Slate has a cool article up about Hollywood's relentless portrayal of biking people as dweebs and losers. It's not something I've really thought about before but reading through the article I realize, hey, they're totally right. I can't remember a recent film where someone got around by bike who wasn't a total sad sack.
The Slate piece points to the Ben Stiller flick Greenberg, along with Napoleon Dynamite, Jason Schwartzman's neurotic character in I Heart Huckabees, Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day and, of course, Pee Wee Herman to point out that, according to Hollywood, bikes are only ridden by the dependent and the insane:
Greenberg is just the most recent film in which a character's non-automobility—whether for lack of a car or for lack of the ability to drive—is used for comic effect, whether as a metaphor for a deeper personality flaw or as a token of marginality and/or plain creepiness. As the humorist Art Buchwald once observed, "People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there's something wrong with him."I didn't ride a bike all through high school even though my flat, sunny, small hometown would have been perfect for biking to school. A big reason why I didn't ride was image. Who biked to school? Dweeby boy scouts, in my recollection. Driving a car (even a piece of shit car) was essential to being a socially acceptable high school human.