How Brendan Fraser invented the modern himbo | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

How Bren­dan Fras­er invent­ed the mod­ern himbo

30 Mar 2021

Words by Anna Bogutskaya

Close-up image of a man with curly hair wearing a patterned shirt.
Close-up image of a man with curly hair wearing a patterned shirt.
His per­for­mances in Enci­no Man, George of the Jun­gle and Blast from the Past set the blue­print for the buff, unthreat­en­ing lead­ing man.

I have been wait­ing for the Bre­nais­sance (or Frasers­sance, the nomen­cla­ture is fuzzy) to hap­pen since 2006, when I ordered a US import DVD of Enci­no Man (known as Cal­i­for­nia Man in the UK) because it was the one Bren­dan Fras­er film I had not seen. Please under­stand, the lev­el of my devo­tion to Fras­er is such that I paid actu­al mon­ey to own a film star­ring Pauly Shore (I still have the DVD, by the way).

Now, with an upcom­ing role in the next Dar­ren Aronof­sky film and a sud­den resur­gence of Fras­er Appre­ci­a­tion on Twit­ter, it’s time to pay respect to the man who cre­at­ed the blue­print for the mod­ern himbo.

Released in 1992, Enci­no Man was the first in what I’ve chris­tened Fraser’s Him­bo Tril­o­gy. It was only his sec­ond film role, his first lead­ing one, and it would cement his on-screen per­sona for years to come: that of a sim­ple hunk who is unaware of his own buff­ness, deliv­ered into a mod­ern world with­out an ounce of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty in him, all goofy and wide-eyed and open to all the excit­ing things soci­ety has to offer to a beau­ti­ful man.

A him­bo (the male ver­sion of the gen­dered term bim­bo’) is a famil­iar trope in film and tele­vi­sion. The term was coined by jour­nal­ist Rita Kem­p­ley in her 1988 Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle, describ­ing a lov­able hunk with­out a lick of com­mon sense. The him­bo is defined by his con­ven­tion­al attrac­tive­ness, his buf­foon­ery and, above all, his lack of tox­i­c­i­ty. Where­as the bim­bo’ trope is under­pinned by misog­y­ny, the him­bo is an anti­dote to the aggres­sive machis­mo and bicep mania that dom­i­nat­ed Hol­ly­wood movies in the 80s and 90s (we could argue that Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Bal­boa is the ori­gin of both of these tropes but that’s an arti­cle for anoth­er day).

In the ear­ly 90s the him­bo was more com­mon­ly referred to as a love­able klutz’, a char­ac­ter­is­tic which became key to Fraser’s appeal as he rose to star­dom. Fras­er per­fect­ed his him­bo per­sona in 1997’s George of the Jun­gle, in which he plays the tit­u­lar George, a man raised by intel­lec­tu­al apes in a jun­gle after his par­ents died in a plane crash. George is a comedic twist on Tarzan – except that the apes here talk, and there is not even an ounce of attempt­ed grit­ti­ness to be found anywhere.

Two people, a shirtless man with long hair and a woman in a white shirt, standing outdoors near a waterfall.

George’s main char­ac­ter flaw is that he slams into things when get­ting about on slings. When explor­er Ursu­la (Leslie Mann) brings George to New York City he is ogled by women every­where he goes. Fras­er can cheek­i­ly smile at the cam­era, wink and flex, yet at no point are his ges­tures force­ful, or even, real­ly, sex­u­al. Fraser’s him­bo is there to be admired, but rarely touched. He moves with a charm­ing clum­si­ness and is pulled in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, allow­ing him­self to be led by (much smarter) women.

Con­trary to most Hol­ly­wood lead­ing men of a sim­i­lar phys­i­cal­i­ty, Fraser’s him­bo shows no desire to dom­i­nate or con­trol. His char­ac­ters are mal­leable, eager to please, and bliss­ful­ly unaware of how women look at him. Fraser’s him­bos are there to be gaw­ped at, specif­i­cal­ly by women. Most­ly, it’s a safe occu­pa­tion. There is no mal­ice about his him­bo. If he makes a mis­take, he can be cor­rect­ed. There is no ego to wound beneath the dimples.

Fraser’s him­bos are also one of the few exam­ples of a male lead tak­ing on the born sexy yes­ter­day’ trope, which usu­al­ly sees a woman, prefer­ably of super­nat­ur­al ori­gin, intro­duced into the world to which she is com­plete­ly naïve, only too eager to be taught by the first man she encoun­ters. She is also always pre­sent­ed as attrac­tive and high­ly sex­u­alised but total­ly unaware of her own sex­i­ness: think Mil­la Jovovich in The Fifth Ele­ment or Daryl Han­nah in Splash.

In the final film of his Him­bo Tril­o­gy, 1999’s Blast from the Past, Fras­er plays Adam, a man who’s been sequestered by his own para­noid par­ents in an under­ground bunker for fear of a nuclear war. When he leaves the bunker to get sup­plies, he dis­cov­ers that there has been no attack; his favourite sit­com I Love Lucy has been off the air for decades and meets his love inter­est Eve (Ali­cia Sil­ver­stone), a peak 90s woman who shows him around the strange new world.

All of these char­ac­ters embody the him­bo’ and born sexy yes­ter­day’ tropes. He is nev­er afraid of the world, always curi­ous about it. He wields his priv­i­leges (that of a cis het white man, but also that of a beau­ti­ful cis het white man) care­less­ly and inno­cent­ly, which is the core of his charm. It’s not just phys­i­cal beau­ty that makes him so appeal­ing, but his open­ness, his sense of won­der­ment. Fras­er paved the way for actors blessed with comedic tim­ing, taut abs and a jaw­line for days. With­out him, there would be no Joey Trib­biani, no Andy Dwyer, no Mag­ic Mike.

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