Smile please

There are no lead paragraphs in the future. I've been laughing, manically, at that advert there on the left since I saw it. I seem to remember starting other pieces with similar words, but then I laugh manically a lot these days.

Look at them. Ooh, ooh, tough. Grrrr. They would kick your head off as soon as look at you. If they ever read this they will have to come to kill me for laughing at them. It's what a man has to do. Why does Butler have one eye bulging bigger than the other? Is he taking it up the shitter from someone whose penis curves very far to the left? More importantly, what does it say about a world gone wrong that this image is considered attractive enough to lure people into a cinema? By people who may be presumed to know, although I have my doubts about that: such images may be the reason a growing number of people including myself haven't been to the cinema in years.

I would not make myself out a snob, or not all the time. Guns! Explosions! Cars! Swords! Girls in bikinis! These on a poster would get me into a cinema, in a certain mood, or would have done before a series of tragic letdowns taught me that without a good script it is possible to mess up even with these magic ingredients. But there's something wrong if two men scowling at you tells you all you need to know. 'Hurrr! I will watch themmm. They will scowl at meee. They are hard mens.' We appear to have reverted to ... in public debates in olden days Florence, the demagogue who pulled the most frightening faces became the leader; Mussolini may have later tapped into this.

They are not hard mens. They are wimps. They are insecure little boys' ideas of hard mens. Almost by definition, anyone who feels the need to look tough is afraid.

What happened to carefree insouciance, devil-may-care buccaneering? To smiles and laughter? Whatever happened to charm?