I found this posting, about teenagerdom, and the comments attached to it, interesting. I was particularly diverted by this further reflection from the writer of the original posting, Michael Blowhard. Comments had veered into the adultness of film actors, and Michael said this:

… And how about manliness and heroism? They seemed to have a moment or two in the sun after 9/11, but we seem back to distancing ourselves from them again. I grew up an irreverent Boomer, thinking performers like Charlton Heston were a joke, for instance. All that squareness, that granite jaw, the posing ... It seemed to beg to be ridiculed and I was willing to do the ridiculing. These days, I find myself missing that kind of thing, and admiring the people who could once do it. The only kind of heroism we seem willing to swallow (in popcult, anyway) is cartoonish heroism, it's-all-a-big-joke-anyway heroism. Which I think is kind of tragic. These days I watch an early Heston movie thinking, Good lord, the fact that he was able to do that, with conviction, and put it over, and people were able to accept and enjoy it - why, that's really great! There aren't many performers who can do that today. I don't like Costner much, but I do find myself cutting him some slack just because he seems determined to do squaresville heroism. Doesn't do it very well, but credit for trying. …

I agree about Kevin Costner, and actually like his acting rather more than Michael B seems to. Costner's problem is finding roles where what he wants to do is what they want done. I think one of his more successful movies weaving in and around these themes is Robin Hood Prince of Thieves>, which is all about the difference between stroppy rebelliousness and true adulthood. The Crusades, interestingly, are identified in that movie as a kind of adolescent tantrum, which ended in tears in the manner of a drunken teenage car expedition, but on a grander scale of course. However, while Costner is trying to be a serious grown-up, he finds himself up against a state of the art cartoon villain in the form of Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham.

Costner would probably be denounced at places like this as nothing but a wallower in political correctness. The anti-crusades stuff in Robin Hood plus the fact that in Robin learns about adulthood, maturity, etc. from a far more civilised black man. And of course there was Dances With Wolves and JFK. His constant striving after adulthood would get lost in the anti-PC complaining. But this would be a classic political box error. Political correctness is left wing. Trying to be grown-up. If you try to do both, nobody sees it because nobody wants to. Kudos to Michael for breaking out of the boxes.