tim’s plans are wrecked. By the season’s last episode, ostensibly a review of American Underdog: The Kurt Warner StoryTim can barely put two words together and is an incoherent mess. Tim believes that the angel-like appearance of his deceased doctor has been his only source of light.

Brick by brick Cinema viewers watch Tim’s life get destroyed for reasons that are both within and outside of his control. It’s a downfall matched only by one other performance this year: Jeremy Strong’s Kendall Roy on Succession.

Heidecker has been mocking masculinity in a variety of ways. Cinema for years now, moving between being a vindictive king like Brian Cox’s Logan Roy and a righteous, crazed, eternal loser like Kendall. The two programs are a brutal assessment of American masculinity.

The shows may not seem to have much in common at first glance. Succession is the definition of prestige TV, an HBO show filled with big budgets for expensive wardrobes that set Twitter flying (Shiv’s blue dress!) . and remote locales. Kara Swisher hosts a podcast. It concerns itself with the lives of the Roys, zero-point-zero-zero-one-percenters who run an empire consisting of everything from cable news to theme parks to cruise ships.

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Cinema actually started much more modestly, as a podcast between Heidecker and Gregg Turkington, both of whom play twisted versions of themselves on what’s ostensibly a movie review show. Adult Swim funded part of the show partially through Patreon. CinemaThe show is entirely funded by crowd funding. And the basic premise of the show is simple: one of the hosts, Tim, doesn’t really care about movies, while the other, Gregg, only cares about movies. This has led to a complex mythology between the hosts, which includes two quack doctors as well as a terrifying EDM festival and two Italian rock-and-roll lovers.

You can find plots in Cinema often revolve around Tim’s various schemes, which range from alternative medicinal vaping to starting the rock group Dekkar. The comedy shifted to a new audience when the HEI Network was created. Joe Rogan and NewsmaxTV were added, as well OANN and a growing number of right-wing echo chambers. Heidecker, a huckster who wants to make his currency and sell his health products, is determined to get every dollar from his customers with just a song or a smile.

The show reboots itself to some extent every season, with Heidecker taking on new forms of masculinity in it’s every changing shapes. There’s a season where Tim moves to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and embraces riding a motorcycle, simple living, and being pro-life — until his partner has an abortion and he realizes his Jackson Hole friends were white supremacists.

Tim starts a band, with Manuel and Axion, who later transform into DKR. Six Bags Cinema is his first venture, and he becomes an entrepreneur. Electric Sun Desert Music Festival was created by him. Trumpian run for District Attorney. He ends each of these trips in total disgrace only to sink lower and then rise again with a new messianic high.

HEI Network

Where Cinema You can find it scattered. Succession is direct. It’s an amalgamation of families with media empires, but it’s most clearly the Murdochs of Fox. Their fictional network, ATN, is clearly a parody of Fox News, with jokes about aging viewers and news anchors getting into a rage about cancel culture; one of this season’s best jokes takes place in the opening credits, with a news chyron reading, “I smiled her by the photocopier — now I’m facing chemical castration.”

Logan seeks only to conquer, which is easy enough if you’re willing to follow Mr. Burns’ advice: “Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.” Add ignoring a massive sexual abuse scandal in the cruise division. Kendall wants to be a ruler through a combination of love and fear, but ends up with neither. It’s no surprise they’ve destroyed their relationship, and yet they’re stuck with each other, just like the host of a movie review show and the only film buff he knows.

The two shows began working the same question — what is at the heart of people making some of the most popular media today? The answers they gave were delusion, anger, and isolation from all those we love. Therapists working with billionaires confirmed this. Succession Right-wing streamers made a lot of noise advocating horse dewormer for COVID. Satire isn’t far from reality in either show.

But while there’s no real end to the waking nightmare of modern life in 2021, narrative insists on one. Jesse Armstrong, Succession’s creator, and Tim Heidecker seem to agree on this much: if these things end, they will end poorly. Succession’s brutal finale showed the hopes of the three main Roy children decimated by one of their spouses, call it Succession III – Rise of the Wambsgans. It was difficult not to feel sympathy, despite their respective terriblenesses, for the cruel Shiv and creeping fascist Roman and the egotistical Kendall.

CinemaHeidecker seamlessly switches between abusers and abused. Mark Proksch (also known by his alias Mark Proksch) is a well-known abuser and victim. The Shadows: What Do We Do? standout Colin Robinson) spends season after season as a victim of Tim’s physical and verbal abuse — at one point Tim declares during a trial “I have a right to strike you!” He regularly destroys Gregg’s collection of VHS tapes, either through magnetization or arson.

“I grew up in Pennsylvania around car dealers, these German, stoic, World War II–generation men, serious men, and masculinity was very strong, and there was not much but boring tendencies to watch sports and drink beer,” Heidecker told The Believer 2019 “I saw it all around me. Repressed men get very angry.” While they stare at Twitter and stock prices instead of sports, the men on Succession aren’t much different.

All Tim lacks is the Roys’ never-ending font of money. He thinks he’d be content if he could get so rich, and if everyone converted their Hei Points into dollars, it would make him very happy. However, Logan and Kendall show how false that is. If you’re set on conquering no matter what, then the world looks like a permanent battlefield. Logan accepts Kendall’s rightful point that Logan doesn’t need the Waystar money. Except that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the next win is.

The question hanging over Tim, Gregg, the Roys, and everyone unfortunate enough to be dragged into their circles — why can’t they leave? Why do they insist on hating the people closest to them, to embracing the worst aspects of their humanity for money they don’t even need, to making 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 this and can’t stop now, because the fall would be even worse than anything in front of them. So they’ve convinced themselves this is one true way. All they can do, all they want do, all they must do, is whatever they’ve done over and over again.