Underbellie

Last night my husband and I spent a few sawbucks to watch the latest film starring Will Ferrell, Land of the Lost. Since we have young children and a working class income, a night with just the two of us is usually spent in simple pleasures: dinner together, a bit of housekeeping, a glass of wine and a silly film. Both of us, though we enjoyed this latest inane Ferrell comedy (the meat and potatoes of our mindless entertainment proclivities), were disappointed by the disturbing yet somehow boring repetitions of the same racist, sexist, and heterosexist foibles we keep seeing in today’s featured blockbuster comedies.

Land of the Lost evidences the seminal properties that define what I call the Man-Boy Movie. Ferrell plays Dr. Rick Marshall, a version of character repeated in countless comedies du jour, including Superbad, The Break Up, Knocked Up, Don’t Mess With The Zohan, Step Brothers, Hot Rod, Old School – I could go on. Marshall may somehow be an advanced scientist but is more importantly a middle-aged man uncouth, stupid – although somehow intelligent enough to create a revolutionary piece of scientific equipment – profane, and socially backwards. Anna Friel plays Holly Cantrell, in a winsome turn at Worshipping Girl Scientist. Danny McBride plays Will, a redneck, substance-abusing, pyrotechnic sidekick (more about him in a minute). Once in the Land of the Lost they are joined by Cha-Ka, a primate-like being played by Jorma Taccone, and the film follows the foursome through various comedic shennanigans based on a mere skeletal frame of a plot.

Ferrell’s potrayal is just as we’d expect (as listed above) – yet still, in my opinion, the performance managed to be very funny. Holly, on the other hand, is something different: her character is composed almost entirely of equal quantities of plucky cheerleader speeches, hero-worship in the case of Marshall (we are unsure as to how he deserves this), and a remarkable patience and fortitude whilst being sexually harassed, fondled, and diminished by all three male characters (including the humanoid Cha-Ka). Supposedly Holly is an empowered, intelligent woman; but she is none of these qualities so much that she’d inconvenience the bad behaviors of the males of the film. For instance, at the outset of the adventure Will comments to her, in so many words, she will find an upcoming adventure so thrilling her vagina will get moist. She threatens him with drowning should he speak to her this way again. But as the film proceeds we see this is an empty threat: similar comments, and an almost incessant amount of unwelcomed breast-fondling, are repeated regularly – and Holly takes no action to stop these. Her pluckiness and intelligence, therefore, serve only as a foil for her male co-stars, in such a way as to always help and never hamper.

She is also, of course, young and heteronormatively mainstream beautiful (she is also, of course, white), typical fare for these kinds of films. We are spared no details in an exploration of Ferrell and McBride’s very human physiques – a pool scene, half nudity, fat rolls, and many closeups on their faces showing every pore, greasy hair follicle, and wrinkle. Anna by comparison is framed through a dewey lense of flawlessness, presented in an immaculate tank top, hotpants, little girl braids, and impeccable makeup (I am skipping over the odd fact that in the orginial television series Holly and Will were Rick’s children; Anna as Ferrell’s romantic and sexual interest resembles something between Science Barbie and a teenage daughter). And most regrettable of all, although we are afforded long addresses by Rick and Will discussing their eating habits, the adventure of collecting hadrosaur urine (don’t ask), their life’s ambitions, their camp songs, their twisted view of the world and their harebrained, silly shemes – all we know about Anna is she went to Cambridge at some point and then attached herself to Rick’s scientific methods. For all intensive purproses Anna is a one-dimensional beauty, not anything approaching a three-dimensional person.

Because, for me, the most disturbing part of the Man-Boy movies is not so much the presence of young, heteronormatively beautiful females, but the lack of character and comedic fairness afforded to them. Part of the “Average Guy / Hot Girl” phenomenan (although, notably, the men featured in these films are “average” in looks and physicality, while their behavior often contains greater than average components of near-sociopathic behavior, personal ineptitude, aggressiveness, and sometimes sadism) – is that the bumbling hero will end up with a woman in some grey area of supermodel / mom – she being afforded only the most superficial character traits of these socially-prescribed categories. Another article refers to this as “the current generation of romantic comedies that pair aged boy doofuses with women who are far more mature and responsible.” Yes, the morality and intelligence of the females in these films is notably more developed than the male, but it’s also boring. They are beautiful, humorless (although they allow poor behaviors to go mostly unchecked so therefore show some tolerance), devoted to their deeply-troubled males, and serve very little besides eye candy and a sort of “prize” for our heroes. It’s frustrating so few moviegoers speak out about this.

Because in film it seems we find old, ugly, fat, comedic or flawed females as either A. the butt of the joke, or B. completely unable to carry our interest in a typical lead role. Taking the analysis, only briefly, up to better caliber of film, consider last year’s The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke was touted as not only giving a good performance but achieving heights of physical inhabitance in his turn as the scarred, battered, beaten-up hard-living professional athlete at the end of his career. The filmmakers’ choice for his counterpart? Marissa Tomei as the “aging stripper”. Really? Is that what an old, blousy stripper typically looks like? Taken as one film, you cannot really find fault; but why is this what we see, over and over, an uninteresting but repetitive variation of Beauty and the Beast? Because we would not find an ugly, “old”, deeply flawed (or all three!) woman relatable or worthy of much notice or interest.

It’s worth a brief mention: Danny McBride’s rendition of Will is also problematic. Within seconds of our introduction to this man he has spewed forth a few varieties of verbal vomit: elaborating on his future plan to build a massive casino complete with huge parking lot, taking a wife to mate with and then, if she’s not pleasing, imprisoning her in the far wing of the gold-leaf massive building which features a prominent racist charicature of a Native American (I am not making this up!). The character of Will bothers me almost more than Anna, because he provides us the opportunity to laugh at “rednecks” and their backwardness, but also get our giggles on the racist, sexist, and heterosexist behaviors (identical to those displayed for decades past) he mawkishly provides. Ultimately during the film Will becomes a far more relatable, if still crude, character. And this, to me, is a good thing. These films are in the final analysis buddy movies; and this is one reason I enjoy and continue to watch them.

Because yes: I laugh with crude, profane humor, I love depictions of playful – and yes, at times asinine – friendships, and I fiercely enjoy random, inane comedy. The funny moments in Land of the Lost – and there were many – were those where the camera lingered on Ferrell or Will as they were allowed to perform as unbalanced and very human characters with their own stories, their own weirdnesses. Why was this not afforded to the sole female in the film?

Too much analysis? I don’t think so. We have seen these same patterns, this same diminishment to the female, repeated in not only today’s Judd Apatow vehicles but movies spanning back through my cinematic memory. Pop culture is both a window into how we view our world and a mirror for which we can gaze, reflect, and self-correct. When we see a slew of same-minded pheomena, it can be informative to investigate why these memes exist, what they say about our culture, why they’re appreciated, and when and why they should carry some misapprehension.

I have decided it will only be when we have more female writers, directors, and producers, and more intelligent, discerning, and fair-minded men involved in the process that I can enjoy these comedies not just in my gut but in my mind and heart. In the meantime, I will enjoy the slapstick moments, the silly references to sexual appetite, the unnecessary and aggressive “fuck you’s!”, the odd impersonations and absurd and unbelievable scenarios Ferrell and his ilk deliver, as best I can.

Further reading: “Ah, Hollywood, where men will be boys”

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Photo credit: “happy sailing” from x_ray_ on Flickr; used under Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0).