jethrien | Thinky-thoughts on irresponsibility and gender portrayal

Thinky-thoughts on irresponsibility and gender portrayal

This is brought to you via the Green Hornet, which is getting lukewarm reviews today.

So once upon a time, when men were men and women and minorities knew their place, men (white men, of course, the others don't count) in television and movies and comics were competent and benignly indulgent of the dizziness and incompetence of their female companions and minority sidekicks. See, say, The Spirit or I Love Lucy.

These days, it seems far more likely, at least in light-hearted fare, that the women are the competent ones, while the men are overgrown man-children who need to be gently herded lest they do nothing with their lives but drink beer and make fart jokes. With the Green Hornet, we apparently have the same dynamic--Kato is the hyper competent killjoy to his employer's inanity.

So here's the question. Is it that we've made some progress, so women and minorities are allowed to be competent? (Clearly, not enough progress, as the main character's still a guy and the woman/minority still acts as an "other". Although I'd certainly rather be boringly responsible and competent than a ditz.) Or is the social mores have changed enough that the prejudice is still just as bad? Is it that in the 1950s, competence was prized and therefore only white men got it, while now perpetual adolescence is prized and therefore only white men get it?

(I realizing I'm totally generalizing here. Obviously there are movies with female heroes and so on. Although, I can't think of a movie where a woman acts as badly as the men in, say, Knocked Up or Iron Man. It seems that you can be a useless, irresponsible schlub and still be sympathetic and even heroic, but only if you're a white dude. Anyway, there are lots of exceptions, but I feel like there's enough of a trend to think about.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Katherine Heigl is kind of a hysterical, hyper-emotional, flaky ditz in Knocked Up, though, so maybe not the best example...

The best, most human characters in that film were the sister and brother-in-law.

The rest I could take or leave.

Except Jay Baruchel. He needs to go to my room and wait for me. I'll be right there. ;)

The sister and brother-in-law do actually follow the pattern of man-child and responsible woman. But then, that whole movie is about how the man-child learns to grow into a responsible adult (as exemplified by yelling at the sister...IDEK).

As opposed to Iron Man 2, which is about how a man-child who makes his PA's life a living hell with his selfishness, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness, and by flat out running roughshod over anything she wants to do fixes everything by marrying her. Cause that's going to work out SO well.

Hm. It's been a few years since I've seen it, so I'll defer to your better memory.

I did, though, feel like the sister *wanted* to be a slacker, but knew she couldn't for the sake of her kids.

I recently caught the second half of it on TV, otherwise I wouldn't remember it well at all. But yeah, nobody in that movie could really be called a decent human being.

I don't hit Knocked Up as being that bad--there's a woman among the group of stoners, Paul Rudd's character's a perfectly normal and good guy (the closest thing to anything wrong with him is his secret fantasy football league), his wife's kind of a shrewish monster, and the main character grows up into a responsible husband and father.

I don't think perpetual adolescence is prized; the arrested development characters are never portrayed as role models. Plus, when they're the main characters, their story arc usually has them growing up. So that theory doesn't work.

I think it's just that the writers are acutely aware of the prejudice, and know that they can't make a woman or minority the incompetent fool without it coming across as nasty (or at least, not the only incompetent fool or most important incompetent fool - Dinner for Schmucks had a diverse group of nutjobs.) So, when they need a slacker/stoner/ditz type, writers now make the character male.

Two other factors come into play though:

1. Reality says the slacker/stoner is probably male. Stereotypes make their ways into movies because they carry some truth, and these days, women are much more likely to be successful in high school and college; the pro-male differential only comes back into play when women start having babies. Since comedies almost always feature characters who are young adults or teenagers, that means characters reflecting reality should feature competent women and immature men.

2. Comedians are, for whatever reason, largely male and can easily play immature nuts. The top female comic actors usually come across as either nerdy (Tina Fey) or cute-attractive (Katherine Heigl, Mila Kunis). The latter group occasionally plays slackers (Mila Kunis in That 70's Show; Elizabeth Banks in "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"), but really can play any social level of character (Mila Kunis in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"; Katherine Heigl in "Knocked Up"). On the other hand, you'll never see Tina Fey play a slacker. The only current male comics I can think of who do well playing a non-slacker straight man are Steve Carell (Dan in Real Life; Evan Almighty; 40 Year Old Virgin) and Paul Rudd (every movie he's in). So we get that gender difference in comedies because that's what the actors and actresses can do.

Paul Rudd's character's a perfectly normal and good guy
...I'd disagree with that. The movie makes a big deal about how Katherine Heigl doesn't want to get married because she says how shit a husband Paul Rudd is. But this is besides the point of the post.

Eh, the movie makes a big deal about how Katherine Heigl doesn't want to get married because her sister complains about Paul Rudd's character. But the movie portrays the sister as a nagging shrew who won't let her husband take an occasional night to play fantasy football, and I don't remember it showing Paul Rudd's character acting like a bad husband, with the possible exception of the post-blowup Vegas trip.

Funny how we react to the movie differently. The sister is definitely a nagging shrew, but Paul Rudd is also clearly completely disengaged from the marriage and takes any excuse he can find to absent himself from it. So though you don't see him throwing fits or anything, he's a pretty crap husband.

I would only point out that having a character like "nagging shrew" is a terrific role for a woman to play. Judging from yours and Ivy's comments, aside from the shrieky flake that is Katherine Heigl's character, this is the only other major/memorable female character. So the movie separates its few female characters along a ditz/bitch dichotomy. Presumably, this is done to make it so Paul Rudd isn't the bad guy. Awesome.

Well, yes, it's a male-focused comedy. And I didn't get the impression that Heigl's character was a shrieking flake either; she's pretty likable, and her levels of hysterics are way below the expected for "pregnant out-of-wedlock career woman with slacker baby daddy." She's an MTV anchor, which makes her the most successful adult in the bunch. Honestly, my take was that Rudd and Heigl's characters were likable, Rogen's character became likable by the end, Rudd's wife is a nagging shrew, and the rest of the characters weren't major either. So that's 4 major characters, evenly split between gender, with Rudd and Heigl playing reasonably mature adults, Leslie Mann playing the nagging shrew, and Rogen playing the immature slacker who grows up over the course of the movie. I have a hard time finding something particularly wrong or anti-feminist about this one.

You wouldn't with that assessment because you're looking at them from a level of personality and where that doesn't excuse the sexism, what job people have. Heigl = not great personality but good job = fine. It's just not that simple. It doesn't help that the whole premise of the movie is that someone who is as put together as you claim Heigl to be, should go through the effort of having a stranger's baby in order to force him to mature into a better person. It's a really icky and uncomfortable (not to mention unrealistic) premise upon which to base a comedy. Hey, I'm all for comedy, and you can make just about anything funny, but this wasn't even that good. (Caveat: haven't seen the whole thing.)

Basically, this movie is a dude movie. The women are humorless mothers who exist only to make men feel bad/grow up. Not exactly progressive.

It doesn't help that the whole premise of the movie is that someone who is as put together as you claim Heigl to be, should go through the effort of having a stranger's baby in order to force him to mature into a better person.

I honestly don't understand that reading--Heigl's character has perfectly reasonable motivations of her own. It is possible for women to want to have kids when they get pregnant out-of-wedlock, you know. I must have missed the part of the movie where Paul Rudd lectures Heigl on how she has to have and keep the kid because otherwise, Rogen's character won't grow up, and her womb really has no other purpose but to help the patriarchy. But I have a short attention span, so you never know.

It's certainly a male focused comedy, but I really think you're stretching to find sexism in it.

(deleted comment)

It's sarcasm, not condescension. I'm making fun of your rigidly biased feminist brain, not your certainly non-feeble female brain.

But I suppose I can't enjoy a comedy where pregnancy is a plot point unless the movie jumps through the appropriate feminist-approved hoops: The woman must consider abortion, she must explain why a baby would be fulfilling to her, it must be woman-positive, there need to be slogans, etc. Even if she's not actually the main character. Oh wait, there are two scenes discussing abortion (one among the guys, one between Allison and her mother), but we'll ignore that because both the characters suggesting abortion (Jonah Hill's character and the mom) are portrayed as morally wrong, and the characters don't agonize over abortion as a real choice. It's just not a proper screwball comedy without agonizing over abortion.

Yeah, I'm getting annoyed. Because you're attempting to find a sexist trend in movies that require a downright warped reading to find sexism, and pulling out rather nonsensical feminist snark to do so. Oh, and the accusation of "man-splaining"--apparently sarcastic borderline condescension only goes between genders one-way. But I'll stop now if you will.

It's sarcasm, not condescension. I'm making fun of your rigidly biased feminist brain, not your certainly non-feeble female brain

I object to being called rigidly biased. I enjoy a shit-ton of sexist-ass shit and have no problem with it. I happen to loathe the Apatow cycle of shitty comedy (it's not even funny). I'm not so biased that I can't swallow quite near to a metric shit-ton of sexism in things I observe. And I don't complain about most of it. In all our disagreements, we might have fallen out differently on a handful of films/TV/books. You know how many of those things I consume in a year? Hundreds. Thousands. Rigidly determined not to like things because I'm a femi-nazi? I think the only rejoinder here is Bitch, please.

On "mansplaining": The point of this exercise was to see if people observed a bias in film. I have. I look at it from the point of view of a gender that does not open films. That is told it can't open films. Who, if you surveyed film/TV life as if it were a census, would make up about 15% of the total population. And I'm tired of being told by one who is a white male, who enjoys an infinite amount of privilege in that fact, that I'm being too sensitive on this issue. I don't take umbrage often. But every time--every time I do--you jump in to tell me why I'm wrong. And if you didn't know that's how you come across, you do. You come across as saying, "Let me tell you why your opinion is wrong" versus "Let me explain why I disagree." Fair cop--I do some of that, too. We agree to disagree. No more mansplaining. For either of us.

Ah forget it. That last was a bitch line too far. Look, I'm still feeling patronized, so I'll just drop it. I really could care less about this goddamned movie. It's sexist, to me. Period. Agree not to change my mind, I'll agree not to change yours.

I would think that the man-child focus comes primarily out of it being the male anxiety of the current cultural moment. But that means that movies featuring man-children and their stable female/minority sidekicks are still All About the Menz. They exemplify a certain blindness/lack of awareness of the problems of anyone else, so even though the man is no longer perfect, I don't see it as a step forward per se.

Also, Green Hornet (not having seen it) having a super-smart/tech savvy/hard working/humorless Asian sidekick does not strike me as exactly progressive.

Oh, my point is mostly that while being competent is better than being useless, this trend (if it is a trend and not just me cherry picking) is not progressive at all.

Also, compare to the top TV comedies, where we're actually growing out of the dumb dad/male slacker stereotype:

Modern Family: The closest character to a ditz dad, Phil, is also a pretty good real estate salesman, competent with technology, and tends to be the calming influence on the family. The other male characters are all competent and reasonable, no nuttier than the women.

Big Bang Theory: The woman is a ditz with common sense, all the male characters are geniuses.

How I Met Your Mother: All 5 characters have real jobs--the men are an unidentified businessman (Barney), a lawyer (Marshall), and an architect/professor (Ted); the women are a reporter (Robin) and an elementary school teacher (Lily). The men are no less mature than the women.

The Middle: Mike's the controlled, competent dad; Frankie's the nutty mom. Enough said.

30 Rock: Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin are competent and mature; Tracy Morgan and Jane Krakowski play nuts.

The Office: Again pretty mixed gender on the straight characters vs. comics, though more male comics than female.

Better With You: One guy's a slacker, the other's a hotel manager, the two young women are both somewhere in between.

Raising Hope: Everyone's insane.

So at least in TV comedies, I think we have a pretty good amount of gender equality at this point.

Two more quick commentaries:

BBT: I don't know if I'd call Penny a ditz, though she was certainly written that way early on. She's very savvy, and while she doesn't keep up with the guys in science, I think she can think rings around them in other ways. I especially like that Bernadette is also a scientist.

I actually wish Kunthrapali and Walowitz weren't so cartoony in their characterizations.

HIMYM: I love, love, love this show's gender equality. Lily and Robin are allowed to be smart and sexual and as raunchy as the guys. I also appreciate that they are two women allowed to choose their reproductive paths without those choices being value judgments on their characters. Even Robin's child-aversion is presented as "Not for me, but fine for others," not OMG NO CHILDREN EVER. (Even when it veers to the latter, they pull back.)

Barney has become a little too cartoony, but I think they're sorta trying to pull that back as well.

I rarely watch either show and grind my teeth from a gender perspective.

She's very savvy, and while she doesn't keep up with the guys in science, I think she can think rings around them in other ways. I especially like that Bernadette is also a scientist.

Certainly, and pretty much every female supporting character has been sharp (even the Vegas prostitute Leonard and Raj get to cheer up Howard!) Leslie Winkler, Dr. Barnett, Leonard's mom, and Amy Farrah-Fowler are all in the guys' intellectual weight-class (and in my favorite twist, the actress who plays Amy Farrah-Fowler is actually that smart), while Sheldon's mom is wiser than any of the main cast.

One other cool thing about every show I listed, and kind of unique to modern TV comedies: None of the main characters are wholly perfect or wholly flawed (particularly impressive for Modern Family's cast of 10 including 4 children). How did we end up with a set of 8 still running TV comedies with entirely three-dimensional casts?

We earned them through our suffering.

It's an interesting question--has competence fallen off as the most desirable trait in a protagonist such that it is being foisted off on minority/female characters? I think

ivy03 has a good point about male social anxiety explaining the rise of the Dude/Bro hero. I think she's reading the cultural moment exactly right. With traditional masculinity under some scrutiny and even being rejected outright, men, who've forever defined themselves as things they are not (they're not gay, they're not women, etc.), are trying to figure out how define themselves as something they are as the things they traditionally were are being co-opted by women.

What "Dude/Bro hero"? In all of these movies, the irresponsible side of the male protagonist's personality is his worst trait!

Iron Man: Tony's irresponsibility is a problem to be overcome; his genius is his good trait.

Knocked Up: Ben's irresponsibility is the problem; the entire movie is about him growing up and becoming a responsible father.

Other major superhero movies: No one would ever call Batman or Superman a slacker. Spiderman doesn't qualify either--he takes on too much responsibility, not too little.

Other major comedies: The only admirable male character in 40 Year Old Virgin is Steve Carrell; all of his immature co-workers are a little reprehensible. In Juno, Jason Bateman's slacker husband is also reprehensible. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jason Segal's character has to overcome his slacking (and heartbreak) to produce his puppet Dracula musical. I suppose "I Love You, Man" kind of celebrates Jason Segal's cloud-cuckoolander character. But generally, comedies that have a point (i.e., we're leaving out "bunch of crazy stuff happens" movies like The Hangover) aren't celebrating the Dude/Bro, they're making the arrested development a problem to be overcome.

What "Dude/Bro hero"?

Uh, duh, all the ones you just mentioned? Basically, any character played by Seth Rogen. Ever. Yes, the immaturity is often the obstacle to be overcome, but it's played as their endearing trait. What draws Paul Rudd to Jason Segal in I Love You, Man, but that? What there is there to Seth Rogen's character in, again, anything? He's an obnoxious douchebag who says the right combination of words at the last second, thus somehow graduating him up from reprehensible. I don't particularly buy it. But I don't have to. I vote with my time/dollars and don't see comedies that are all about dudes being dudes together because it is so hard to be dudes when, like, there are chicks around. (Which? Be fair now, that was exactly the plot of I Love You, Man.)

Superheroes are a different stripe of movie, and one which I didn't think overlapped with the Dude/bro movie much until Rogen got cast as the lead in Green Hornet. You use Tony Stark as an example. Tony's not really a Dude/Bro person for exactly because he's driven and smart. He's not a slacker/stoner/loser/Rogen type. Yes, he's an asshole, and he's an asshole to women, even the one he likes and physically/emotionally/financially depends on. But he's not a Dude/Bro. He's an anti-hero. Very different archetypes.

Other superheroes aren't really in the scope of the original musings of the lovely lady who is hosting this debate on her LJ. She specifically pointed to lighter-hearted fare, which doesn't really describe any of the superhero movies out recently. Certainly not the ones you name-checked, although Spider-Man 3 veered so far into crack territory, perhaps it wished it had been...

Edited 2011-01-14 21:00 (UTC)

I don't know what kind of movies you've been watching lately where comic protagonists are supposed to be unlikeable. Of course the immaturity starts as an endearing trait in a comedy; unpleasant and reprehensible comic protagonists are what you get in awful Jack Black movies (Year One; School of Rock). So if you want to make a comedy about an immature guy, the immaturity has to be at least a little endearing or the movie doesn't work. You might as well complain that "My Cousin Vinny" portrays rude provincial ignorance positively because Vinny's New York attitude is endearing, or that "Enchanted" portrays wacky ditziness positively because Giselle's confused wandering around New York is endearing.

And the plot of "I Love You, Man" was about the need for male friendship, not about how hard it is to be dudes when there are chicks around. Gender roles and relations are pretty much the focus of every romantic comedy; if you're going to find something sinister in that, then obviously you won't like them. The experience of the movie is utterly foreign to you; that doesn't make it sexist or wrong.

I never said comic protagonists are unlikeable. Stop putting words in my mouth. What I'm saying is that the change has become what is most irritating about them is supposed to be adorable. And you don't really help negate my comments by saying Jack Black is your other best example. He's a poster child of slacker/loser who remains mostly a slacker/loser.

Think of it this way: would any of those women they get want them? As they are? No. As they're improved upon to be? At best, a 0.1% chance. I am not playing the "she's too hot for him" card, I'm playing the "She's too put together to possibly want that card." Unless that's also a source of humor--as in, her failing is liking guys who are no good for her. But if that's the case, she should dump his ass when she makes her emotional improvement arc. Oh, wait, that would require females in Dude/Bro comedies to have emotional arcs.

So if you want to make a comedy about an immature guy, the immaturity has to be at least a little endearing or the movie doesn't work. You might as well complain that "My Cousin Vinny" portrays rude provincial ignorance positively because Vinny's New York attitude is endearing, or that "Enchanted" portrays wacky ditziness positively because Giselle's confused wandering around New York is endearing.

That's just the point: WHY do we have to make all these movies about maturity-stunted males? The prevalence of these films is at least as bad as the films themselves. And the fact that you have so many to rattle on about is proof of how much of a glut there's been of late. Would it rankle so much if there were another pool of female-friendly films to counter it? No. But the closest we get to female-friendly films are male-led films with hot male leads. (Not complaining, mind.)

Comedies about immature guys just aren't that funny. I Love You, Man actually was better than most because it dealt with, as you said, the need for male friendship. Unfortunately, it frequently slipped into defining male friendship as the only solace from women. You know what did a better job of male friendship as a positive force? Role Models. Were women just as marginal? Yes. Did it feel sexist? No because the men did not mature at the expense of the women. (In some ways, the women seemed to benefit--they got more mature men without them having to take the hits and bumps and scrapes to smooth out the immature starting materials.)

or that "Enchanted" portrays wacky ditziness positively because Giselle's confused wandering around New York is endearing.

I like Enchanted, but the fact that the ditzes split up to marry the capable people only serves to send the impression that a marriage between equals isn't possible. In way, that does portray ditziness positively because it makes it almost a prerequisite for success in a relationship. Now, it was gender-equal, though not perfectly so since the ditzy female was the heroine and the ditzy guy was the second male lead, but it did put one and one on the ditzy scale for men and women. So, there's that.

I think it's some of that, but also combined with the aging boomer/glorification of youth thing. Everyone wears blue jeans, middle aged people do the "Don't call me Mr. X, that's my dad" thing, etc. I think we've made growing up uncool.

You know, I've asked myself this question before, and still haven't come up with a decent answer.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thinky-thoughts on irresponsibility and gender portrayal

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

One more point

no subject

no subject