>On Apr 15, 2011, at 3:44 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> > As you say, it's an anti-capitalism, anti-striving uppermiddle class
> culture of fools. shag
>
>And how does this work in the service of neoliberalism?
that sentence was in response to a thread that took place last year, so had little to do with the recent comments abotu neo-liberalism. I was pointing out how Apatow films resurrect the sexiness of the "icky" males I thought Doug might be talking about.
In Apatow's films, the answer is for everyone to simply accept things as they are instead of asking about the structural impediments to employment. The answer is that there's no connection between the economy and what happens between men and women. Women, magically, are overachievers and men, magically, are fuck ups. To borrow a phrase I just read to describe the goal of sociology: If the task of sociology is to make reality unacceptable, the task of Judd Apatow's films is to make reality acceptable.
In this case, the point is that there's no reason why women are career-minded, put together (possibly robotically so) and cultivating utter perfection whenever possible and there's no reason why men are unemployed, drunk stoners who watch movies and play video games all day. Indeed, the deal is, they are probably just naturally that way and the only reason they can't get together is that they just go a little overboard.
Homosociality among men encourages a bunch of burping, farting, wanking, sex-obsessed childmen with their faces in a bong all day, coming up to inhale a pan of half-baked brownies every so often. Homosociality among women is domestic: with or with other women observing they attend to PTA duties, care for children, preside over their hired help, or go shopping. Women bond, while bitching about men, in their perfect shiny kitchens, picturesque backyard patios, or while shopping for the perfect accoutrements to their nearly perfect lives: kitchenaid mixers, cribs, lamps, sheets.
Among themselves, men put each other down by calling each other women and making fun of the smell of each other's farts, even though they are quite proud of their fartastic creations. They are always, always honest about their lack of desirability, celebrating their loserdom. Among themselves, women tell each other that they don't deserve the shitty relationships they have if they are single, and confess to the shitty relationships they have in spite of the facade of the perfect marriage. They tell each other that they are better than this and deserve more.
For Apatow, this hyperhomosociality is mitigated when the starring couple get together after a bumpy ride. Ideally, they are a very unlikely couple. Old story, of course. But they endure and, mostly, they endure because their relationship tempers the impulses born of their homosocial lives outside of couplehood. Relationships are about each individual reining in those impulses. Gender relations are the result of individuals making bad choices and things can only be fixed by individuals making the correct choices.
In the movie, Knocked Up, Catherine Heigel's character, Alison, is the embodiment of the perfect woman Dwayne described: good looking, great career, no man. Celebrating a promotion, she goes to a club with her married sister and meets Ben: unemployed, stoner, drunk, no ambition (except a porn site), living off a few hundred dollars leftover from a $15k accident settlement. He lives with a bunch of other guys who are 20-something children with no or crappy jobs, drunk and stoned all the time, playing video games, watching old movies, insulting each other as pussies, vaginas, girls - even though they want nothing more than to have sex with pussies, vaginas, girls. Sex with women is acknowledged as something they rarely achieve and, if they do, it was by virtue of an accident or miracle.
Ben hooks up with Alison. With beer goggles, everything that's wrong with the guy - a little chubby, out of shape, so-so looking compared to her gorgeous good looks, stoner stupid, child-like, unemployed - is set aside for a drunken fuck. She gets pregnant and doesn't even consider not having a baby.
The rest of the movie is about her coming to realize that he's not so bad - in part because he comes to realize that he needs to be a little more responsible in order to win her back.
All told against the backdrop of Alison's sister's marriage: Debbie and Pete have two daughters (which is interesting because, if I'm not mistaken, the children in Apatow's flicks are usually girls), he is a decent guy but they are clearly in the doldrums. She suspects an affair: he's been staying late at work or has mysterious business dinners to attend. Pete describes marriage as an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, only everyone's tense and angry and not just for 22 minutes, but forever. When discussing marriage with Ben, Pete brings up a classic cultural trope:
"Do you ever wonder how somebody could even like you? The biggest problem in our marriage is that she wants me around. And I can't even accept that. I don't think I can accept pure love."
You hear this all the time in movies - and in life. The most common version is when a man accepts an award, wife by his side, and he introduces her by saying that he's always amazed that she picked him. Or he tells everyone that she's amazing because she puts up with him. Everyone reads this as a compliment, but it's an insult. She's an important person you should know, not because she does anything important as her own person, but because she loves him.
That line, like this passage in the film, operates in a couple of ways:
1. whatever goes on between het couples, if a man is aloof, uncertain about the marriage, taking off to play fantasy football or go to movies alone, having an affair, unhappy and withdrawn in his marriage, it has everything to do with his own sense that he sucks. Next time, ladies, you wonder why a relationship is sucking, just remember that it's because *he* feels unworthy. Thus, you should feel bad for him, try to understand, put up with the shit. He's not an asshole who mistreats you. He's a poor guy who has no self-esteem. Your job, ladies, is to fix that for him. Once you show him how much self-esteem he should have, how great he is, he'll stop being an asshole!
2. A man portrays his wife as superior to him, but *only* because she puts up with his shit. There's nothing about her that makes her great because of what she does independent of him: not her career, not her intellect, not her avocations. It's all about how she exists for the man. Feel special ladies. Your whole purpose in life is to make sure that a man, who doesn't think he's especially interesting or worthy, is made to feel worthy and interesting.
while I'm on a roll, another film that irritated the shit out of me, worse than any apatow flick: He's Just Not That Into You. It was inspired by a self-help book which was inspired by an episode of Sex and the City where Miranda asks Carrie's new boyfriend, Jack Berger, to decode a date she'd been on. Berger explains that if the guy didn't go back to your apartment after a date, then he is just not that into you. If he wants you, Berger says, he'll move heaven and earth to make it happen. He's not tired, busy, scared, being a gentleman; he doesn't want you. End. Of. Story. For Miranda, this is a revelation. In the film, they illustrate why this is so eye opening. There is a series of vignettes showing how girls are taught, early on, that if a boy hits them on the playground or dumps milk on their head, it's because he just doesn't know how to relate otherwise. Mothers comfort crying girls by saying, "oh! It's wonderful that he farted in your face. That means he like you!"
Later, in scenes based on the book, women talk about instances of grown men supposedly doing the equivalent. At the gym, women say, "Oh, the reason why he's not calling is that he's afraid of you. You are so successful, so wonderful, so put together. He must be terrified." At the office, "Oh, sure, there was a spark there. He's just afraid to go further because you have a great career and he's a landscaper. You go girl! Ask him out. He just needs a little nudge!" "Go ahead. Call him. He told you to call him didn't he? He gave you his number, his card. Doesn't that mean he wants you to call? Of course it does!"
Etc. Women tell each other that the real reason they aren't finding men is that the poor guys have it tough: their jobs aren't good enough, their jobs are too demanding, they're not in touch with their feelings, they are too proud to be needy and in love, they're forgetful and easily distracted, they're in recovery and need to take things slow, they are afraid because they just broke up with someone, or the all-purpose reason: guys lack a sense of self-worth and purpose; compared to your glowing sense of self-worth and purpose, they're nothing and could never be worthy. As a consequence: they flee.
Since hetmen don't understand what they really want, since they don't understand their own feelings, then it's your job to show them that they know not what they do.
The film makes fun of another device that keeps women enthralled to shitty relationships: the apocryphal tale of the fuck up turned prince charming. There is always someone telling a woman getting treated like shit about the guy who, after many fuck ups, finally saw the light, got married and now living happily ever after. "Yeah. Yeah. He was constantly breaking up with Susan. Dumping her. Sleeping around. Then, one day he realized that she was the one for him, got on his knees and proposed with the ring out of a bubblegum machine. They've been married for 25 years!"
Of course, the whole point of the book is to explain that the reason why it doesn't work out - het women pursuing men or being there for them - is that there's some primordial male desire to chase after a woman. Men like to fight for something and like the reward of winning that something. If you just give it to him, he won't be able to exercise those primordial impulses and won't feel like a man. In order to get that man, ladies, let him enjoy the thrill of the chase!
The two main stories emphasize the thrill of the chase. Alex is the successful bar owner/manager (not sure which) who only decides he wants Gigi when she, finally, gets the message he's been telling her: if a guy wants you, he'll do whatever he has to in order to have you. When she finally realizes that this applies to Alex, she stops chasing him. As a consequence, he realizes her wants her and stops at nothing to immediately run to her apartment and find her. Which, interestingly, tells the audience that it's not that he's not interested in you - it's not an issue with your character, values, morals, appearance, personality, whatever - it's that you didn't set up enough impediments to make he feel that the chase was on. so, if you think a guy might be interested the thing to do is play the game: pretend like you're not interested. Voila!
One illustration is the couple, Beth and Neil. They have a long-term live-in relationship. Although she's always acted as if marriage doesn't matter, it turns out that it does. But Ben is adamant: When she presses, he won't go there. She splits. Taking care of her father after a heart attack, she observes her sisters' husbands, a bunch of beer guzzling sports fans who never lift a finger to help their wives. Neil shows up to comfort the family and ends up quietly taking on the task of doing the dishes. Beth realizes that he's a better husband that the ones shouting in front of a game on t.v. She wants him back, this time living together is enough and she doesn't need the stupid piece of paper to have a husband. As a consequence, because she no longer wants marriage, Neil decides he wants marriage. He needed to win a prize!
Two other tales are cautionary: what happens when you don't play the game correctly. Basically, the two women are traditional foils: the hypersexual (Anna) and the asexual (Janine).
With regard to Janine, married to Ben: Go ahead, have your own life, have your own ambitions - but don't be a ball breaker; and never, ever, ever make a guy feels like he has to marry you or else and then be so driven by the accoutrements of hetmarried yuppiedom that you withhold sex. Playing hard to get and withholding sex after marriage? That means you don't like sex for reals! And men don't want that. You love sex, but you control yourself because you know that what's important is making him feel like he won something that required effort! Once so snagged, you must be a vamp in bed. His vamp, and no one else's! Janine's problem is that is obvious that she doesn't really like sex and concedes to being sexual, later, in order to keep her husband.
Anna is a sexy yoga instructor with aspirations as a singer. She is the object of desperate love from Conner, one of those poor puppy dog souls desperately in love with someone who will never want him. Conner, interestingly, is portrayed as easily crossing over - as gay. In order to woo the gay clientele snatching up the condos and town homes he's selling, he dresses in a way that would appeal to gay men. Interesting that all the talk about *men* not wanting to shack upr or being unhappy shacked up is portrayed against this backdrop of coupled up gay men living the hetfamily american dream....
But Anna is a beautiful - too beautiful - hypersexual, self-absorbed woman. She uses her sexuality to get what she wants from men. She needs comfort and affection? Then she uses the allure of sex to get Conner's foot rubs and friendship, especially when things don't work out with another guy. Meanwhile, she meets Ben who is unhappily married to Janine, the asexual yuppie. There's an animal sexuality between the two of them. But the problem is that she doesn't want him. She's also interested because he can help her with her singing career. As punishment for using her sexuality to get what she wants out of men, she ends up alone, singing sad songs as a lounge singer.
The asexual ball breaker, Janine, is the yuppie, career woman obsessed with remodeling their town home. Life is all about floor tiles and fabric swatches. Here, a husband is merely a prop to fill out the image of the happy couple living the american dream. When she confesses that she never has sex with Ben anymore, she realizes that might be the problem. She throws herself at him, in his office, having (unbeknownst to her) interrupted a tryst with the hypersexual Anna. But she has to be punished for being an asexual ball breaker who, like Anna, turns on the sex to get what she wants. She also ends up alone.
Janine discovers the affair and symbolically smashes a mirror. Instead of continuing with the rage, tossing all his shit out the window or something, she neatly folds up his clothes and leaves them in a orderly stack for him with a cold, sarcastic goodbye note. In the end, she's living alone, in a new apartment. There's the suggestion of empowerment and possibility: she dumps the guy, moves on. Maybe she'll find love. Still, you can't really miss the fact that she is ice cold and wants to be alone, just as she was ultimately alone when choosing tile patterns even though Ben was ostensibly there.
Of course, there is another tale bound up with all these: that between Mary and Conner. Mary, like Gigi, is constantly finding herself misinterpreting male behavior. The guy who phones her, leaves a voicemail wooing her, is really a serial romancer who is leaving the same voicemail for several other women. Mary, played by Drew Barrymore (whose company produced the movie), does not figure prominently in the movie, but plays an important role in so far as her story undermines the ostensible message: that you have to make men want you by striking some happy middle between asexualized Madonna and hypersexualized whore, by putting out but not too much, by ensuring that men get the thrill of the chase.
In this case, Conner moves on, gets over Anna. Later, he's at a cafe, admiring his ads in the paper. Mary, who has spoken to Conner on the phone, an ad rep at the alternative weekly, who worked with Conner to create his ad campaigns, is admiring the ad in the paper, doing so only feet away at the same outdoor cafe. She sees Conner and phones him. They get together, they hit it off. it's effortless. She calls him - something the book tells you not to do! So, the story serves as that tale that keeps women going, hoping that there's an exception to the rule. Most guys? Just not that into you. But once in awhile there will be that guy, like Conner. You, too, can pick up the phone, initiate a conversation, start the flirting, invite him over - and it will all, magically, work out. You go girl! So, interestingly, the film closes with a story that unravels the message of the others.
It slayed me that the film peddled these two competing messages. I mean, it's Hollywood; the film has to undermine itself and give people happy endings about how effortless everything is.