I wanted to take a moment to honor beloved character actor Dabney Coleman, who owned his slice of terrain so completely he became a “type”. You can’t get Dabney Coleman? Well then you want his type, someone who can do what he did, even though nobody could really do what he did. He was such an effective prick. Coming up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, he “hit” at the right moment. The world was changing, social mores in a huge shift, and there was a lot of confusion. What were people’s roles in the new regime? How do you make sense of it all if your place in the hierarchy wasn’t set in stone through tradition? Coleman often played limited men, who seethed with barely controlled rage about losing their spot, what we would call “privilege” now (even though the word is so over-used it probably should be retired. It’s what Robert Lifton called a “thought-terminating cliche”.) Coleman understood men like this. He embodied resentful men who couldn’t stand the new era, hostile men who couldn’t hide their hostility.
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