Thinky-thoughts on irresponsibility and gender portrayal

[jethrien]

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.)

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

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.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

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.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

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.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

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.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.