Apatow’s Women Have To Face Up to Reality

Troy and Jessica:

So far, we’ve agreed that the male leads in Apatow movies get to enjoy a gloriously self-indulgent protracted adolescence, while their female counterparts are more commonly portrayed as “uptight and domesticated,” personally or professionally unfulfilled, lacking a comparable support network — essentially relegated to a “no-fun zone.”  There are exceptions, of course, like Catherine Keener’s character in
The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Aubrey Plaza’s in Funny People, but for now we’ll leave them aside.

Referencing David Denby’s 2007 article on the evolution of the romantic comedy [2] Jessica asks how the slacker-striver paradigm “became the default romantic comedy relationship? And is it a reflection … of the real-life dating world?” Troy, for his part,  thinks that while the male characters’ feelings about heterosexual romance imply a deep anxiety about the responsibilities that accompany family life, since “perpetual adolescence is not a viable proposition for most men. Unless they are, professionally, funny people.” And maybe not then, either: Even funny guys Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, who built their careers playing variations on the incorrigible adolescent, have lately acquired a few chinks in their movie star armor.

Perhaps, as Troy suggests, Funny People’s relatively tepid performance does represent a collective exhaustion with Apatow’s preoccupations. But I think it has more to do with the fact that in these dispiriting times, audiences would rather sit through 99 minutes of escapist fare like The Hangover than a 146-minute serio-comic rumination on mortality and lost love. Moreover, as a number of critics have pointed out, it’s tougher to feed your fans’ appetite for everyman comedies when, like Judd Apatow, you’ve gone from Hollywood outsider to consummate insider. (The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis muses that the director “seems to have become uncomfortable with or perhaps immune to the messiness of life.”)

That may be true, but he hasn’t entirely lost his capacity for wry observations that resonate with uncanny emotional truths. Although Knocked Up [3] was more overtly humorous and, in its contrasting depictions of men and women, more readily provocative than Funny People, one key scene in the latter film offers an interesting commentary on gender difference.

Late in the movie, as Laura (Leslie Mann) considers leaving her husband for former love George (Sandler), she subjects him to a kind of litmus test: She plays him a video of her daughter Mabel (Maude Apatow) performing in a recital. Mabel sings beautifully, but George is bored to distraction, and Laura sees it. His chance to win her back evaporates the moment he checks his BlackBerry (although the actual denouement comes later). What Laura wants in a prospective partner—and what George fails to provide—is validation for the choices she’s made. To a woman who’s opted to sacrifice her career so she can have a family, George’s disinterest in Mabel’s performance is especially painful; it’s tantamount to a personal rejection.

In a roundabout way, this scene from Funny People brings me back to Jessica’s question about whether the striver-slacker paradigm reflects a pervasive social trend. Arguably, it does. In recent years, the conversation over women’s life choices has been reinvigorated as we struggle to balance our personal and professional identities.

In the 18 years since Susan Faludi’s Backlash [4] examined the withering criticism that met the feminist movement, increasing numbers of women have chosen to swap the fast track for the mommy track. As women decided it was too taxing—and frankly less satisfying—to try to sustain a flourishing home life and a successful career, cover stories in The New York Times Magazine (“The Opt-Out Revolution [5],” 2003) and Time (The Case for Staying Home,” [6] 2004) confirmed a full-on cultural shift. Many of us felt validated. Many of us still felt torn.

What the women of Knocked Up [3] and Funny People share, I think, is a certain ambivalence and anxiety about their life choices, as well as an acute awareness of their responsibilities. Knocked Up’s [3] Debbie (Mann) and Alison (Katherine Heigl) are constantly reminded of their sacrifices. In the midst of a celebratory girls’ night out, for instance, Debbie has to go home early when her husband calls; their daughter might have chicken pox. It’s no coincidence that her cell phone rings just as a younger man (Jason Segel) tells Debbie she’s beautiful. (By the way, I object to Troy’s reductive characterization of Debbie as “brittle shrew.”)

Similarly, Alison’s mother (Joanna Kerns) cautions her that pregnancy will jeopardize her hard-won position as a TV entertainment reporter. “What’s going to happen to your career?” her mom frets, fueling Alison’s anxiety about losing her job.  Alison’s response: She’ll conceal her condition as long as possible. In both cases, the message is plain: If you think you can have it all, sister, you’d better think again.

The men, by contrast, don’t have to face those questions, only the prospect of familial responsibilities cutting into their man-space. Whether it’s Pete’s rotisserie baseball league or Ben’s bong-hit-inspired living room banter, the guys’ domain is sacred—and best not contaminated with the annoying details and quotidian chores associated with family life. Men, certainly in Apatovia, get to linger in fantasyland while women face up to life’s harsh realities. And not just in Apatovia. I say that because it’s 4 a.m., and having been awakened by my young son’s cries, I sit in his room writing this while my husband sleeps upstairs.

Bleary-eyed

Lael