Ethan Hawke. As much as his name already produces eye rolls
and heavy sighs, I think it might be a valuable exercise to briefly
reaffirm just what it is about Ethan Hawke that we all know and
hate—those familiar qualities that so powerfully personify his
innate douchebag-dom. And what better time to reflect than with this
week’s release of Hawke’s own masturbatory shrine to the essence of
Ethan, The Hottest State?
Like many an era’s archetypal figures, hindsight has not been kind
to our wispily goateed dreamboat: beginning his career with a starring
role in the grandma-friendly, homoerotic opus Dead Poets
Society, Hawke misplaced his razor at some point in the early ’90s
to become the quintessential Gen-X actor—a pin-up caricature of
the useless, cynical, and readily marketable twentysomething slacker.
Hawke’s comfortable acceptance of this crown doesn’t exactly merit
contempt so much as pity—for as we look back upon this bygone
era, it’s difficult to conceive of a greater casualty of the time.
Let’s face it: The smug, unemployed loser look isn’t coming back into
fashion any time soon. No, what really makes Ethan ultimately so
contemptible is just that he tries. So. Hard.
Not content to just be the beefcake spokesmodel for the “What
were we thinking?” generation, Hawke devoted himself early on to
self-conscious Renaissance Man overtures—publishing the first of
two poorly received novels in 1996, shortly before acting in the
literary triple threat of Great Expectations, Snow Falling on
Cedars (huh?), and, of course, that Hamlet modernization we
all forgot about. Surprisingly—and in spite of his stellar
musical performance in Reality Bites—Hawke never made the
leap to mid-level alternative rock band during this period either.
Shortly thereafter he knocked up and married Uma Thurman—whom
he later went on to shit-talk in thinly veiled allusions in the script
to Before Sunset, after cheating on her… with a CANADIAN. I
could go on, but suffice to say, our mutual understanding is a valid
one: Ethan Hawke is, and forever will be, a douchebag.