“White men are nice… until they’re not.”
I have no idea where the quote above comes from. Perhaps it doesn’t come from any particular place at all. It’s just a sentence that feels like a quote because it’s so damn true.
The Boys is a new series on Amazon Prime based on a graphic novel of the same name (though notably based in the UK). Whether it was intended to be or not, Amazon’s adaptation is a full-blown meditation on the modern western male, specifically the white variety. It does this with a powerful contrast between the two leads, Hughie Campbell and Billy Butcher.
Hughie is the typical white millennial male who we can assume is of Irish derivation. He’s passive, indecisive, almost willfully unsuccessful, though funny and kind. He knows he is capable of more, but mustering up the courage to ask his perfectly reasonable boss for a well-deserved raise is just too hard. Certainly moving out of his dad’s apartment is way out of his league, even though his lovely girlfriend/fiance is en…