"Hollywood's Other Obsession: Blond Bad Guys:"

"Hollywood's Other Obsession: Blond Bad Guys:" My new VDARE.com column is up:

Exactly why Hollywood hates blond men almost as much as it loves blond women is not clear... This prejudice against blond men would seem to be on a collision course with the tendency of movie moguls, such as Steven Spielberg, to marry blonde women, such as Kate Capshaw. This means the industry's hereditary elite will tend to become blonder over the generations. No doubt it will cause no end of father-son conflicts, keeping Beverly Hills psychiatrists prosperous for the rest of the century. [More]

And who can forget "Lethal Weapon II" where the bad guys were Afrikaaner drug smugglers in the South African embassy? Fortunately, Mel Gibson seduced the beautiful blonde Boer babe away from dark side.

My all-time favorite blond bad guy is Gary Busey's Mr. Joshua in the original "Lethal Weapon." Busey has had a two-role career: Buddy Holly and Mr. Joshua, which shows a fair amount of range, but he hasn't made much of a mark in anything else. Of course, falling off a motorcycle onto his head hasn't helped.

A reader asks:

How far back does the blond bad guy motif go? Is it left over from WWII and the SS? Or were they doing this in the early 1930's as well? It would be kind of interesting if Hollywood was still doing its part to win the war against the Nazis.

But I would imagine that it is simply the flip side of your other article. If the leading lady has to be pale and blonde, and the hero has to be darker, well the villain has to stand out. We would not want the audience to pull a brain muscle in the theater.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer