Sweet! A nutcracker guard for stars
At last the Zeitgeist has thrown up another tool for analysing
popular culture that is almost as powerful as the notion of
“jumping the shark”. It is the concept of “the nut guard”.
If it had been created in Australia it would probably have been
called “the cup” or “the box”, by analogy with the device used by
cricketers to protect their vulnerable parts.
However, because it was created in the US, it is defined thus by
Entertainment Weekly: “Nut guard (noun): the credit on an
actor’s resume that is so beloved it stops fans from wanting to
actually kick him where it hurts after sitting through his latest
stinker.
“Origin: after seeing Fred Claus, Mandi told her friend
Karen that she wanted to kick Vince Vaughn in the nuts. Karen said,
‘You can’t. He’s got a nut guard because of Swingers.”‘ So
John Travolta, who has made many a kickworthy, gets a nut guard for
Pulp Fiction; Brad Pitt is guarded by Fight Club and
George Clooney by Michael Clayton. Tom Cruise, whose whole
life is kickworthy, gets nut guards for Rain Man and
Collateral.
The concept applies to women, too, even if it’s a technical
misnomer. Lindsay Lohan’s nut guard is Mean Girls, which is
not nearly enough. Angelina Jolie’s is A Mighty Heart, which
counterbalances two Lara Croft movies. Cate Blanchett has so many
guards she could do kickworthies for the rest of her career.
Last year, this column, after consulting its readers, declared
that Nicole Kidman had jumped the shark, based on a string of
embarrassments that displayed chronic bad taste in scripts.
Since then, she’s been the best performer in The Golden
Compass and has played an interesting neurotic in Margot At
The Wedding (which made just $80,000 in its first week in
Australian cinemas, suggesting Our Nic is not a huge drawcard in
her own land).
Any protection she may claim from those performances is
dissolved by a flick just opened here; the sci-fi potboiler The
Invasion (in our photo, Kidman has just learned that her former
husband has been turned into a zombie by aliens, which sounds like
the story of her life).
Like The Stepford Wives, it’s the kind of shark-jump
symptom that causes audiences too polite to don the steel-capped
boots to ask: “What was she thinking?”
The nut guard is a new tool for media analysts, and its
parameters need refining. Click here if you can
help with these questions:
Is an Oscar-winning performance automatically a nut guard, and
how many kickworthies should it block?
What is the current nut guard/kickworthy balance of Eric Bana,
Toni Collette, Russell Crowe, Judy Davis, Mel Gibson, Rachel
Griffiths, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Miranda Otto, Guy Pearce,
Geoffrey Rush, Naomi Watts and Hugo Weaving?
It is, of course, a matter of personal opinion, and we’d like to
hear yours.
