Troubled Masculinity and Broken Houses in OBSESSED

The recent movie Obsessed has been called in bad taste, and of course that’s true. It’s probably a little easier to spot the vulgarity here, because of the inter-racial sexual scandal, the flinging around of the slur “bitch,” and the sight of Beyonce kicking ass in heels. These are all more obvious signs that we should be uncomfortable, even though we tend not to notice much of the latent violence, racism, and misogyny of more mainstream and white films.  I’m actually curious about a certain terrible pleasure in taunting back, in having the upper hand for a moment, even at the cost of dredging up dangerous stereotypes and cultural divisions. The morally suspect, lascivious white woman; the vanquishing of the white woman stealing the Good Black Man; the defense of the upwardly mobile black family against the threat of the corrupt white trickster — these are old and harmful tropes for sure, but they express different fears and prejudices than the usual ones that jam the airwaves.  Besides, the film is rife with conflicting messages about gender, race, and the family — and isn’t that why we’re here? 

The plot is simple. Handsome successful Derek (Idris Elba) exchanges a few pleasantries with the skinny blonde temp at the office, who turns out to be bat shit crazy. Lisa (Ali Larder) continually tries to get in his pants, stalks him, and compromises his integrity.  Eventually she notches up the stalking to kidnapping levels, and only a major girlfight with wife Sharon (Beyonce Knowles) can stop her. 

 

 

 

 

A Defense of Sex and the City

In the couple weeks since Sex and the City movie came out, the film has taken something of a beating at the hands of the news media. These articles read much less like film review than cultural critiques, perhaps because the movie was poised to disrupt box office trends, or because the four-year hiatus gave everyone an opportunity to say his or her piece about the series and its legacy. Embarrassed by the fan frenzy (female pleasure is just so frivolous), many of these reviewers have taken out on the movie issues that have long been understood about the show. Goodness knows I have plenty to say about what’s wrong with SATC on the big, or small, screens. I’d like to take this moment, however, to stand up for a film that was, at the very least, a love letter to fans, but also significantly more than that.

Anthony Lane begins his snide review in the New Yorker with a reflection on the excitement and secrecy that surrounded this release. Standing in line at the theatre, Lane shares his predictions about the plot with a woman nearby:

I took a wild guess. “Apparently,” I said to the woman behind me in line, “some of the girls have problems with their men, break up for a while, and then get back together again.” “Oh my God!” she cried. “How do you know?”

Already, Lane begins with the notion that the film’s subject matter is too appallingly trivial to care about. What an incisive and witty take-down of those silly female fans: this movie is about nothing but love and suffering, and it definitely wasn’t worth his time.

Lane reveals a nasty condescension towards the subject matter; indeed, many writers seemed mortified by the masses of women who invested their time, money, and emotions into this movie. Slate assembled four of its women writers to dish on SATC, and their conversation was saddled with the persistent need to condemn and distance themselves from the movie’s frivolity.

Meghan O’Rourke: Carrie, after Big Jilts her, says, “I feel like I took a bullet.” Um, really? You mean like a soldier?…

Erin Bucklann: So many audience members were sobbing throughout my screening and I was struck by hearing more crying in that movie than during any serious war movie or mourning scene I’ve watched in a looong time.

Measuring stories of intimacy, friendship, and heartbreak against war, politics, and tragedy, these critics participate in a didactic and classically sexist framework that assigns value to one experience over another and pits the mythical and heroic against the everyday and interpersonal. Historically, women’s stories have always been relegated to second-class art, and it looks like not much has changed. This is a zero-sum game in which women always lose.

Sex and Therapy on HBO

Katie and Dave aren’t having sex. Jamie and Hugo have way too much sex. Carolyn and Palek can have as much clinical or angry sex as they want, but as long as no eggs get fertilized, their problems are far from over.

Tell Me You Love Me has gotten a lot of buzz–for being HBO’s latest brainy show and, mostly, for having sex scenes that aren’t easily distinguished from actual sex. As in, the camera never pans away from a couple’s lusty embrace to a roaring fire, or anything. Instead, we see spread legs, erect penises, pubic hair, everything. Mireya Navarro’s Sunday Styles piece, “It Isn’t a Real Sex Scene? I Still Need a Cigarette” likens the show’s unsettlingly realistic sex scenes to pornography. Whatever one says about pornography, though, at least it’s trying to elicit pleasure. Tell Me You Love Me has no such goal.

I Don’t Want No Baby: Knocked Up, Waitress, and Shmashmortions

I may be the only person in the country who cried in sadness during Knocked Up. I did: I shed a tear for Katherine Heigl’s Alison, when she’s weeping at the doctor’s office having just being told officially that she’s pregnant. That moment is so difficult, and not just for Seth Rogen’s awkward Ben who’s standing next to her unsure what to do. It felt painfully accessible–what young woman couldn’t imagine the terror and confusion Alison is experiencing?

Knocked Up is #3 at the box office right now. It’s a great movie, but there’s no doubt Judd Apatow’s strength is in capturing the male voice, as Dana Stevens notes on Slate. The film succeeded not just in the extended stoner scenes and bathroom jokes–which got a little tiresome if only by their length–but in the poignant conversations between the men, between Ben and his friends, his father and, especially Paul Rudd’s character, Pete. Stevens cites the moment between Pete and Ben, when, high on shrooms in a Las Vegas hotel room, they share their fears and disappointments in a scene that is “as revealing as it is hilarious.” Suddenly honest with one another, they express their feelings and, indeed, their love and respect for the women in their lives, the women who, earlier, had seemed like nothing so much as intrusions on good old masculine fun. A.O. Scott identifies a larger critique here, one that is cheerily embedded in jokes about bongs and getting laid:

Lessons from Sex and the City: Hoping Against Soulmates

I turn on Sex and the City and it’s the first episode of the fourth season, “The Agony and the ‘Ex’-tasy,” in which they confront that classic question: do you believe in soulmates? I can’t seem to stop talking about The One, and it’s not the most encouraging topic, as this episode makes clear. Carrie gets a mailing from a dating service full of warnings about letting her soulmate “slip away.” Miranda declares that “soulmates only exist in the hallmark aisle in Duane Reed Drugs,” but it turns out that the notion is not so easy to shake off.

Miranda’s main problem with the idea of soulmates is that it makes you feel an essential dissatisfaction with yourself and your life as it is. You constantly have to be looking for that magical solution, that person whom you may well never find. Charlotte wants to believe “that there’s that one perfect person out there to complete you,” but Miranda points out the risks of this: “And, what? If you don’t find him–you’re incomplete? It’s so dangerous!” “You’re still looking outside yourself and saying that you’re not enough,” she says, in a very empowered, accept-yourself kind of moment.

But Charlotte’s rebuttal is disconcertingly resonant: “Are you enough?”

The Wedding That Wasn’t: Dysfunctional Women on Grey’s Anatomy

The problem of work vs. love and family comes up again and again on Grey’s Anatomy. Richard has learned to regret neglecting his family for his job (but was it about his job? or was it just that he cheated on his wife?). Derek worried that he messed up his interview for chief because he was thinking too much about Meredith. Ellis Grey was a bad mother because she was an excellent surgeon. Cristina and Burke, I thought, were going to work out, because they were both so obsessed with their jobs and it didn’t interfere with their relationship.

But then the whole wedding thing happened and Cristina was the first to acknowledge a double standard. Bailey sends her home to prepare for the wedding, and she says, “Burke’s getting married in twelve hours too, but he gets to scrub in!” She has to deal with the overbearing mothers and get her eyebrows ripped off. She comes back to the hospital to get just a moment in the operating room: “I am a surgeon, Dr. Bailey, but right now I feel like somebody else.” That somebody else was supposed to be a bride. We begin to appreciate Cristina for putting up with all this even though it’s contrary to her nature; Burke’s mother admits that she used to think Cristina was selfish until she proved her ability to be flexible “on what matters most to Burke.” Apparently what mattered most to him was that she stay home and try on jewelry instead of scrubbing in.

Saving Yourself for The One

If there is an exact opposite of having Sex Like Men, it’s saving yourself for The One. People might think this doesn’t happen much anymore–whether or not that’s the case, many adolescent girls, and probably some guys, grow up thinking they’ll wait to have sex until marriage. Not for religious reasons, necessarily, but for idealistic ones. Whenever I contemplate the idea of The One, I can’t help but think of the fabulously bad Marisa Tomei movie, Only You (1994): when she was a little girl, a Ouija board told her she would marry Robert Downey Jr., so she chases him through Europe to make this happen. Or something like that.