Tag: Observe and Report

From the Archive: Dude Rules: A Response

This post by Stephanie Rogers first appeared at Bitch Flicks in March 2009.

Glenn Whipp of the L.A. Times wrote a fascinating piece a few days ago titled “Dude rules: leaping into buddydom,” which explores Judd Apatow’s legacy of films, as well as films that imitate the ever-popular prepubescent man garbage that continues to dominate the box office. Whipp lists seven rules on how to nurture on-screen guy bonds, and I offer my response to these rules, highlighted in red below. It’s a good idea to take a look at Whipp’s original article to get the full context of what we’re dealing with.
Rule #1
Sharing fun, challenging and intellectually engaging activities can strengthen friendships.

The point is: Male friendships need not solely revolve around sports and beer. In fact, in today’s movie world, those guys are the losers to be mocked and avoided.

The Real Point is: Male friendships need not solely revolve around sports and beer. In fact, in today’s movie world, male friendships can revolve around exploiting women (the boys’ Flesh of the Stars website in Knocked Up) and living out their 30s and 40s as man-children, sometimes with their mothers (Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers), while often jobless and perpetually stoned.
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Rule #2
Friends are optimists, not naysayers.

The point is: No one likes to be around negative energy. If the dude doesn’t like Bob Marley, tell him “peace out” and move on.

The Real Point is: Friends are optimists, not naysayers, especially when it comes to getting you laid. Without Kumar, Harold wouldn’t have hooked up with Maria. Without Harold, Kumar wouldn’t have hooked up with Vanessa. Without the sage advice from the gang at SmartTech, Andy would now be a 44-year-old virgin. Without a little prodding, Carl (Jim Carrey) would still be a single guy, watching movies alone in his apartment (Yes Man). If the dude doesn’t help you score, tell him “peace out” and move on.
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Rule #3
Friends carry each other.
The Real Point is: This rule can often be applied when your friend’s adolescent shenanigans go just a little too far. In Old School, when Frank (Will Ferrell) destroys his marriage by acting like a 12-year-old, his friends warmly accept him as their fellow fraternity brother. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, when Andy (Steve Carell) is too freaked out to hook up with the girl he went home with, the token crazy-sex-whore (Elizabeth Banks), Cal (Seth Rogen) does the right thing and steps in to take care of it.
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Rule #4
Friends accept friends for how they are. Even when alerting the authorities might be the more prudent call.

The point is: If your friends are 40 years old and still living at home (Step Brothers), don’t try to change them. Buy them a case of Fruit Roll-Ups instead. If your buddy is a heavily medicated mall cop looking to join the police force (Seth Rogen’s upcoming Observe and Report), you pat him on the head and hand him some pepper spray. And if your wingman gets a fake ID with the name McLovin on it — well, you can tell him he’s an idiot — but then you ask him to go score some beer.

The Real Point is: If your friends are 40 years old and still living at home, that’s totally acceptable. If your friends are 40 years old and still living at home, that’s totally hilarious. It’s funny when Will Ferrell’s character in Wedding Crashers screams, “Ma! The meatloaf!” after saying goodbye to a woman he lied to (at a funeral, no less) in order to get in her pants. In fact, why not just say “fuck it” and live out your 40s in a fraternity, with an entire group of man-children, complete with blow-up dolls, underage girls, and bikini-clad mud wrestlers (Old School).
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Rule #5
Friends make an effort to stay in touch.

The point is: … You don’t wait for buddies to call you. You pick up the phone. Or better: Just show up on their doorstep.

The Real Point is: You don’t wait for buddies to call you. You call them, so you can avoid your wife and kids to hang out with 19-year-old girls all day (Wedding Crashers). You call them, so you can lock them in a room and force them to watch pornography (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) as a way to educate them on what it’s like to score. In fact, why not just show up on their doorstep to lend them your very own giant box of porn. Knowing your friend’s at home, jerking it to your homemade mixed-porn-tape, Boner Jams ’03, surely qualifies as staying in touch.
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Rule #6
Friends remain equally loyal in good times and bad.
The Real Point is: Friends will very loyally do anything to get you laid, including enduring a “midnight rape” by the hilarious token psycho female (Wedding Crashers), accidentally setting you up with a transsexual (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), which leaves room for the always-hilarious and requisite gay jokes, and giving you amazing, hard-earned advice on how to spot the most vulnerable drunk girl to take home (The 40-Year-Old Virgin).
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Rule #7
Friends know it’s OK to say, “I love you.” But they don’t have to, you know, talk about it at length.

The point is: These days in movies, male friendship means never having to say anything more than “I love you, man.”

The Real Point is: These days in movies, male friendship means never having to say anything more than “I love you, man” as long as it’s a way to prove that you’re secure in your masculinity. Of course, you’ve probably spent most of the movie bonding over hot chicks, and ways to go about screwing hot chicks, and fetishizing lesbians (who are most certainly always hot and making out for your pleasure only), and fantasizing about the MILF, and standing around with various nude-for-no-reason background women who you probably never speak to, and throwing in a few gay jokes here and there. Congratulations! By that point, I’d say you’ve proven your straightness to the audience enough to risk just a little hetero-bro-love.

Observe and Report Roundup

April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

An odd coincidence is that Jody Hill’s Observe and Report is currently in theaters, and getting all kinds of attention for a rape scene that’s played as comedy. Worst of all, many out there are defending the movie as an edgy, dark comedy, and arguing that the scene doesn’t depict rape at all.

I’ve hesitated writing about the film; movies this noxious don’t deserve whatever free press a site like ours provides (assuming that all press is, in some way, good press). With no plans to ever see OaR, I don’t know that I could contribute a whole lot to the discussion personally, but thought I’d compile a list of what other smart people are saying, and give you a glimpse of the R-rated trailer–with hopes that it shows you as much of the movie as you’ll ever want to see.

A lot of the discussions center around the question of whether or not the sexual encounter shown in the final seconds of the trailer is actually rape. Stupid question; yes, it is. Period. The more interesting debate, which not many are taking up (according to my reading) is why a film like this is being made at this time. I’m all for dark comedy, though this doesn’t really seem like one (MaryAnn Johanson asks whether the movie is a comedy at all in her weekly column at AWFJ), and what worries me is the kind of cultural work being done. All those people who like to shout about how movies are just entertainment and say people like us have no sense of humor, or take things too seriously, are underestimating the power of representation–of the arts in general, film-making included. Although the movie has an R rating, we must ask who the intended audience of such a movie is. Clearly, it’s male, and the movie has a ring of adolescence about it (an epidemic of our time), with its “jokes” about sex, drug use, alcoholism, violence, and whatever else I’ll miss by refusing to see it, which clues us into the fact that it is for people who are still in a phase of their lives when they figure out their own values.

People are seeing OaR, too. It finished fourth in the holiday weekend box office, selling over $11 million worth of tickets. There’s a desire for this sort of thing, and the interesting question is: Why?

Here are some highlights (and lowlights) from the blogosphere:

And some mainstream reviews:

  • Observe and Report by Michael Phillips @ The Chicago Tribune (In a review that otherwise seems fair, writer Micheal Phillips seriously drops the ball–to say the least–when he claims: “The best, riskiest bit in Observe and Report involves Faris, with wee vomitous spillage drying on the pillow by her slack jaw, underneath Rogen, who cannot believe the dolt of his fondest desires is trashed enough to give him a toss.”)
  • Mall Crisis? Call Security. Then Again, Maybe Not by Manhola Darghis for The New York Times (Darghis can be counted on as a female voice in the NYT, but she often–and this is no exception–offers more respect than is due.)
  • Observe and Report by Peter Travers for Rolling Stone (The most appalling of all the “official” reviews I’ve read, which should be no great surprise, considering the source. Here’s a sample: “Props to Hill and Rogen for believing you can play anything for a hoot, including R-rated sex and violence.” Yeah–props. That’s what I was going to say.)

Other sickery:

  • Writer Jody Hill describes his latest movie as “a dark, crazy, awesome journey” in “An Auteur of Awkward Strikes Again” in the NYT
  • An apologist for the rape scene, in a column from New York Magazine, says:


But, given all the horrible things Ronnie does later in the movie — out of spite, or stupidity, or flat-out psychosis — this scene winds up seeming a lot less awful as the movie goes on. For one thing, as horribly misdirected as it becomes, his “courtship” of Brandi is the only thing in Ronnie’s life that comes partly from a place of sweetness rather than entirely from a place of darkness.

Audiences are happy when Ronnie ends up with shy coffee girl Nell, someone who he’s built up a narrative-long relationship of openness and trust. When Brandi tries to get back in his good graces, Ronnie gives her a public kiss-off that centers on her sleeping around.

and, best of all

So which is it? Rape, or the reality of dating circa 2009? As with anything Hill has to say, the meaning is not clear. Feminists have the right to be angry, especially when a mainstream Hollywood movie offers such a backward vision of male/female fornication. But is Observe and Report really saying anything new? In this Girls Gone Wild dynamic of brazen openness and complete lack of shame, should a drunken slut bear any of the blame? It’s not a question of that horrid old excuse “she had it coming.” It’s more of a mirror on where society has sunk since women were empowered to ‘take back the night.’ Clearly, had Hill meant the scene to be something akin to pure sexual assault, Brandi would have been treated like a piece of dead meat.