The Myth of Eternal Youth

I've discussed before the mythology of the incompetent male which seems to plague modern cultural media, and it is interesting to see this series of links [via Metafilter] on the current trend in Hollywood movies to display the male rejection of adulthood.

"The center of attention is usually a guy, his buddies and his toys. He will, most of the time, be nudged toward responsibility, forgiven for his quirks and nurtured in his needs and neuroses by a woman who represents an ideal amalgam of supermodel and mom."

What is interesting to me is that this is not an entirely new trend in cultural longing, and that the desire to be eternally young and the glorification of incompetence seem to go hand in hand, attested to by the thankfully concluding reign of the village idiot. However, as any good myth-theorist could tell you, in order to understand what these kind of myth trends mean one has to look at who benefits by them, which in this case clearly seems to be all the corporations selling expensive gadgets, ie: toys, to American consumers. By telling people to be young and stupid, they are more likely to sell their products.