Cultural Divide

While driving today, I listened to the PBS program "Fresh Air" and heard the insipid Terry Gross interviewing Chris O'Dowd relative to his role in " Girls."

Prologue:

I like Chris O'Dowd or at least I like him in the roles I've seen him play, and I've never watched "Girls." "Fresh Air" gets very good guests, and I think Terry Gross is a pretty good interviewer. However, the minute she inserts her personal take on things into an interview, I recoil (as I would with any professional interviewer, and especially such a left winger as Gross).

What befuddled me with this interview was their discussion around a scene in the series, where O'Dowd's character goes off on two girls after they seemingly promise him a 3-Way and then spill wine on his expensive rug and laugh about it.

They played his part of the scene and a little of the 2 Girl's reaction.

My befuddlement arose from the fact that Gross and O'Dowd took it for granted that the O'Dowd character was being a jerk.

From my perspective it was anything but.

You'll have to listen to his rant yourself but the gist of it was that he was a hardworking man who pulled himself up from meager means and had had it with privileged girls who took hard work for granted because their Daddies paid for everything, including plastic surgery, and thought it was fun to tease a guy and ruin his rug.

While he might have been a jerk for thinking he was in for a 3 Way, what he went off on wasn't the rant of a jerk, and yet both Gross and Dodd thought it was.

At first I thought this might be a generational divide rather than a cultural one but O'Dowd is 35 and Terry Gross is 63 and older than me.

Now I appreciate that mentally and emotionally, actors are probably 10 years younger than their calendar ages, and that Gross is, undoubtedly, desperate to remain hip, but this isn't a generational issue.

I'm afraid I can't recall the exact response of the 2 Girls but it was smarmy and dismissive, to say the least.

Again, I've not watched this show and perhaps that's because it seems to be such a hit among people who I generally find vapid, and I know nothing more about O'Dowd's character then what was revealed in the clip, but why is someone a jerk for calling out the shallowness of two privileged girls?

I understand Judd Aptow is the producer of the series (The same guy who is getting **** from "feminists" because of the Elliott Rogers killing spree) and I suspect that he didn't think the rant was the tirade of a jerk.

I'm hardly a prude and the 3 Way element of the scene is totally immaterial. The character may, indeed, be a jerk, but not based on the sentiments he expressed in his rant.

I'm assuming it is a cultural divide because I can't even imagine how someone would find fault with the substance of the guy's argument.