In rehearsal we have discussed how Gordon weaponizes his “lack-of-power”. He doesn’t know how to do anything, he doesn’t have control over anything, it’s not his fault. A man who uses this excuse has been branded by the media as “The Bumbling Man”

In 2016, in the midst of the Weinstein scandal, Lili Loofbourow published an article “The myth of the male bumbler” – she described them as “wide-eyed and perennially confused”

The world baffles the bumbler. He’s astonished to discover that he had power over anyone at all, let alone that he was perceived as using it. What power? he says.Who, me?

Lili Loofbourow

The bumbler is bad at his job, bad at menial tasks, so unaware of the world around them that they are not responsible for the fallout of anything that they were responsible for or anything they did.

There’s a reason for this plague of know-nothings: The bumbler’s perpetual amazement exonerates him. Incompetence is less damaging than malice. And men — particularly powerful men — use that loophole like corporations use off-shore accounts. The bumbler takes one of our culture’s most muscular myths — that men are clueless — and weaponizes it into an alibi.

Lili Loofbourow

The result of the bumbler at it’s best is that those around him have to pick up the slack (take over organizing office parties, change a diaper, feed the baby) – at it’s worst, the bumbling man uses his personality to get out sexual assault, contact with Russian agents, or complicity.

KYLE:
It’s a peculiar feeling, this kind of love, Gordon.
You have the ability.
Everything, all of it, is made up of people.
With you at the top.
It.
Functions through: people
That make it work and go and people can stop it, when it is not working. For everyone, and say
This is not good.
This can be different.
And better.
Gordon, you can do this.

GORDON:
Who owns–

KYLE:
Gordon–

GORDON:
Anything, really…
…I can’t

KYLE:
You own it.
You can.

p141 – p142

Huffpost article further explaining:
Beware The Bumbler (Huffpost)

I leave you with this quote by Martin Luther King Jr. “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than since ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”