Jack Black – Bitch Flicks

‘Shallow Hal’: The Unexpected Virtue of Discomfort

Its challenge to fatphobia is covered in fat jokes and gross-out humor, tailored to trigger our prejudices. We can laugh, if prepared to question why. We can sympathize, if braced against an awkwardly half-choked, giggling snort. Humor strikes faster than self-censorship.

"Only a man this shallow could fall in love this deep." — “Only a man this shallow could fall in love this deep.”

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

We are bad at multitasking empathy. When moved by Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning struggle with his stammer in The King’s Speech, you don’t want to recall cackling at Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda. As you congratulate yourself for noticing the rather obvious sexiness of Emmy-winning Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, you’d prefer to forget laughing at Verne Troyer in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. It’s more comfortable having your heart warmed by the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, if you ignore that your ribs were tickled by Me, Myself and Irene. It’s easier to feel good about sympathizing with Jared Leto’s Oscar-winning trans heroine in Dallas Buyers Club, if you blank the comedy stripping of Sean Young’s trans villain in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The result is that neither gross-out comedy nor award-winning pathos seriously challenges its audience’s comfort; the comedy, because we’re never asked to sympathize, and the Oscar-bait, because we’re never tempted to mock. In 2001’s Shallow Hal, the Farrelly Brothers took Oscar-winning Gwyneth Paltrow, dressed her in a comical fat suit and demanded sympathy. The result was downright uncomfortable, and I loved it.

Shallow Hal comes with no genre cues or award endorsements to aid in compartmentalizing our empathy. Its challenge to fatphobia is covered in fat jokes and gross-out humor, tailored to trigger our prejudices. We can laugh, if prepared to question why. We can sympathize, if braced against an awkwardly half-choked, giggling snort. Humor strikes faster than self-censorship. The film has the boundless bad taste to remind viewers of their shallowness while daring to make them feel bad about it. The result can be a jarring viewing experience, provoking Rolling Stones‘ critic Peter Travers to declare “something condescending, not to mention hypocritical, about asking an audience to laugh uproariously at the spectacle of a fat person being sneered at and dissed as “rhino” or “hippo” or “holy cow,” and then to justify those laughs by saying it’s society’s fault.” Yet, is it truly hypocritical to remind an audience that they’re hypocritical?

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMLZnY2nLcw”]

The moment we see Jack Black’s Hal and Jason Alexander’s Mauricio hitting on “hotties,” the audience’s instinctive reaction is that they are too short and overweight to be justified in their shallowness. Hal is hypnotized into seeing inner beauty, and the hotties in fat suits and ugly cosmetics are utterly transformed into hotties without fat suits and ugly cosmetics. This premise allows Shallow Hal to become a forensic deconstruction of the fat joke. Do crushed chairs and giant meals remain funny, if acted by slim Gwyneth Paltrow? Or is it only the fat body that’s funny?

Many critics have pointed out that Shallow Hal uses tired, conventional fat jokes, without acknowledging how deliberately it targets thin bodies with those jokes. Left to imagine the fat body of Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) only from bystander reactions and glimpsed body parts, we build a mental image of something hyperbolically monstrous. When Rosemary’s fat self is finally revealed, it is not to be mocked, but to relieve Hal and expose society’s dysmorphia. Of course, the Farrellys can’t control the audience’s response, only confront it. As Katherine Murray says of Chasing Amy and Dollhouse: “the power and relevance of both of these stories comes from the fact that objectifying women is a popular pastime in real life, and not everyone sees the problem with that – the discomfort and uncertainty of these stories comes from the fact that objectifying women is a popular pastime in real life, and not everyone sees the problem with that.”

Paltrow’s sympathetic performance blends spiky defensiveness and vulnerability. Seeing such low self-esteem in a slim, blonde “hottie,” Hal perceives it as “cuckoo.” Of course, it should be equally cuckoo for a fat woman to suffer pointlessly lower quality of life because of irrational stigma. Separating the body and the stigma raises interesting questions. Would it still be a dream to date Paltrow’s slender blonde, if onlookers reacted with the same judging, mocking and disbelieving scrutiny applied to obese girlfriends? Where Louie‘s “So Did The Fat Lady” wallows in the pathos of a fat lady that men won’t hold hands with in public, Shallow Hal questions whether men would feel comfortable publicly holding hands with Gwyneth Paltrow, if she were associated with lower status rather than higher. Or are they, actually, more shallow than Shallow Hal?

Hal progresses through each hurdle of deconstructed shallowness, from defying public judgment to accepting Rosemary’s body in its real form, with “love grows where my Rosemary goes, and nobody knows but me” becoming his anthem of social defiance. Shallow assumptions that short, overweight Hal is ridiculous for chasing girls “out of his league” are equally challenged. Hal can attract conventional “hotties” once his desire is proved more than superficial; it’s just that then he doesn’t want them. Shallow Hal joins gross-out classic There’s Something About Mary, and the non-Farrelly Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, as a romcom that dares to demand of men: “what is it about you that makes you deserve the girl?” It puts its hero through a trial of worth, without the usual, unquestioned entitlement to date whatever hottie the script provides (*cough* Forgetting Sarah Marshall). In There’s Something About Mary, a range of men try to seduce Cameron Diaz’s “hottie” using farcical exaggerations of classic wooing tactics: Matt Dillon’s sleazy Healy eavesdrops to discover and embody all her fantasies, Lee Evans’ emotionally blackmailing Tucker fakes a disability and an English accent to out-vulnerable the most vulnerable Hugh Grant fop, Chris Elliott’s stalking Dom manifests a passion so intense and persistent that it brings him out in hives, and hunky Brett Favre combines athleticism, wealth and fame. But it is only Ben Stiller’s continually humiliated Ted who, while making every technical error imaginable, loves Mary enough to place her happiness above his own desires, meaning he alone passes the film’s trial.

Conversely, the clients of Deuce Bigalow are farcical exaggerations of female anxieties: the narcoleptic fails society’s demand for women to be attentive; Amy Poehler’s Tourette’s violates expectations of ladylike behavior; the giantess is manly and intimidating; Fluisa is obese and unfit. Only by honoring the humanity and femininity of each of these extreme archetypes, and passing the final test of fully accepting his “hottie” girlfriend’s prosthetic limb, can Deuce prove himself worthy to be accepted and loved in his turn, as a flawed being. The shockingly honest self-scrutiny in gross-out comedy is one of the genre’s central pleasures. Farrelly Brothers movies are elevated above mean-spirited imitators (*cough* Norbit) by their dedication to conjuring and confronting anxieties on a path to purification. Though I didn’t include the Farrellys’ crude and absurdist Me, Myself And Irene in my survey of cinematic portraits of psychosis, and though it was slammed by mental health organizations, I must admit the film recognizes the psychosis of Jim Carrey’s Charlie Baileygates as his own responsibility, while allowing him to be a romantic and sexual being, which is as rare as it is refreshing. Since my psychotic break was flamboyant, I appreciate the Farrelly Brothers’ defiance of the respectability politics that plague mental health activism, just as Shallow Hal acknowledges and even exaggerates Rosemary’s overeating, while still challenging her dehumanization.

Crucially, Shallow Hal does not confine itself to the hypothetical thought experiment of imagining conventionally attractive actors as obese or cosmetically ugly, but introduces genuinely nonconforming bodies, including launching the acting career of Rene Kirby in a prominent supporting role. This tactic confronts viewers with the humanity behind the metaphor. Think of the audiences who empathized with Boris Karloff’s cosmetic monster in Frankenstein, but were appalled by the genuinely nonconforming bodies of Tod Browning’s career-destroying Freaks. Shallow Hal dares to sit Frankenstein and the real “freaks” at the same table, where all are celebrated as “one of us.” Does its casual conflation of fatphobia and ableism disturb some fat acceptance activists? The intense identification with nonconforming bodies that gay director James Whale showed in Frankenstein, or Oscar Wilde showed in “The Birthday of the Infanta,” faded from the camp aesthetic as gay rights advanced. The identification with Frankenstein shown by crossdressing director/star Ed Wood in Glen or Glenda, and transgender creator/star Richard O’Brien in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, is fading from today’s trans* rights movement. Is the fat acceptance movement fighting to end body stigma, or merely to separate fat bodies from that stigma? Must every step of progress be accompanied by an act of exclusion?

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G2X8QBt5m4″]

Fat acceptance?

The 1948 “race film” (that is, a Jim Crow era film with an African American cast, targeting African American audiences), Boarding House Blues, opens with Dusty Fletcher bringing a capering monkey into the boarding house to join his act. The monkey claims Dusty’s bed and forces him to sleep on the floor. It also bears a remarkable resemblance to King Louie, who would be talking jive and aping Louis Armstrong as the beloved “King of the Swingers” in Disney’s 1967 The Jungle Book, fully 42 years before 2009’s The Princess and the Frog introduced Disney’s first Black princess (and, despite its jazz-age New Orleans setting, had less of Armstrong’s sound in its Randy Newman score than the ape did in 1967). It is uncomfortable to watch “King Louie” side by side with Dusty Fletcher, as it is uncomfortable to see Gwyneth Paltrow’s fake stigma side by side with Rene Kirby. It becomes even more uncomfortable when “King Louie” removes his head and reveals that he is another African American man, forced into a monkey suit to hustle a living. Good. Let’s be uncomfortable about that.

Erasure is too often the politically correct alternative to discomfort. By cutting blackface and Stepin Fetchit routines from classic films, we retain the sentimentalized self-image of racists, while erasing uncomfortably visible reminders of their racism (and groundbreaking African American stars, as collateral damage). Boarding House Blues also stars Moms Mabley, a middle-aged woman (and the major pioneer of stand-up comedy, whose taboo-busting routines were tamed for film). Today, her role would be played by Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence or Tyler Perry in drag and a rubber fat suit. How would Murphy’s Rasputia hold the screen against Mabley’s real deal? Doesn’t the safety of our laughter at Rasputia depend on Mabley’s substitution? One more star of Boarding House Blues deserves attention: Crip Heard. Crip is a dancer with one arm and one leg. Entering on a crutch, he tosses that crutch aside with a flourish and dances unaided. It is hard to imagine this celebration of Crip’s resilient body appearing in even the blaxploitation film of the 1970s, let alone the modern mainstream. Where could Crip dance today? If you’re honest, you know the answer: in a Farrelly Brothers movie.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qSklDMBnQM”]

There is no question that fatphobia is a vile, irrational and bullying stigma. But the commonly repeated mantra that it is the “last acceptable prejudice” is demonstrably untrue. From physical disability to mental illness to trans* status, there are numerous acceptable prejudices in today’s comedies. As Kathleen LeBesco points out, the Farrelly Brothers have “more than any mainstream moviemakers working today, fought hard against the devices of concealment, cosmetic action, and motivated forgetting, and as a result thrown into question the reassurance that public bodies are flawless bodies.” The runner-up? Jackass, of course. So, are we ready to embrace the anarchic Farrelly vision of squirming confrontation and broad-based solidarity? Or must our body politics become respectability politics?

See also at Bitch Flicks: When It Seems Like The Movie You’re Watching Might Hate You

Brigit McCone admits to having a thing for Jack Black and Rob Schneider. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and terrible dancing in the privacy of her own home.

Moments of Sincerity in Otherwise Endless Oscars

What stood out were what seemed like genuine heartfelt moments. John Legend and Common delivered a spirited performance of “Glory” from snubbed director Ava DuVernay’s ‘Selma,’ and an equally impassioned acceptance speech when they won, notable for its intersectionality. They brought up Hong Kong’s fight for democracy, Charlie Hebdo, and America’s shameful prison-industrial complex. “‘Selma’ is now” is a message many need to hear, including their liberal Hollywood audience.

This is a guest post by Josh Ralske.

Here’s the sad, secret truth of every Oscars telecast: There are no winners. Ever. Especially not the audience.

This year’s show — at least, the prefabricated part of the show — peaked early. Neil Patrick Harris does a fairly charming opening musical number with the supremely talented Anna Kendrick, celebrating the movies (of all things), and gets hilariously interrupted by Jack Black (and seriously, thank goodness for Jack Black and his endless comic energy, his wholehearted commitment to whatever bit he’s doing — please let him host one year) who sings a funny, pointed rant calling out Hollywood these days as all about superhero movies and sequels and what the Chinese market will buy. Undeniable truths, and naturally he gets thrown off the stage. In any case, that is no longer the Hollywood that the Oscars celebrate. The blockbusters, for the most part, went home with nothing. Even the highly touted American Sniper, seen by many as a potential upset winner for Best Actor and Best Picture, only got one tech award. Which is a good thing, by my measure. The movie is an odious celebration of a man — if we judge him by his own words — completely unworthy of such.

In any case, the awards mostly celebrated smaller, more idiosyncratic independent films. Which is a good thing, generally, even if the near sweep for Birdman smacked of some intense navel gazing. As JB alluded to, Hollywood is currently fixated on blockbusters, and mid-ranged “cinema of quality”-type movies like The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything need the buzz of awards season to generate moviegoer interest and turn a profit. I didn’t love either of those films, but I think they both have their virtues, whether it’s Imitation‘s acknowledging Alan Turing’s persecution and highlighting the important role women like Joan Clarke played in WWII code-breaking, or Theory‘s sporadic directorial flourishes, which make one wish James Marsh had taken a less literal approach to the material. And of course, both films feature excellent performances, though Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar-winning perfect mimicry of Stephen Hawking has less dramatic impact than any other performance in the category.

It was an upset only because the pundits were wrong, seeing it as a battle between Michael Keaton and Bradley Cooper, when we all know that as far as the Oscars are concerned, the able-bodied actor playing a differently abled person, particularly a real person, always — ALWAYS — wins. That theory also held up with Julianne Moore beating out former Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, who gave the best performance of her career in the brilliant Two Days, One Night, because clearly by the Academy’s high standards, early onset Alzheimer’s is a “real” disability, while depression is not, and the quality of the movie that surrounds the performance is secondary. As someone who has suffered a loss to Alzheimer’s in his own family, and loved Sarah Polley’s Away From Her (for which Julie Christie was nominated for an Oscar, and lost to Cotillard), that melodramatic clip they showed on the telecast of Still Alice is all I need to see of it.

Winner Julianne Moore in Still Alice — Winner Julianne Moore in *Still Alice*

Despite a couple of minor surprises, the show was mostly even duller than usual. Actors, including some great actors, blandly read their introductions from the teleprompters. The one exception, Terrence Howard, was apparently the victim of a technical malfunction. Either that, or he was simply overcome with emotion introducing a clip from Whiplash, but frankly we hope it was the former. NPH’s jokes were mostly bad puns, but he also managed to insult former winner Octavia Spencer, embarrass the snubbed David Oyelowo, and worst of all, smear Edward Snowden with a stupid quip following Citizenfour‘s well-deserved win for Best Documentary Feature. This was especially galling as brilliant documentarian Laura Poitras was one of the few women nominated for anything in a non-gendered category. NPH’s jokey allusions to the unbearable whiteness of the proceedings did little to alleviate our feelings of sadness and disgust over said. Then there was his 11th hour (or at least it felt that way) reading of a long list of weak jokes about the telecast, which he’d spent all night setting up. Seriously, a long-ass way to go for that dumb list, and by that point most of us still watching just wanted to go the fuck to sleep.

Similarly, Lady Gaga’s straightforward rendering of a melody from The Sound of Music was nicely performed, but poorly timed. If the producers need to include such extraneous musical numbers, they really need to frontload them. Once the broadcast hits the three hour mark, no one wants to see anything but awards.

Then there was Best Picture presenter Sean Penn’s dumb joke asking who gave Birdman mastermind Alejandro González Iñárritu, who also won for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, his green card. Iñárritu claims he found Penn’s joke hilarious, but seriously folks, who wants what is possibly the biggest moment of his career upstaged by such shenanigans? Penn also should have realized that there were many in the millions of viewers who would take his insult at face value. That’s the kind of joke you only make in private. And only if you’re an asshole.

There were other highlights — mostly provided by awardees who shared their personal stories and points-of-view — and other lowlights, mostly provided by John Travolta. Seriously, this was supposed to be Travolta’s chance to redeem himself after last year’s embarrassing “Adele Nazeem” gaffe. Instead, his awkwardly entitled touchy-feely behavior with Scarlett Johansson on the red carpet, and onstage with Idina Menzel, while jokingly apologizing to her for his slip, just highlighted what a bizarre public figure he’s become. Scientology doesn’t seem to be helping him much these days.

Common and John Legend performing Oscar-winning "Glory" — Common and John Legend performing Oscar-winning “Glory”

Beyond that, what stood out seemed like genuine heartfelt moments. John Legend and Common delivered a spirited performance of “Glory” from snubbed director Ava DuVernay’s Selma, and an equally impassioned acceptance speech, notable for its intersectionality, when they won. They brought up Hong Kong’s fight for democracy, Charlie Hebdo, and America’s shameful prison-industrial complex. “Selma is now” is a message many need to hear, obviously including their white liberal Hollywood audience.

Megan Kearns makes some excellent observations about that, about Imitation Game screenwriter Graham Moore’s affecting acceptance speech, and about Oscar winner Patricia Arquette’s controversial remarks backstage. Arquette made a public stand on an undeniably important issue, and seemingly spoke off the cuff, so while I empathize with those who were offended, I’m inclined to be more forgiving of the tone deafness of her remarks. Beyond that, those moments of what appeared to be genuine sincerity helped get me through the slog of that endless telecast.

Josh Ralske is a freelance film writer based in New York. He has written for MovieMaker Magazine and All Movie Guide.

School of Rock: Where Shrewish Women are "The Man"

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Jack Black in School of Rock

The first decade of this millennium was a pretty good time for American culture, all in all, George W. Bush notwithstanding. YouTube was invented, the pound symbol was saved from oblivion by hashtags, and Tina Fey got famous.

But the early-to-mid aughts also brought something really unpleasant to our culture, something that had been brewing since the dawn of Generation X: the celebration of The Man Child. In everything from Old School to Role Models to the Complete Works of Judd Apatow, male characters Peter Pan’d their way through life, even as pesky forces like bills and harping girlfriends tried to harsh their mellow.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Man Child trope from a feminist point of view is his female counterpoint: the Nagging Killjoy Shrew. This woman tells the Man Child to grow up, to accept responsibility, to stop acting exactly like he did when he was 19. To which the Man Child responds, “stop crushing my soul and my dreams! I just gotta be me.”

I have no idea where the cultural idea that women are better at being grown-ups than men came from. I think it may have been some misguided attempt to correct previous sexism while simultaneously getting out of having to do the dishes. I’m also not sure how the patiently suffering Sitcom Wife of the Man Child so prevalent in the 80’s and 90’s turned into the Hellish Shrewbeast of the 2000’s Aptovian comedy.

School of Rock, the 2003 film written by Mike White and directed by Richard Linklater, typifies the Man Child vs. Shrewbeast dynamic, which is a shame, because it is otherwise an extremely entertaining and lovable film, and I wish I could recommend it without reservation.

Jack Black plays Dewey Finn, a man-child whose unyielding pursuit of a rock n roll stardom has thwarted his maturation and upward mobility toward certain signifiers of adulthood like having an actual bed in an actual bedroom instead of a mattress on the floor of your buddy’s living room. Dewey’s roommate Ned Schneebly (Mike White) has given up the rock and roll dreams he shared with Dewey in his younger days for the more stable and adult life of a substitute teacher. Dewey assumes Ned’s identity, taking a substitute teaching job at an elite prep school in order to make rent, with the side bonus of recruiting a bunch of children into his new rock band. Events occur, life lessons are learned by all, young selves are actualized by the transformative power of music, and humble offerings are made to the gods or rock. Like so many stunted artists, Dewey and Ned discover that teaching their craft to the next generation of dreamers allows them to stay active with their passion while earning a respectable living doing it. Roll adorable credits with the kids’ band playing an AC/DC song.

Dewey vs. The Man, including a cop, the man whose identity he stole, his employer, and Patty

But along the way, Dewey (and Ned) conflict with various Hellish Shrewbeasts. First, Ned’s girlfriend, Patty (Sarah Silverman), who instigates Dewey’s deception by insisting he GASP, actually pay rent to continue staying in her boyfriend’s apartment (that bitch.) I cannot for the life of me figure out why Sarah Silverman accepted this role. Every word out of Patty’s mouth comes out sounding like a verbal a punch in the face (to Dewey) or yank on the leash (to Ned). She’s one of the most unpleasant characters I’ve ever seen on screen, indisputably the villain of the piece, even though her attitudes (Dewey should get a job so her boyfriend doesn’t have a Man Child living on his living room floor anymore; Dewey should not be casually forgiven for fraud and child endangerment) are entirely reasonable. I don’t know if Silverman was miscast and/or misdirected, but her caustic performance unfortunately bolsters the Man-Child-Good/Responsible-Adult-Woman-Bad dynamic in School of Rock. Silverman is fantastic at playing the elusive female variant of the Man Child [see also Dee Reynolds in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (after the pilot, where her character is a much more pedestrian voice of reason), and Daisy Steiner in Spaced] so she might have exaggerated the shrewish aspects of her character in an attempt to show range.

Joan Cusack as Principal Mullins with Jack Black

Patty isn’t the only flavor of Shrewish Nemesis Dewey must work around in School of Rock, and I’m not sure if that makes matters better or worse. Next up is the principle of the school Dewey has conned his way into, Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack). Ms. Mullins is a stickler for rules and discipline, but it is clear that her straight-laced authority is part of what makes her school so exceptional. While Ms. Mullins inspires fear in her students and isn’t exactly liked by her colleagues (which she laments), but she is undeniably respected, both by the characters (even Dewey!) and by the film itself. Unlike Patty, we see the lighter side of Ms. Mullins, first when Dewey discovers the key to loosening her up is a third of a beer and a Stevie Nicks jam on the jukebox, and later when she jubilantly congratulates her students after their climactic performance at the battle of the bands.

Miranda Cosgrove as Summer Hathaway, class factotum and band manager.

Finally, there is a mini-Shrew in the form of “Class Factotum” Summer (Miranda Cosgrove). Summer has learned to play the game at her elite school, racking up gold stars and grade grubbing her way to the top. She and Dewey butt heads at first, but Dewey quickly deduces he can manipulate Summer into going along with his antics by giving her a somewhat specious mantle of authority as Band Manager. The twist is that Summer takes on this role with aplomb and ends up being a vital part of the Band’s production team (her new interest leading her father to ask in one of the best lines of the movie, “Why has my daughter become obsessed with David Geffen?”). One of the many ways that School of Rock is exceptional is how much dignity it affords its well-rounded child characters, which makes it no surprise that young Summer is the most sympathetic of the Shrews.

It’s unfortunate that School of Rock relies so heavily on the Man Child vs. Shrewish Woman dynamic, because it is otherwise a funny, heartwarming, endlessly entertaining film. It’s a comfort food flick for me, something I put on to pull me out of a funk. I was almost mad at my feminist goggles for revealing this unfortunate pattern.

“Write me a better reference!”

One more quick feminist gripe before I go: I know the character speaking this line of dialogue is nine and wouldn’t necessarily know any better, but it is a CRIME that when drummer Freddie challenges Bassist Katie to name “two great chick drummers” she offers up Meg White before Moe Tucker or Gina Schock. A CRIME.