Archer is a TV show that has aired on the FX Network for the past few years. The show neatly represents America’s narcissistic sexual hierarchy and the importance of mothering in raising boys into healthy men.
Overview Of The Show
Archer is about a spy agency, ISIS, and its general incompetency. The agency is headed by eponymous character Archer’s mother, Malory. Archer is an international spy who works with his ex-girlfriend Lana Kane. The accountant for the agency is Cyril Figgis. The show is fairly surreal in the sense that there is a mixing of time periods. The show looks like a 60’s spy cartoon, but the references in the show are contemporary. The style of dress is of the Sixties, and the history of the characters suggests that the show is in the 60’s. However, they use modern technology like GPS. Consider the relevant four characters:
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Sterling Malory Archer: Also known as “Duchess.” A classic narcissistic alpha. He is an international spy who is handsome, jacked and always suited down. He is proficient at driving, martial arts and weaponry. However, his primary concern is drinking and playing the field. He has serious anti-social and narcissistic issues. His ex-girlfriend is fellow spy Lana Kane who is deeply enamored with him
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Malory Archer: Sterling’s mother. A cold and self-absorbed woman who is particularly loathsome. She has the ability to turn on the charm and regularly seduces powerful men. She was a terrible mother who treated Archer poorly. As with any psychologically draining relationship, Malory & Archer need each other to bolster their self-identity.
Lana Kane: A tall, gorgeous dark-skinned woman. She is very competent and often bails Archer out. She is in love with Archer, but his instability precludes a relationship. She is often mad because she plays second fiddle to Archer because Archer is Malory’s son.
Cyril Figgis: Comptroller for ISIS. He is competent at his job, but is a hopeless beta. He is insecure and often tongue-tied. He is the victim of office politics because he does not understand how to manipulate power. He dated Lana in Season 1, but, of course, that relationship did not last. Lana never said she loved him and often balked at public recognition of their relationship.
The Sexual Hierarchy In The Show
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Consider my sexual hierarchy post. In the show, we see it embodied with Archer, Lana and Cyril.
Archer is an alpha, with his pick of the women. Every female wants Archer’s dick. Given his personality, he exploits this with ruthless abandon. Cyril resents him, as Archer treats him as an inferior and doesn’t take him seriously.
Lana is a typical woman trapped between an alpha and a beta. She, of course, burns with desire for Archer, but she can only lock Cyril down. She dated Cyril so she could treat him like Archer treated her. However, when women in are control they are never satisfied with the relationship. Her treatment of Cyril mirrors the indifferent, sometimes cruel, way Archer would treat Lana. When she found out Cyril was cheating, it was the end of the relationship. Women will only stick around here only if they are in complete control of the beta. With him cheating, it set her off because it showed she couldn’t even completely control a weak beta.
Notice how narcissistic Archer is and how Lana, despite their fighting, will submit to his frame. She is a classic codependent with Archer, but becomes a compensatory narcissist with Cyril.
Malory And Archer: The Wages Of A Self-Absorbed Mother
Archer & Malory have a sick relationship. She is a classic, cold self-absorbed woman. She left Archer in his most tender years to be raised by her butler, Woodhouse. She would show up intermittently, bearing gifts only to mock Archer while she was drunk. She clearly clearly sees Archer as little more than an object in the game of her life.
Archer, for himself, developed serious anti-social and narcissistic tendencies as a result. His drinking, his rebelliousness and his rakishness all suggest of strong dose of anti-social personality disorder. He is clearly self-absorbed, displaying a level of self-interest that he inherited psychologically from his mother. His inability to emotionally connect with anyone, his cruel treatment of perceived inferiors and his obsession with the superficial all suggest he is a clinical narcissist.
Archer highlights is how important healthy mothering is for children, most especially, for boys. There is much chatter about the importance of fatherhood in these corners of the web, but the importance of mothering isn’t discussed as often as it should. While every child may not have a father in their life, they most certainly will have a mother. In the absence of a father, healthy mothering is absolutely crucial.
However, what becomes of men with poor or terrible mothering is either becoming a simp like Cyril or an alpha like Archer.
Consider the beta first. Cyril embodies the beta beset by bad mothering. He has little ability to stand up to women and tends to either treat them like absolute dirt or deify them – that is most likely how Cyril treated his mother. He would treat her like a goddess while harboring nasty, violent thoughts about acting out against her. We see Cyril occasionally treating women like shit, only to back off if they push back. That’s how he treats his mother, as he would push back on his mother a bit, only to hastily retreat and resume worshiping her.
With Lana, we see a sexually frustrated man blinded by his codependent approach to women by worshiping or devaluing them. He tries to please Lana, only to find that kissing up to her only causes her to ratchet up her demands or disapproval. Frustrated, he pretends to want to change and improve with women, but he knows no other way of dealing with women.
Remember that these sorts of behavioral approaches are formed from infancy. The infantile rage is just that – a deep-seated rage from a mother’s neglect. Defenses have to be erected against this rage, so a baby can either choose one of two forms of narcissism: codependency or outright clinical narcissism. The former is the choice made by Cyril, the latter is the choice made by Archer.
Becoming a narcissist in the mold of your mother is easy; merely copy and mimic the all-important maternal figure. Children all adopt behaviors of those around them, trying them on to settle on a stable identity. This natural behavior is disrupted by the personality disorders of the parent. The most disruptive of these is narcissism. From an early age Archer mimicked the behavior of his mother, quickly using it is a defense mechanism against the existential disappointment of a childhood denied. Archer found out that by simply denying emotions as they arose was the best way to paper over his natural, biological emotional needs going unfulfilled.
As he aged, he found drugs, sex and rock and roll. The rush of sex, drunkenness and fast cars provided him with a way to feel something, anything. The dreadfully bland world of self-absorption is terribly psychologically draining and, often, boring. Abusing alcohol and sex is an avenue that allows Archer to experience the world of feelings. His anti-social impulses are yet another defense mechanism against change.
Both approaches taken by Archer and Cyril are inappropriate and unhealthy. Now, there is nothing wrong with enjoying alcohol, sleeping with many women or investing emotionally in a woman. As always, it is always why you are engaging in said behavior. While there certainly are institutions in society that hurt men psychologically – such as the public school system and the wider media that favors women over men – flawed mothering have marred both men’s lives. Society needs healthy mothers to raise healthy men. First, healthy mothering can greatly ward off needy behavior in men when it liberates them from the need to seek female approval in the realm of romance.
A common cause of needy behavior is men who were taught, as boys, to seek to female approval. If the mother doesn’t expect it from her son, then it minimizes beta behavior. Second, a healthy mother ensures her sons have a sympathetic ear to turn to during their vulnerable years of adolescence. Not having to rely on romantic partners for emotional support helps a young man. Many betas are born in high school when they have little guidance in the hormone-fueled rush of the teenage years. Quality mothering can help teach these men self-respect and appropriate boundaries in a relationship.
Poor mothering causes so many problems in society. Sure, she isn’t going to be able, generally, to teach a young man about how to deal with women sexually, or teach him masculine things like shaving or changing the oil in a car or even lend an ear in the way only another man can. However, she can contribute great value to a man’s life.
Archer shows a man who was a product of a completely self-absorbed woman who, in turn, creates another completely self-absorbed man in Archer. Neither person is truly a happy person and neither will ever experience real, true humans emotions like love, compassion or sympathy. Cyril represents the approach to narcissism known as codependency – he feels emotions insofar as it allows him to play the roles narcissists need him to. None of these approaches are healthy and all are a result of poor parenting. The deficient approaches to dealing with women displayed by both Archer and Cyril are a direct result of poor mothering and how society approaches the issues between the sexes.
Read Next: America’s Sexual Hierarchy Favors Alpha Males More Than Ever
Interesting analysis on the show which highlighted alot of the same thoughts I had about it.. Nicely written man
I can relate with this article.The most common cause of betahood is the absence of a strong father figure and a narcissistic mother.
Most guys growing in this toxic upbringing become slaves(codependent) to woman. Turning them into manginas/white knights.
With a staggering divorce rate, Alot of good fathers are forced to be deadbeat dads due to limited visitation rights, financial instability(being taken to the cleaners as a result of the divorce proceedings). His children are at the mercy of these woman. So the cycle keeps on spinning
The daughter grows up to hate man and turns to feminism as a means to rationalize her actions e.g riding the cock carousels, throwing hordes of good guys under the bus
The son grows up to be the classical beta, nice guy orbiter. He becomes used and abused over and over again.
When you follow in the path of your father, you learn to walk like him. ~Ashanti Proverb
Only a man can raise a child to be a competent adult. This is the one and only truth about children that is undistputable. Anything else is either bad luck or good luck depending how they turn out. Women with fathers that act like mother or women raised by single mothers always turn into cock whores and little rape fakers, and men turn into betas. A good father is the difference between a whore and a beta or a good wholesome actually worth letting live girl and alpha.
Sounds like my family. The feminist sister, my lost decade of betahood (9-19). Worst part is my sister’s a high school history teacher. Is it better for the dad to stay or leave? Because my dad stayed and I looked up to him as a kid until one day I woke up and saw what a loser he is. Maybe if he hadn’t been around it’d have been sink or swim and I’d have left betahood sooner. That’s another kind of codependency. Mom was a corporate whore and she’s only divorcing him now (in my twenties) because he cheated. Just like the article says. Archer is a good show after all.
That’s a good proverb Psquare. I fixed my problems internally. My dad relies on anti-depressants.
I guess I’m just a natural born ASSHOLE. No father figure to look up to, and still grew up to not be a bitch (beta).
There is nothing inherently masculine (never mind alpha) about being an athelete or going to the gym. Yes, most athletes are betas. Some of them are women.
“No father figure to look up to, and still grew up to not be a bitch (beta).”
And yet you employ a classic, feminine argument.
I’ve observed the damaged Alpha-Narcissism amongst heavy steroid users, the ones who go to ridiculous lengths to be big, and have had to have surgery to remove mammary tissue.
From what I gather, steroids *can* be used safely, but some guys go to extremes with it. I’m left wondering two things about these guys: “Whom are you trying to impress?” and “Why do you seem to be jealous of me when you’re stronger, wealthier, and have slept with more women than me?”
Like Archer himself, these guys are friend to no man.
In the series Archer regularly disrupts relationships, even driving Barry to the point of insanity so that he becomes Archer’s arch-nemesis. Despite all the focus in these parts of the inter-webs are picking up women, we endeavor to do so with a moral compass; to improve our lives, rather than engage in a pissing match with every other man on the planet.
The Alpha-Narcissist, however, is compelled to do what they do, not because they love it, but because it helps cover-up their deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.
This tracks with professional athletes:
It’s an extremely dangerous profession. I don’t have the stats, but I gather it’s about as physically over-taxing as the military, leaving one with permanent injuries. While the military serves a higher ethos, a professional athlete serves the lower needs of popularity and income – an income which, far too often, gets eaten up on extravagance while their career lasts.
I definitely don’t want to paint all athletes with a single brush, but I could see a lot of Alpha-Narcissists being attracted to the form, and never caring about the substance.
Alpha is strong. Beta is weak. Females and most of the self proclaimed alphas nowadays are weak, that’s the fact. In today’s society all weaklings are protected by the system.
No athlete is a beta, and I’m not even speaking of picking up women-athletes have them by the dozens…, I’m talking about physical strength and the ability to kick some ass. Give credit where it is due. Let actions speak louder than words.
Oh, certainly. There will always be the Ty Cobbs and Mike Tysons in professional sports, but they are the exception. They stand out because only those at the top of their game stay in the game. Nobody is going to put up with that sort of shit from a support player.
And the support players make up the majority and are, in every sense, betas.
And, for that matter, most athletes, even those at the top of the game, aren’t pros. There isn’t a lot of money in hurdles.
Strength is relative to how it is measured.
What good are your muscles and aggressive fronting if you can’t keep your woman in check? You’re basically a victim of societal conditioning and this alpha/beta bullshit. Real manhood is a man who gets his needs met. A scrawny man on minimum wage who leads his woman and makes her salivate for his 2-inch penis is a bigger man than the athlete or meat head with a 6-inch penis who buys 1million dollar diamonds to impress his bitch. Your idea of manhood is seriously flawed.
I agree, and I’m by no means flexing here, just stating the facts. As gay as it sounds, Most women prefer a man who can somewhat protect them(or look like they can), even though its unnecessary in today’s society since all weaklings are protected by the system, as I have stated before. Lets be realistic here, that 2 inch dick scrawny guy you described isn’t picking up any quality pussy due to media brainwashing of today’s sluts, much less being the “alpha” and keeping his slut in check. The slut is with him because its convenient at the moment. That thought of being ‘ALPHA” is only in that poor little bastard’s head, because the slut that he’s with knows she WILL fuck a “BIGGER” man 😉 when the opportunity arises.
Dont trust anyone not even your mother.
ALL ARE WHORES EXCEPT OUR GRANDMAS!
DUDE, you are so proving the premise of the damaged, narcissistic alpha it’s not even funny…
Do you not realize you just proved the articles assertion?
This is an extremely insightful comment. To corroborate, I offer my own family as an example. My mother is a textbook narcissist, and a nasty, selfish, domineering shrike. My father, meanwhile, is a classic white knight beta worker bee, who in his attempts to appease and supplicate to my mom made her behavior and attitude infinitely worse. Now, for a rundown of how the kids came out:
Oldest brother: Living the beta dream, slaving away to support his ever-fattening wife and passel of kids. His role as breadwinner/ slave has visibly sucked the life out of him.
Oldest sister: Single mother of three kids from two dads. Exceedingly snide and bitchy, with a long history as a carousel rider. The two older kids have a strong father figure, so they are coming out ok, though one is already pregnant at seventeen. Her youngest son’s dad is a complete loser who only gets visitation, so the kid is already a sensitive momma’s boy whose behavior is increasingly out of control.
Brother 2: Extreme white knight, though with outgoing personality and natural charm he has been relatively successful with women.
Brother 3: Omega to the max, a timid simpering niceguy. Has zero scruples about his brothers’ and friends’ sloppy seconds, since he has zero ability to get girls on his own. A raging slut of my acquaintance approached him as a means of exacting revenge for my having nexted her. He proceeded to date, impregnate (maybe? paternity visibly ambiguous), move in with and marry this whore, who of course became obese through the course of these events. At the outset I explained who she is and what she was doing, but he was so thirsty and desperate that he chose to sell me out and drive a wedge into our family rather than telling her to take a hike.
Me: Recovering beta niceguy. Before I knew any better I had zero sexual success. Betahood is deeply ingrained and it has been a struggle to change. At times I overcorrect and am an extremely cold asshole to females even when it’s unwarranted.
Brother 4: Paper alpha. Extremely aggressive and in-your-face, but is allowing his slut girlfriend to walk all over him. It’s common knowledge, except to him, that she has run around on him numerous times over the years.
Sister 2: Bitter, mean, angry. Hates men.
Brother 5 :Much the same as me.
All of us, to at least some extent, has had difficulty relating to the opposite sex, though at least our home life was somewhat stable growing up. I can only imagine how much worse we might have come out with no dad at all.
Jesus, you had 6 siblings…
It’s a good thing the Pope allowed the rhythm method!
I can relate to this quite a bit. My father was rarely around as his job required him to be away from home for extended periods of time and hence I was primarily raised by my mother. My mother as far as I can tell has sacrificed quite a bit to raise me (I was a very difficult child) and never harboured ill-will toward me. She was not narcissistic but she did not have the necessary knowledge to raise a male child. I led a very sheltered childhood as my mother was one of those helicopter parents that has to meddle in every aspect of their children’s lives. This left me with severe confidence and independence issues that I have just started to de-program. I also never learned how to deal with women and became a textbook beta/white knight who put women on a pedestal, thinking that it was the right thing to do. Thankfully, the little time I did spend with my father left me with a strong moral base from which I could make corrections to my life.
Here’s a subject for another article. What happens when the dad acts more like a friend than a real father? My dad doesn’t get on with his three brothers very well and has few guy friends. The ones he does are more like aquaintances (an article in itself, the death of brotherhood). So I became really close to him as a kid, but he wouldn’t stand up to my mother. I ended up following his examples, as kids do, and wound pretty friendless a a child, outside my dad who was not a father. It’s a feel-good prison. As father and son we were each other’s only real friends, but that’s not healthy parenting. Didn’t help that he tried raising me Jew when the kids who were nicest to me were Christians. I kept my distance.
Considering the recent almost hit piece done on ROK by the writer from Oregon, this piece is well timed. It could not be more sensible, for having women who would be exceptional mothers, also raises the probability of them being great wives. We need them to be both. We need them to reject their favored status in the courts and media, and come back; as our sex pets of course. But they need to understand, that we are more likely to be faithful if they are less likely to turn into raging psycho-harpies.
Many of us came here because the latter was what we always wound up dealing with. Even when we owned our shit and started finding what we felt at least were good women, and started to improve ourselves. Sadly, most of them turned out to be the latter as well. For it was the former we were looking for, a mate, a companion, a friend. Someone to help us shoulder the burdens in hard times, and enjoy our company during success. Instead, we found only slavery, and now these hit pieces are coming because they know we are now a full blown movement, ready to explode, and they don’t know how to stop us.
Should have hopped on the train while you had the chance Malory.
You better call Kenny Loggins. ‘Cause you’re in the danger zone.
Had to find this on YouTube:
Uh, clearly by design, you’ve neglected to note Archer’s slumming with the whale HR chick that he doesn’t publically admit to but rocked his world.
Pam’s shear slut nature and open honesty about said ‘slut nature’ is justifiable enough to slide her a few inches from time to time.
She’s my favorite character on the show, because despite others dislike or disgust in her…she just simply doesn’t give a fuck!
Single motherhood is the only form of child abuse which is celebrated by society. I argue that a fatherless boy will be more damaged and traumatized from being raised by a single mother versus a boy who experiences sexual abuse and is raised in a healthy, natural father-dominated, mother-submissive family.
You read that correctly, single mothers do more damage to a boy’s identity than being a victim of child rape. We should be condemning any bitch who chooses to be a single mother and demanding father-only custody for boys of divorced parents. But that will never happen because we’re too busy bashing each other skin color. Meanwhile, manginas, society and the cunt media are a single unified force against men who succeed in further destroying all men’s freedoms because you fags want to keep hating a man for his ethnic race.
Over-complicating a simple issue: think less, attack the manginas and cunts more. This society blames psychopaths for existing, the same ones it created via single mother neglect and selfishness.
Aren’t the statistics that approximately 65% of homosexual men were raped/molested as kids? I don’t think having a single mother is worse than being raped, BUT being a kid with only a single mother around severely increases the child’s chance of being raped and molested. As we saw in the Penn State “charity” that Jerry Sandusky was running, he was abusing children who had no father and unstable families. When Father Riccardo Seppia, advisor to the Pope on the pedophilia scandal, was arrested for soliciting for children, he instructed in his emails to find boys who had bad family situations, ones that could be manipulated, etc. The predators look for the children who do not have a stable family structure, and having a good dad is supremely important.
Everything feminists say is self contradicting. They say that motherhood is a biological reality and fatherhood is a social construct.
Okay, then why focus on the behavior of fathers and husbands at all? If motherhood is so important to our species it’s been hardwired into the DNA, feminists should be doing everything in their power to analyse the behavior of women so they can become the good mother’s we desperately need, right?
Nope. Just whine about husbands not doing their fair share of housework all day while totally ignoring the shortcomings of women.
What a joke these people are.
You forgot to mention that Cyril is a sex addict lol. The funny thing is, although Cyril is clearly the beta of the two, Archer is paying child support for Cyril’s baby lmao, that episode was hilarious. Love this show. DANGER ZONE!
Cartoons.
LOL—euphemism born of cognitive dissonance. I guess it’s just too much for some guys to have “black woman” & “gorgeous” in the same sentence.
Damn, you got it bro. I can’t handle black women being gorgeous. My dick has no idea what to feel.
Take your mindless race trolling & shove it up your ass, dipshit.
Mulatto butts!
I can’t say that I agree with all posts on this site, but I agree with this one. Like Lana, I cannot tolerate men who allow me to dominate or push them around; I prefer those that are confident, have their lives together, and won’t tolerate poor behavior from me.
Why? Because it forces me to be a better, stronger person (*gasp* say the feminists), and because traditional gender roles are more important than people believe, and not just on a surface level – but that is a topic that has likely been covered from beginning to end here. I have witnessed mothers who produce sons lacking confidence, filled with anger and confusion, and so on, and they are the ones who do not respect women (or anyone else), who cannot function in social settings, and who passive-aggressively allow others to take advantage of them while harboring internalized anger.
No thanks.
Thank you, I suppose, for writing a post that is logically discussed, relevant to something most people have at least seen once, and not filled with “women are bitches and hoes” type of slurs.
Funny enough, my boyfriend and I are going as Archer and Lana for Halloween. Good thing he’s actually more like Archer (minus the narcissism) and nothing like Cyril.