The BROODERS

From Sinatra to Staples, here are 21 of the world’s most broodingest baritones who have burrowed their way into our hearts.

Here at the Scenester we like to spare a thought for the lovelorn, especially in the lead up to Valentine’s Day. After all, without the despair and despondency of heartbreak, where would half of our musical catalogue come from? It is in this spirit of solidarity, that we turn with fondness to the men who through the years have loved misery and given us company in moments of solitary sadness. May their brooding, baritone voices offer warmth to those who find themselves in a similar state in this supposedly festive season.

And Man Swooned

I've been reading a lot of Jane Austen lately, and the notion of young heroines using their beguiling manners to make a "conquest" which in those days simply meant a young, eligible bachelor falling madly and deeply, head over heels in love has been around since the Victorian era. Proust makes use of the term as well.

The "marriage plot" made popular by Ms Austin's novels was something that the women's movement was supposed to have retired long ago (hat tip to Jeffrey Eugenides). That the whole purpose of a woman's existence was to marry well was supplanted by feminism. Unfortunately, it's not the women who seem hooked on that notion in today's world, but the men. 

Why do nice guys finish last?

The question contained in the title is a recurring theme in the films of Whit Stillman, which are largely autobiographical. With the release of Damsels in Distress (covered in these articles by The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker) late last year after a thirteen year hiatus, it seemed befitting to relive some of the most memorable moments from his previous work. Even the initial sampler to Damsels, which can be viewed here, demonstrates the actual "problem" of female attraction to the dark male character. By reviewing what went before, we can probably shed some light on the topic at hand.

In this first clip taken from the Oscar-nominated Metropolitan (1990), we can get a flavor for Stillman's comedy of manners. As Nick Pinkerton in The Village Voice put it,  the film presents us with

the milieu of its writer-director—Preppie, Yuppie, Urban Haute Bourgeoisie—and treated it, not as something to be pilloried or taken for granted, but as a suitable subject for his characters' study, even defense ... It applied the emotional delicacy of the 19th-century courtship novel to the sexual revolution's aftermath—for Stillman, something more ambiguous and disorienting than the accepted version of escape from barren, pre-orgasmic Puritanism.

This is a luv thing...or is it?

An old conversation gets refreshed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, love is a-many-splendored-thing and all that jazz. Love sucks, but we all fell for it like suckers. Even our old dear friend Candido Apokalyps who back in The Scenester’s fourth issue declared that “coupling was the recluse of the ignorant” and “for chrissake don’t insist that we do it for love period!” wound up eating his words. The last we heard he was exiled to the burbs somewhere driving a wagon with three kids in tow. That’s irony for you.

It might be a generational thing. As the old axiom goes, “a man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart; a man who is still a socialist at 40 either has no head or pays no taxes”, so it might be with love and marriage. But, having reached the mature age of the mid-life crisis kind, what lessons if any has life taught us, dear scenesters? Are there any nuggets of truth that can be picked up from having walked the earth a bit longer than your typical young adult? Apart from acquiring a beer gut, love handles, man boobs, and grey hair, is there any wisdom to be imparted from one generation to the next?