12/12/2007: Superbad is garbage.
Superbad.
The way I figure it, most movies are actually about the importance of hooking it up with a member of the
opposite sex and integrating quietly into the measured current that washes us all into the Christian afterlife. I
hesitate to use the term hetro-normativity, even though that's more or less what I'm talking about.
Nevertheless, I hesitate to use hetro-normativity because I hate that word for purely aesthetic reasons. Not
only that, but I read the best letter and response I've ever read in Savage Love today and it really put
everything I do (and the actual value of what I do) into a crystal-clear perspective for me. I quote the letter
here:
Q. Your recent columns about men, women, weight, attraction, and honesty were incredible. As a
strong feminist, I know women overwhelmingly bear the brunt of sexism in our society, but I feel
that the ways that sexism affects men—and how this code is maintained by social relationships
between other men as well as women—are often marginalized. Sexism affects us all in some way,
and this week's column did a nail-on-the-head job showcasing how all men are negatively affected
by sexist patterns. Understanding and accounting for gendered interactions between all people helps
undermine patriarchy, because the roles we as a society impose on one of the two hegemonic sexes
are diametrically opposed in the other. Great job. —Feminism Is Great Healthy Thought
A. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, FIGHT, but thanks for sharing.
http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0750,savage,78568,24.html
I honestly think that everything I write about as an academic, and most of what I read, is absolute rubbish
that has no practical value or connection to the real world. There are noteworthy exceptions to this, but
they are few and far between. Not only this, but many of the exceptions are written in a dialect so obscure
that it takes years to understand what they mean and by that point one is so disconnected from the original
problem that it no longer matters what is happening in reality. Now some straw-people argue that, like any
profession, an academic develops a jargon related to the field and uses it in order to express problems related
to the field that can not be discussed in layman's terms. This is true. An academic talking about gendered
interactions between two hegemonic sexes is only being specific in the same way that a mechanic might be
when talking about dual overhead cams and exhaust manifolds and all of that. On the other hand, academics
(and I'm particularly singling out Habermas here), unlike mechanics, take actual situations from the real
world that are invested with the real life suffering of people and invent abstract solutions to these problems.
Mechanics don't do this. Then, when it becomes the case that the abstract solution neither works nor is
even slightly comprehensible to the people who originally had the problem, the academics turn around and
say that and say that the solution was only ever supposed to be hypothetical, thus helping no one. Want me
to cite specific examples? Go fuck yourself.
Anyhow, the point I'm trying to get to here is that Superbad is going along as a mildly humourous teen-
gross-out comedy, but then, at the end, every one of the heroes suddenly pairs off with the girl of his
dreams (I say girl of their dreams because the women are obviously only accessories to the men, in each
case providing the male protagonists with an essential missing half of their personality). Not only do they all
pair off, but there is this whole maudlin thing going on about childhood's end and how perfectly natural it is
that we move from the phase of all male friendships into the phase of male/female relationships—we join the
stream of docility and flow slowly into the great sea of God moderated death.
Superbad, in this respect, goes onto my special shit-list along with shows like the Simpsons. These works
are ultimately all about familial normality, and all of the freakish behaviour and subversity they promise us at
the outset ends up being, in the end, just a big ploy by which the obscure and scary parts of the world are
slowly coated in a bland suburban mother-of-pearl veneer. The final promise that everything can return to
normal and that every outlandish possibility in life eventually leads back to the supposed truth that everyone
is good and everyone in some way or another actually embraces some aspect of the American dream is one
of the biggest mind-fucks going. It is the entertainment industry's version of multiculturalism: you can be
anything you want to be as long as that thing ends up looking like what everyone else is doing.
We see the theme over and over in movies about men and women and the things they do. Whether it is
James Bond, dragging some bimbo along, keeping just ahead of the lasers and explosions, or it is some
romantic comedy, or it is some luscious film-noir rehash like No Country for Old Men, the thematic
presence of the man/woman relationship is always a lynch-pin. It is not that these films do this consciously,
they are simply mirrors reflecting the way that we all have been trained to feel.
Superbad and its wicked cousin, The Simpsons, are the worst offenders in this regard. For while they
pretend to be not about man/woman relations and the effort to push everyone into the normal stream, they
are actually more about this than any other film or show. See, the people attracted to this kind of material
are the ones who sense, even slightly, what a big bag of bullshit the whole man/woman game is in the first
place. These people are attracted to the Simpsons because they feel it actually mocks these
conventions…but then if you watch it carefully you will see it doesn't. It is just another way of luring
people back into the same crap. I know I just said I hated academic bullshit, but now I am obligated to
mention Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment at this point…making me much like the
Simpsons, in that I lured you in with my subversity and then zinged you with the same critical theory
bullshit I had just demonized, just when you least expected it.
It is 4:00am, and I'm not sure I'm making sense. But I'm glad I wrote this anyhow.
Superbad.
The way I figure it, most movies are actually about the importance of hooking it up with a member of the
opposite sex and integrating quietly into the measured current that washes us all into the Christian afterlife. I
hesitate to use the term hetro-normativity, even though that's more or less what I'm talking about.
Nevertheless, I hesitate to use hetro-normativity because I hate that word for purely aesthetic reasons. Not
only that, but I read the best letter and response I've ever read in Savage Love today and it really put
everything I do (and the actual value of what I do) into a crystal-clear perspective for me. I quote the letter
here:
Q. Your recent columns about men, women, weight, attraction, and honesty were incredible. As a
strong feminist, I know women overwhelmingly bear the brunt of sexism in our society, but I feel
that the ways that sexism affects men—and how this code is maintained by social relationships
between other men as well as women—are often marginalized. Sexism affects us all in some way,
and this week's column did a nail-on-the-head job showcasing how all men are negatively affected
by sexist patterns. Understanding and accounting for gendered interactions between all people helps
undermine patriarchy, because the roles we as a society impose on one of the two hegemonic sexes
are diametrically opposed in the other. Great job. —Feminism Is Great Healthy Thought
A. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, FIGHT, but thanks for sharing.
http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0750,savage,78568,24.html
I honestly think that everything I write about as an academic, and most of what I read, is absolute rubbish
that has no practical value or connection to the real world. There are noteworthy exceptions to this, but
they are few and far between. Not only this, but many of the exceptions are written in a dialect so obscure
that it takes years to understand what they mean and by that point one is so disconnected from the original
problem that it no longer matters what is happening in reality. Now some straw-people argue that, like any
profession, an academic develops a jargon related to the field and uses it in order to express problems related
to the field that can not be discussed in layman's terms. This is true. An academic talking about gendered
interactions between two hegemonic sexes is only being specific in the same way that a mechanic might be
when talking about dual overhead cams and exhaust manifolds and all of that. On the other hand, academics
(and I'm particularly singling out Habermas here), unlike mechanics, take actual situations from the real
world that are invested with the real life suffering of people and invent abstract solutions to these problems.
Mechanics don't do this. Then, when it becomes the case that the abstract solution neither works nor is
even slightly comprehensible to the people who originally had the problem, the academics turn around and
say that and say that the solution was only ever supposed to be hypothetical, thus helping no one. Want me
to cite specific examples? Go fuck yourself.
Anyhow, the point I'm trying to get to here is that Superbad is going along as a mildly humourous teen-
gross-out comedy, but then, at the end, every one of the heroes suddenly pairs off with the girl of his
dreams (I say girl of their dreams because the women are obviously only accessories to the men, in each
case providing the male protagonists with an essential missing half of their personality). Not only do they all
pair off, but there is this whole maudlin thing going on about childhood's end and how perfectly natural it is
that we move from the phase of all male friendships into the phase of male/female relationships—we join the
stream of docility and flow slowly into the great sea of God moderated death.
Superbad, in this respect, goes onto my special shit-list along with shows like the Simpsons. These works
are ultimately all about familial normality, and all of the freakish behaviour and subversity they promise us at
the outset ends up being, in the end, just a big ploy by which the obscure and scary parts of the world are
slowly coated in a bland suburban mother-of-pearl veneer. The final promise that everything can return to
normal and that every outlandish possibility in life eventually leads back to the supposed truth that everyone
is good and everyone in some way or another actually embraces some aspect of the American dream is one
of the biggest mind-fucks going. It is the entertainment industry's version of multiculturalism: you can be
anything you want to be as long as that thing ends up looking like what everyone else is doing.
We see the theme over and over in movies about men and women and the things they do. Whether it is
James Bond, dragging some bimbo along, keeping just ahead of the lasers and explosions, or it is some
romantic comedy, or it is some luscious film-noir rehash like No Country for Old Men, the thematic
presence of the man/woman relationship is always a lynch-pin. It is not that these films do this consciously,
they are simply mirrors reflecting the way that we all have been trained to feel.
Superbad and its wicked cousin, The Simpsons, are the worst offenders in this regard. For while they
pretend to be not about man/woman relations and the effort to push everyone into the normal stream, they
are actually more about this than any other film or show. See, the people attracted to this kind of material
are the ones who sense, even slightly, what a big bag of bullshit the whole man/woman game is in the first
place. These people are attracted to the Simpsons because they feel it actually mocks these
conventions…but then if you watch it carefully you will see it doesn't. It is just another way of luring
people back into the same crap. I know I just said I hated academic bullshit, but now I am obligated to
mention Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment at this point…making me much like the
Simpsons, in that I lured you in with my subversity and then zinged you with the same critical theory
bullshit I had just demonized, just when you least expected it.
It is 4:00am, and I'm not sure I'm making sense. But I'm glad I wrote this anyhow.
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