New comedies may be darker than they seem
“The Hangover” continued the streak of hot R-rated comedies making a lot of money and tearing up college campuses and Facebook profiles alike. What makes these films “adult” is their subject matter surely, but there is something deeper at play than just delighting at seeing filmmakers push jokes as far as they can go. These are silly films on the surface, but truly aspire to address adult fears in a palatable way. We’re laughing, but what we’re laughing at is the same thing bound to make us run screaming for the hills in another context.
With just minor tweaking, these premises could easily become horror films. If you look at the premise of “The Hangover,” the film is basically about a loss of control so complete the characters spend the next hour and a half picking up the pieces. It’s funny because no one got hurt, but how scary could that have turned out? These films walk a fine line between humor and horror, tragedy and comedy.
This really reflects the current national mood. Just watching the news has become an experience not unlike waiting for the second shoe to drop. With so much going wrong and so much doubt, it’s hardly surprising that comedy has taken a darker turn. We’re living in a time of great change. At a time when fewer and fewer people are entirely sure of their roles in society anymore, we take our comedy a little sad, a little neurotic and a whole lot more seriously.
And these films are dark, make no mistake. Todd Phillip’s “Old School” addresses our innate desire to go back to a simpler time when life becomes overwhelmingly “adult.” “The Hangover” plays on that same concept, although in a more concentrated dose of adolescent behavior during a weekend. Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up” is about dealing with an accidental pregnancy and “The 40-Year Old Virgin” is, at its core, about a man so afraid of intimacy and maturity he chooses to extend his adolescence indefinitely. There is absurdist comedy in overextended adolescence, of course, but I think it goes to deeper and more painful places than that.
In today’s world, what makes someone a grown up? With limitless lifestyle possibilities, there seems to be no demarcation line anymore. The realization that no one really knows what they’re doing is terrifying and builds a lot of the emotional base for these films. They’re so successful because they are so relatable. Art mirrors life and it seems like we’re having a hard time coming to terms with being responsible for a world with so many problems and so few easy solutions.
All of which makes the female characters in these films so difficult. For all their eloquence in addressing the concerns of maturing men in today’s day and age, women get cartooned, stereotyped or ignored altogether. When your female characters either fall under “girlfriend” or “shrew,” there’s a huge problem. Where is the eloquence in discussing relationships? I understand these films focus on men, but is it too much to ask for a woman you can relate to? The men are always shown to be much more logical than the women. It’s as if the women are rendered in 2-D to play their part in men’s stories.
Rachael Harris’ ridiculously evil girlfriend character in “The Hangover” serves as little more than a reminder to Ed Helms’ character, Stu, of the dangers of submitting to women. However, the stripper with the missing child was somehow rendered as the desirable girlfriend. What exactly is the female template anymore? With so many contradictory directions of how to embody the feminine, the stereotyping becomes shorthand for something far more complicated. These characterizations are confusing at best and insulting at worst. Recognizable villains are much easier to come by in films than in real life. Why does it always have to be a woman who embodies the antagonist?
It’s a dark and confusing time in the history of the world. With so much going wrong, our comedies reflect our fears in a different light. These silly films are, in reality, a very interesting commentary on gender politics and life in our age. We are called upon to constantly reassess the definitions of words that used to be self-explanatory and easy to figure out. A world with more freedom of identity will naturally lead to more doubt. When viewed from this angle, these box-office juggernauts have more to offer than just drug and booze jokes. They’re a sociological time capsule.
The opinions expressed above are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the State News.