Men Behaving Badly…And Then There Are the Women

The last post I wrote was about the Sex and the City movie. I did see it, finally, although in a much different environment than the last one. I expected to hate it, I really did. But I found that even though it is many things the critics say it is (long, ridiculous, heavy-handed), it is also very, very enjoyable, and quite funny. And of course, I was captivated by all the articles denouncing the terrible reviews, defending the movie, even as they acknowledged it wasn’t good.

But time passed. I watched two movies I actually had wanted to see for awhile, and planned to write a joint post on: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, both stories based on books about terrible, awful men and their terrible, awful behavior. No apologies were given. Both books were bestsellers.

And then I realized, even though I have seen all three of these movies spaced out over the course of the last month, that all three were touching upon the same issues. Here I try, not very well, to make sense of it all.

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I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is marketed as the raunchiest, craziest bacchanal, a road trip/buddy movie to rival The Hangover. Based on a true-life account of a womanizing law school grad, the movie tries to give shape and story to the book’s outlandish episodes, including redemption for the movie’s central character, Tucker Max. It’s not funny, though trying to figure out why is tough. It’s not a bad movie; it’s certainly watchable, but no, it’s not even remotely close to The Hangover, save for plot.

Matt Czuchry is the quintessential charming rogue, always with an answer for the ladies, yet back with his friends, he can charmingly degrade ‘em all. He’s always on the lookout for the next lay, the next sexual experience, ready for a new story. His appeal is his outlandishness, as girls are always ready to nail his sexist attitudes to his face. His comeuppance in the film is supposed to be gratifying for the audience—he’s not supposed to get away with calling a girl a “cum dumpster”—but instead it’s trite, predictable. Let the guy roam free; nobody believes he’s real anyway.

Czuchry was Logan on Gilmore Girls, a deceptively similar character to the one he plays here: another charming, rich playboy, who glided through school despite all his professors wanting to strangle him. What’s glaring obvious in the movie is his pedigree, though it’s not mentioned: Tucker is able to toss money at everything. If the stripper, girls or his friends have problems, he throws money at it. A row of 10 special shots is $80? No problem. He doesn’t flinch, and while his buddies, being law students, are conscious of money, he isn’t. Nothing fazes him, and he has the smarts to outwit anyone. He is a lawyer.

What was realistic was the dialogue with his friends. The stories are lifted from the book, and possibly some of the dialogue, but while Czuchry isn’t funny, I did believe that a law student like him, who had a comeback for everything, would talk as intelligently and offensively as he did. The movie sags as the movie reaches its denouement, since we know where this is headed. Of course, things end well—the bitter buddy has found a new love, Tucker learns his lesson. The biggest, and what’s supposed to be the funniest scene, completely falls flat in a way that’s appalling; it’s so much better in the book. It’s kind of sad to see I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell bow down to generic story, missing the no-holds-barred tone of the book, to try to garner an audience that didn’t materialize.

However, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is what the title promises—a depressed, mopey grad student (Julianne Nicholson) conducts brief interviews with men about sex, love, and relationships. It’s all dark and cruel. She says almost nothing throughout the movie, recording these monologues. She is constantly followed by men telling tales of conquest and lust, or they just happen upon her as she’s studying in Starbucks, and her tape recorder is always present. The story is told nonlinearly, and we find out her reasoning for conducting this research—all in the name of feminism, she says.

This movie is largely lifted from the novel, with entire sections of the movie nearly word-for-word. Some of the editing and setups are very postmodern, in fitting with David Foster Wallace’s work, with odd jump-cuts and characters in and out of scenes they’re narrating. It’s very arty and quite pretentious, with a lot of preeny intellectualism that each character affects. Partly because of the setting (and the fact that the book was published in the ‘90s), it doesn’t feel contemporary; there’s talk of rape and love and fantasies and the cruel way that men treat women, but nobody talks like this, in long, artfully constructed sentences.

I’ve read both books, and the wide spaces both stories occupy seem to posit men as these awful creatures. Brief Interviews is not a story that should be seen when in a bad mood, like after a breakup. Nor, really, is Beer in Hell, as both will give ammunition to the phrase “men are cowards”, uttered in the former film. Both stories namecheck feminism, and the men go out of their way to talk about it, how they view it, how they view women—trying to discover what they want, give them what they want. It’s all syntactical gymnastics, and following the logic of most of the monologues gets a little confusing at times. All the men purport to be “honest” in the films, but in Beer in Hell they’re routinely emasculated (especially the groom at the center of the story, but his was the weakest plot), while the men in Brief Interviews are aggressive and gregarious. Sara, the grad student, just takes it all in.

She barely reacts, and her passivity works against her. It’s hard to watch her, especially in some of the more confrontational moments when she is hijacked by monologues by her ex-boyfriend and an interview subject on rape, and not wish her to say something, to scream out in anger. At least in Beer in Hell, the women have their say. They all routinely attack Tucker, spouting off how sexist he is. Tucker will perform his own syntactical gymnastics, but with less snooty intellectualism. And they do have their comeuppance, since the audience is meant to understand that Tucker does really care, that he just wants to have fun, and that (by the end) he’s slowly learning to grow up. That’s not the pat ending in Brief Interviews: Sara is still sad, and her project is merely reinforcing the terribleness of the world, the awfulness of men—even when they care, it’s all wrapped in layers and layers of self-loathing and fear. These men just need to get a grip on themselves. Nothing much really “happens”; the movie is an excuse for a lot of excellent actors to act, though the dialogue often sounds stilted and too actor-y. John Krasinski, the director, is also Sara’s ex, and he is very much the opposite of his nice-guy persona on The Office. Frankly, even he saying the word “bitch” just sounds unnatural.

Both these movies about men behaving badly were supposed to be fun, in a way, just a general romp through awful actions we’d never dare to do ourselves. That’s the selling point. But the Sex and the City movie, also marketed as a fun romp, actually was—though you wouldn’t believe it from the press.

I loved the movie. Yes, I did. I laughed. I had a smile on my face nearly the entire time. It’s ridiculous, sexist, and most definitely offensive. And yet, I enjoyed it mightily.

It is not the Sex and the City of the television show, but I knew that already. The emotional stakes were low, and the Aiden storyline was stupid. Carrie herself was dumb—and most of her storyline could have been avoided had she just told Big outright how she felt. But the nibbles were there—Carrie’s struggle to find a way to make marriage work for her, done her way, felt true. All of the other women were as one-note as possible. I cringed at Miranda being the peppy tour guide, at Samantha loudly being as crass as possible, and at Charlotte because she had nothing better to do. Surprisingly, what none of the reviews mentioned, in between lambasting the movie for every possible offense, was that the movie did try to put the story in context. One of Carrie’s friends gently reminds her of the days when she couldn’t even get Big to stay over, and now she’s mad that he’s always around (“A little perspective is always good”). They do mention the recession, how things have changed since the last movie, and refer to events in both that film and in the canon of the television show. That meant a lot. I also appreciated how the movie tried to bring home the message that life is always hard, no matter the stage. This, unfortunately, was largely lost through the ostentatious outfits and accessories, and the silliness of the plot.

I found the movie beautiful. All the actresses looked fantastic. The colors! The clothes! They looked like what they were—women in their 40s and 50s, well-dressed, with money. Comparing them to younger versions of themselves is unfair. Yes, the movie went over-the-top, but that was part of the show; it was just more of it in the movie, just like the screwball sensibilities that have always underlined the humor of the series.

I completely understand the anger. If I was a mother, the scene between Charlotte and Miranda discussing parenting (“How do they do it without help?”) would be ridiculously condescending and offensive, even more so than it is. Yet I felt that that line was supposed to be a sendup, as sometimes the over-the-top hysterics of nearly every character was portrayed. Maybe it was on us because we took it so seriously.

Maybe that’s another failure of this genre. The backlash to the backlash repeatedly pointed out that some of the vituperative criticisms were unfair, that men’s movies do this all the time…not just The Hangover and Hot-Tub Time Machine, but James Bond. Frankly, The Hangover is an apt comparison to both I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and Sex and the City 2. It too was filled with a stupid plot, slapstick humor, and a helpful heap of sexism, in both obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Yet because Sex and the City 2 had the balls to showcase a completely different side—and do it on their terms—it raised a lot more ire than the usual entries in the genre.

All three of these movies—Sex and the City 2, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men—are variations on a theme. Yes, two are supposed to be popcorn, but all three purport to have Statements. All three movies were written and directed by men, a not-insignificant fact. It’s a tossup whether Brief Interviews is supposed to be revelatory about men, or just another dark comedy on the subject, or even trying to make a statement about women. It’s clear, though, from watching these movies, even as they claim to be about (and for) one sex, it’s impossible not to include the other in some form. Sometimes it’s trite, or boring, or pretentious, or so ridiculous that it’s impossible to believe anything. But all know there is humor in the subject.

Further reading:
What Went So Horribly Wrong with Sex and the City 2? A Critic and Fan Debate the Demerits
Now, In Defense of SATC 2
Un-Innocents Abroad: The Drubbing
Why the SATC 2 Reviews Were Misogynist
All of the reviews I read of Brief Interviews (three, after I watched) were very accurate, but this one's perhaps the best.

I Know Christina Hendricks is Sexy. Stop Telling Me.

I have nothing against Christina Hendricks, but articles like this make me mad.

The majority of attention Christina Hendricks gets revolves around her figure. Even when she graced the cover of New York magazine, the shot focused on her chest, and the piece inside the magazine was little more than a few paragraphs below an enormous picture of her torso. The pieces on the actress usually mention little more than her role as “the curvaceous secretary Joan Holloway on AMC’s Mad Men”, continuing to extol her beauty and wonderful body.

And of course, she has a wonderful figure, one that, as these articles continue to tell me, isn’t celebrated in modern culture, but was in the halcyon days celebrated in the show she appears in. Her figure is also accentuated very nicely by the character she plays, a sexy woman who is known by her sex appeal, and by the period clothes her character requires. Those foundation garments were made for women like Christina Hendricks, relegating the other females in the cast to look poor and skinny when compared to her.

But the more I hear how wonderful and beautiful Christina Hendricks is, the more sad and disappointed and annoyed I get. I’d like to read more about Christina Hendricks the actress, the person behind the body. I’d like to hear about Joan. But I’d also like to stop hearing about how she makes everyone else look paltry and unattractive by comparison. Even in her Esquire photos (where she is close to unrecognizable), it’s clear that they make her boobs pop even more than what should be considered normal, squeezing her into a smaller size. And Hendricks also has one of those figures that isn’t that common, since she has a near-perfect hourglass figure, perfectly proportioned waist and hips. Of course many girls want to look like her.

Aside from the fact that the Esquire survey in discussion is completely unfair, articles that tout Hendricks' size always have to mention “the competition”—those models and actresses that aren’t built like her, those “thin” ones that apparently get all the attention. I’m not suggesting that thinner girls don’t get their share of attention, but there is always the constant, insinuating put down apparent when one is lauding Hendricks’ body:

Winning one for shapely women everywhere, Hendricks is not an anorexia-induced size two. In the accompanying Esquire article she waxed poetic about pork and deep fryers–when was the last time you heard Kate Moss talk about beer battered anything?

“Anorexia-induced size two.” First of all, as someone who was in the mall today, in fact, looking at some of those “size twos”, I can tell you that they are often bigger than you think. Size twos might be tiny, but it is clothing designers who have consistently made sizes bigger than they should be, causing what is known as “size inflation”. Size twos might be stick-figure thin for models, but in department stores, they really aren’t. By using such a loaded term that connotes disease, the article writers imply that small sizes are automatically bought by women who are sickly. Hyperbole? Maybe a little, but the distinction made—that “curvaceous”, at least the curvaceous that Hendricks embodies, is the antithesis of being skinny—and therefore diseased—is harmful and untrue. Nor is adding that Hendricks is a fan of such unhealthy foods going to bolster the argument that she is practically perfection. If she waxed about cheese or arugula, would that be noted? We’re supposed to take away that Hendricks eats “like a real woman”, and her body reflects this diet (which I seriously doubt. I'm sure she does like those foods, but I bet she doesn’t consist on them, or she wouldn't look like she does.) Is eating pork and beer-battered foods supposed to mean that’s what real women eat, and that the women who don’t (those "anorexic-induced sized twos") are less worthy? That there is automatically a connection, that thin women must be starving themselves if they choose not to eat such “men-approved” foods?

To further add insult to injury, Kate Moss aside, there are plenty of articles about thinner actresses and models that mention what they eat, in these same proud tones. GQ, Esquire’s rival, published a cover story on Hendricks’ costar January Jones a few months ago, and the story opens with Jones professing her love for Chili’s queso, beer and football—all signals that she’s a girl for Real Men. Readers are supposed to note that Jones, like Hendricks, is a fun, unfussy person to be around, and their food preferences obviously showcase this.

These articles, though, at their core, do nothing but make women feel bad about themselves. Women can’t win, as they never fit one standard, and whatever preferences they have about virtually anything can be twisted. I’m tired of hearing, even jokingly, how small sizes are ruining America, of being made to feel like I am less than because I am thin, or that I’m expected to uphold some sort of ideal because of what I look like. I don’t like that I have to go on the defense on this topic, and I don’t like that Christina Hendricks can’t get much press outside of her body. She is a great actress, but we don’t hear enough about that; she is relegated to her fair skin, her red hair, and her breasts. Sure, she uses it to her advantage, and I have no problem with that; I would, too. But let’s stop pretending that she is a womanly ideal and that her very presence demolishes or diminishes all the others who don’t look like her. She is as much of a victim of retouching and the capricious whims of the zeitgeist as anyone else.

Notes on Blogging, Gender, Technology, House and Julie & Julia

(I posted this here because of the lengthy discussion of Julie & Julia and House. Unfortunately, the House episode is not available online yet, or I would link and quote from it.)

I had a very bloggy week, between watching Julie & Julia and Monday’s episode of House, which both revolved around women whose blogs got the better of them.

Julie & Julia received a lot of press for its portrayal of supportive husbands, on both women’s side. The Times gleefully wrote of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci’s portrayal of middle-aged passion, but Julie’s husband was a “saint”, so much so that he objected to the label. Much is made of the Childs’ marriage, how passionate they were, but I found Paul Child to be supportive, but distant; in fact, both husbands in the movie were quite bland. Maybe that’s the point—they both were supportive characters, meant to prop up the leads, so they usually are less developed than the protagonists.

But other than that observation, it was Julie’s bloggy passion that stood out, in comparison to this week’s House episode, concentrated on a blogger who goes a little too personal with her diagnosis. Both women get caught up in blogging about their lives, neglecting their significant others, who come to resent their girlfriend’s hobby. (Tip: Get a boyfriend who blogs, or who at least likes the medium as much as you do.) This is reminiscent of Emily Gould’s fantastic bloggy piece in the New York Times nearly two years ago, where she recounts how blogging about her personal life wrecked her relationship and her life. All three women had successful blogs, the real-life ones turning into successful writers. All three were transformed by their hobby, sharing their love with others and eventually having their own audience. Both Julie and Laura Prepon’s Frankie worry too much about their audience; Julie, about actually having one, and Frankie, about what they think. She uses her blog as a crowdsource of opinion, on both the large and small decisions of her life, including the many major medical ones she faces in the episode. Their blogs become their lives, their reason for getting up in the morning. Julie’s Julia Child obsession is fueled by her blogging, and without it the structure of her project would fall apart, as she is documenting her progress. Frankie, too, is obsessed with documenting her life, and despite protestations from her boyfriend, feels she would be lying if she did not faithfully record or retell everything. Julie does not feel this way, though she does consent to not publicizing a fight she has with her husband (though by it being in the movie we presume that it is retold in her book).

The issue here, of course, becomes privacy. Sure, on the surface, Julie Powell’s project sounds fun, if daunting, and not particularly invasive; she is in charge of how much she chooses to reveal, and on the surface a cooking blog would not be one to draw readers.

But of course, that’s too simplistic. One of the women mentioned in the film who actually makes an appearance is Amanda Hesser, a New York Times food writer who made a name for herself (at least to this writer) by writing a column in the Times Magazine in the early part of the ‘00s, “Cooking for Mr. Latte”, about her meals and dates with a certain Mr. Latte, later revealed to be the New Yorker writer Tad Friend. “Cooking for Mr. Latte”, a kind of Sex and the City meets food, certainly had enough dish and romantic intrigue to make it more than just another food column, and, though it was on paper, had a bloggy feel to it, as it chronicled their burgeoning relationship. (The column also became a book.)

So why are all these bloggers women? Why is it that women feel the need to emotionally reveal themselves online, to chronicle their lives? Men seem to go about it in a much more analytical, data-driven fashion; Nicholas Felton has designed a number of what he calls “Personal Annual Reports”, yearly compilations of the minutia that makes up his life, and it’s fascinating: all the restaurants he ate at, the countries he visited, his most played songs on iTunes. Every year, the charts and graphs, not to mention what he actually records, get increasingly complex. (The MIT Media Lab has done similar projects, recording and analyzing personal, daily data of students.) Sure, I already know all the comments, the criticism: even a friend of mine, when I showed him Feltron, responded, “I know the irony of what I'm about to say as a man that [sic] Tweets but that's kind of self absorbed.”

Sure, it’s self-absorbed. But it’s a whole other form of diary, a multimedia one, life writ large. The data aspects makes it so much cooler, because it’s objective, and it’s a form that you can’t argue with; maybe that’s why men like it. There are so many ways to tell a story, and neither is completely right, for each time it’s told, it’s done a little differently, and they all give different sides to the same one.

The Internet, in all its lovely possibilities, has also given us a way to be anonymous and solicit anonymous opinions. That comes across in blogging—again with the choosing to reveal what we want. But there’s also the new ChatRoulette and Formspring.me, services that flip anonymity on its head.

ChatRoulette, memorably introduced to many (including me) via this New York article, is a basic service that automatically turns on a user’s webcam and randomly beams you into someone else’s browser, and they you. The only options are to engage, move on, or turn off. Most outlets have connected it back to the days of the “wild, wild Internet”, before it became safe for minors, where everything and everyone was searchable. Here, it doesn’t matter if your name or your face or your home really belongs to you, as you are only known by your face, and there is no tag—there’s not even a record of who you’ve been connected with. There’s no way to track, no searching, no user names, no login information, no password. Glorious freedom. And yet it’s scary and incredibly intimidating, a party game to play.

Formspring.me is a site, a meme if you like, that lets people ask questions of a particular user. The person can use his or her real name, or a version of it, if the person desires, and those asking the questions can also identify themselves, though they usually stay anonymous. People asking the questions are strangers and friends; maybe you’ll get something good. It’s a version of a Facebook application known as the honesty box, which always got someone in trouble; that’s what honesty tends to do. And yet it’s addicting, in a way, to say too much; God knows in this era of TMI that it’s hard to put a lid on. Lying is contagious too, but it’s confusing as hell; being openly honest, too openly honest, can be about connecting or prolonging the awkward, having something to say, maybe just making a funny.

So we have two sides of a coin here: a site where we are expected to divulge secrets to those asking, and another an interface where we are personally faced with random strangers, no accountability. The first is implicitly about accountability, though we aren’t supposed to be pegged; the second, an escape route if we wish it to be.

But of course, we often occupy on the assumption that more information is better, and that notion led to ChatRoulette map, where users’ IP addresses are tracked to see who is using the service at any time. You do not need to be engaged on ChatRoulette to use ChatRoulette map, as I discovered this afternoon. There’s an option to turn this off, for it ruins the fun for some people. Exposing IP addresses always has a whiff of creepiness, as it feels like Big Brother is coming down to watch.

There are plenty of people that say that both will be a fad, and in Internet world, there are few things that have escaped this designation, one being Facebook. The Internet is both a blessing and a curse, causing us both to escape and feel trapped by our past, and we eagerly take up the call whenever we need to do so.

P.S. I have a formspring.me account. Ask questions, readers! Also cross-posted on Notes on Popular Culture.