As New York-based media studies student and feministing.com editor Chloe Angyal (pictured) readily admits, pouring over Hollywood romantic comedies for a doctoral dissertation “sure beats poking at a petri dish.” The 2009 Princeton grad is currently working towards this very unusual PhD through the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where she is originally from.

The trends Angyal is focused on include the well-noted move in recent years to expose more of the studio film genre’s male stars. Think Jason Segel, Jake Gyllenhaal, Justin Long, Ashton Kutcher, Ryan Reynolds, Justin Timberlake and several others. But what does this all mean?

They’re all white. They’re all lean and broad-shouldered. They’re all rather muscular. Some of them are toned and sculpted in accordance with superhero standards: Chris Evans was fresh off filming Captain America when he made What’s Your Number? and Reynolds made The Proposal right after he wrapped Wolverine. And, uh, it shows…

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Strange things are bound to happen when a freelance travel reporter sets sail for the Bermuda Triangle. But quite frankly, FBLA was completely unprepared for the scene about a third of the way through Gulliver’s Travels that sees Jack Black whip out his privates and dangle them off-screen, for an extended period of time, above Lilliput’s citizenry.

While the 20th Century Fox family film showcases a remixed version of Jonathan Swift‘s fabled kingdom, the basic big-person-little-people ratio remains the same. Ergo, viewed from below, the manhood of our moonlighting mailroom clerk Lemuel Gulliver would be the equivalent of a small dirigible.

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