Arts
Are Judd Apatow's Movies Just Chick Flicks for Dudes?
How Funny People, Knocked Up, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin allow men to explore complex emotions.
Photographic still of “The 40 Year Old Virgin” starting Catherine Keener and Steve Carell, courtesy of Universal Pictures.
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Compared to the women of the earlier films, Funny People’s Laura is the least compelling and the least developed, but she’s hardly a cipher. A cousin to Virgin’s Trish and Knocked Up’s Alison, she struggles to find balance in her life and yearns to reboot her acting career. Though she loves her family, Laura acknowledges a certain longing in her life. (Mann put her own career on the back burner to raise her children with Apatow; he credits her with providing an emotionally authentic female voice in his films.)
So does all this make Apatow’s films sexist? Phallocentric, yes. Sexist, not exactly. True, the men of Knocked Up have more fun than the women, particularly when you juxtapose the guys’ Vegas trip with the girls’ misbegotten nightclub outing. The female roles are indeed secondary in the films. But there is a range to Apatow’s women, from the sexually liberated Elizabeth Banks character in Virgin, to the astute wife Mann plays in Knocked Up, to the deadpan, terrifically sharp Plaza in Funny People. Moreover, female audiences are drawn to Apatow films not because we want to be entertained by watching women explore their emotional attitudes about relationships—we’ve got Sex and the City for that—but because we want to laugh while watching men navigate treacherous emotional terrain. It’s something we don’t often get to see in life or on film. As my husband rather indelicately put it, “Apatow movies are like chick flicks with dicks.”
Apatow’s brand of hermaphroditic cinema finds its literal embodiment in another of the films-within-the-film. While Jessica referenced Re-Do, in which George plays a baby with an adult head digitally attached, a winking meta-commentary on the kinds of films for which Sandler himself has become famous, I would suggest that Merman, in which George plays a half male/half female sea creature (whose cries apparently are a source of female sexual arousal) is an equally fitting emblem for Apatovian gender politics: men work out their issues and insecurities largely through discussion and deliberation, an avenue traditionally open only to women.
But here’s what I want to know, Jessica and Troy: Do you think that Apatow’s movies privilege the bromance to the point where a fully functional heterosexual relationship is impossible? In Funny People, it would seem to be the case. In Knocked Up, you could argue that the most dynamic relationship is the one that develops between married guy Pete (Paul Rudd) and the soon-to-be married Ben. In Virgin, Andy finally seems to have found a promising relationship with Trish. But the movie ends just as they consummate their relationship—capped by a hilariously dreamy dance rendition of “Let the Sunshine In." Is Apatow saying you can’t be a guy’s guy and have a girlfriend/wife at the same time? Or can you?
Looking forward to the next installment.
Best,
Lael
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Comments
LUXBOT
By: p.bateman | Fri, 08/07/2009 - 04:53
you are attacking the person rather than the argument.
my point stands, can there be a male version of SEX & THE CITY without the show being labeled misogynist and the men chauvinist pigs.
can women and feminists in specific tolerate 4 men discussing WOMEN on a popular tv show?
Way to make broad, sweeping
By: Luxbot | Wed, 08/05/2009 - 20:51
Way to make broad, sweeping statements, P. Bateman! And yes, I noticed your moniker. You're just a troll with an incoherent point of view, man. Try backing up and thinking a little.
@ reader2
By: p.bateman | Sun, 08/02/2009 - 05:39
im not talking about responsibility in other aspects of life. im SPECIFICALLY talking about the relationship/sexual aspects....so please keep it specific. the truth is that women get inherently uncomfortable at these things because it makes men less relationship-oriented. you feminist lot hate those romantic movies where women are obsessed with relationship and guys but you would love to see men subjected to the same shit. ihve heard a lot of feminists whine that the media and pop culture tends to exaggerate mens sexuality or something and the whole thing HURTS women because men are becoming more and more sex-oriented and feel entitled to sex.... what the fuck is that supposed to mean?
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you give all the props to women in SATC when they are having a bachelorette party ordering a male stripper but when its some young dudes doing the same the questions that arise in your feminist head are
(1) they are objectifying women, society is teaching young men to be disrespectful to women, think of them as objects etc.
(2)media is exaggerating young mens sexuality (when infact young men are naturally very interested in casual sex)
(3) such behavior is harmful to women who will seek relationships with these guys.
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moreover you will call these men PERVERTS. what the hell do you people want i wonder? cant you fcuking see the REVERSAL OF THE DOUBLE STANDARD?
re: hypocrisy
By: reader2 | Sat, 08/01/2009 - 17:07
The difference is that when women declare themselves liberated, they are saying, "I can take care of myself." It's a reaction to the 50's era infantilization of women, where they weren't even considered independent and responsible enough to open a bank account without a husband or father.
In contrast, these "liberated" Apatow men are saying the exact reverse - "I'm not going to take care of myself." I'm not going to grow up, I'm not going to be responsible, I'm not going to be functioning adult. Nah nah nah boo boo.
Neither men nor women should have to bow to societal pressures, in whatever way they are running. But once you're an adult, both men and women need to at least grow up to the point that they are responsible adults, regardless of whether or not that involves a relationship for any given person.
it is hypocrisy on part of these whiny women
By: p.bateman | Fri, 07/31/2009 - 06:14
it is hypocrisy on part of these whiny women that when women are given the message that they can be free, they dont need a man in life to save them, they can have casual sex, they can explore their sexualities, the message is seen as positive and LIBERATING and breaking the tradition barriers.
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but when men are given this message that 'they dont need a woman in life', they can do without marriage and responsibility and be find casual sex fulfilling and exciting, this message is seen as misogynist and hurtful to women.
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for some reason, in todays society it always has to be about women and their interests....it always has to be seen from a womans point of view. the hypocrisy is mind boggling.