The term "bromance" is so 13 years ago

I think of Filmspotting as generally being a pretty shrewd podcast in its attitudes and attempts to stay current. However, it's hosted by two old guys like me -- within two years of my age, in any case. They/we don't always get things right.

But I was still surprised to see them miss by as much as they did this past week.

In reviewing the new Martin McDonagh film The Banshees of Inisherin, which doesn't open here until Boxing Day, Adam and Josh selected a top five tie-in of "best movie bromances."

Is it 2009 all over again?

I say 2009 because that's when I wrote this post about I Love You, Man, which had just come out. The second paragraph of the post starts out with the words "The word 'bromance' has been thrown around so much lately that we're all pretty much sick of it." Even then, when this cutesy term was in its relative infancy, I was already over it. Though I did acknowledge that I Love You, Man was a perfect encapsulation of what they were going for with the term.

As a good sign of society's development and tendency to become more woke, I haven't heard the term "bromance" a lot in the past five to ten years. Teasing men about their level of affection for other men hardly seems like the right comedic target in a time of increasing awareness of the spectrum of sexuality and where any one person falls on it. What if this person you are calling part of a "bromance" is, actually, sexually attracted to the other person? Not so easy to make fun of then, right?

But even if the 2022 usage of the term wasn't tone deaf, they didn't get it right.

Some of the picks they went on to reveal were not too far off. For example, I liked Josh's inclusion of the leads from RRR, who do indeed meet and become quite taken with one another in the course of the narrative, and even have a great Bollywood dance during a moment of heightened mutual regard. 

But then there were the picks like the leads in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who as far as I recall have been partners for years. They do not meet within the course of the narrative, as do the characters in RRR and I Love You, Man. 

I suppose at this point I should define my terms a bit. To the extent that it means anything, the term "bromance" suggests newness, the sort of infatuation you have toward a person of either gender when you first meet them and just think they're really cool. It also implies a bit of a nervousness about potentially screwing it up.

To take the "b" off the front of the word, if you say "We had a romance," you are talking about a specific period of time that either collapsed or blossomed into something long-term. By the time it gets to long term, though, you don't call it a romance anymore. Lovely as she is, I don't say I have a "romance" with my wife. We had a romance in 2005, and then it blossomed into the marriage that it is today.

A "bromance" is not something that lasts a lifetime. My two best friends, whom I have known since the 1970s, are not people I have a "bromance" with. Those are lifelong friendships. "Bromance" cheapens what we have not only by teasing it and making us feel like we should be embarrassed about it, but by suggesting it's based on the same sort of infatuation as love at first sight. If it was indeed based on that sort of infatuation, it happened over 40 years ago and is ancient history at this point. 

So if Filmspotting really wanted to do a top five best male friendships in the movies, they should have just called it that -- but then they'd also have to know the sheer quantity of choices that would present them. "Bromance," even as a dated term, at least does the work of whittling down your field of contenders to only movies where the characters meet within the narrative and develop a fast, potentially vulnerable bond.

If they'd committed just one of these sins -- used the term but used it correctly, or not used the term but had a ridiculous number of resulting choices -- I probably wouldn't be writing this post. But both? Well, I couldn't stay quiet.

The timing, I must say, is also curious. Instead of tying it in with The Banshees of Inisherin, they could have tied it in with Bros, the lexicographical similarity to which could not have escaped them. But of course that wouldn't work because you wouldn't dare belittle an actual romance between two men by calling it a "bromance." The term is heteronormative in the extreme. 

If the faulty tie-in between Bros and the word "bromance" occurred to them at all, which I have to imagine it did, it should have also signalled that it was the wrong time to resurrect a term that never should have achieved such pop culture prominence in the first place.