Big, Scary Comedians and Their Big, Scary Vaginas

            As a rampant consumer of entertainment news, I was disturbed to hear that Lee Aronsohn, co-creator of Two and a Half Men, one of the worst, most sexist TV shows of all time, Tweeted, “Enough, ladies. We get it. You have periods… We’re approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation.” Spurred on by shows like Whitney, Two Broke Girls, and Are You There, Chelsea?, a September 2011 New York Times article seemingly confirmed these sentiments, declaring the 2011-2012 television season “the season of the vagina” (Carter, 2011).

In their piece, “Mediating Third-Wave Feminism: Appropriation as Postmodern Media Practice,” Shugart, Waggoner, and Hallstein cite a Time Magazine article that wonders if female empowerment will devolve into “mindless sex talk” (p.194). Shugart, Waggoner, and Hallstein also note that confrontation and sexual expression are hallmarks of third wave-feminism. This article was written in 2001, so it is surprising that it has taken 11 years to see several female-centric, sexually frank television shows on the air at once. Whitney, Are You There, Chelsea?, Two Broke Girls, New Girl, and Suburgatory have all premiered this year and feature female protagonists who discuss sex (although the main character in New Girl cannot discuss sex frankly because she cannot say penis). It appears that these authors, as well as the Time writers, predicted that third wave feminism would move toward women developing crude senses of humor; however, the public is still clearly weary of them.    

Holmes (2012) wrote on NPR’s website that “anyone who spends any time in current popular entertainment who does not go substantially out of the way to avoid them is awash in penis jokes and has been for some time. Any woman who has been watching primetime television comedy for, say, the last 25 years has been up to her sweet potatoes in the male form in all its states and conditions.” In fact, major networks have recently allowed primetime characters to say “dick” on television, though I have not read any backlash regarding that decision.

Bridesmaids made headlines last summer for “proving” that women could write gross-out comedies as well as men, while all of the aforementioned shows have been criticized (mostly by men) for their numerous vagina jokes. Comedians like Chelsea Handler, Whitney Comings, and Sarah Silverman have built their entire personas on acting like boys—they joke about their binge drinking, their casual sex lives, and, yes, their vaginas. Bridesmaids is a particularly frustrating example because the film featured exactly one gross-out scene where the women contract food poisoning, and one crude character who made a few sexual references. One scene and one character do not signal the start of crass female humor, but the film was treated like a woman-centric American Pie by the media.  

Shugart, Waggoner, and Hallstein arguably predicted that female-centric gross-out humor could arise in third-wave feminism, and I believe it is perhaps its newest tenet. While I applaud women in pop culture for blurring the lines between male- and female-centered comedy, it is disturbing that so many people are surprised and seemingly put off by the number of current female protagonists. It is also disturbing that using the word “vagina” on television can make headlines in 2012.

References

Carter, B. (2011, Sept. 21). This year’s hot TV trend is anatomically correct. The New York

Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/arts/television/this-years-hot-tv-trend-is-a-word.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

Holmes, L. (2012, April 3). A comedy showrunner’s lament and the status of lady jokes.

National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2012/04/03/149918490/a-comedy-showrunners-lament-and-the-status-of-lady-jokes

The first rule of Fight Club is: Don't talk about homoeroticism

Brookey, R., & Westerfelhaus, R. (2002). Hiding homoeroticism in plain view: 
     The Fight Club DVD as digital closet. Critical Studies in Media Communication,  
     19, 21-43.

            Sometimes movies come around at exactly the right time. The first time I saw Fight Club, I was 13, and the movie’s “screw everything” mentality spoke to my overdramatic, jaded adolescent mind. Since then, it has been my favorite movie of all time. In retrospect, my love of the movie may have made me biased because I do not buy into Brookey and Westerfelhaus’ arguments about Fight Club’s homoeroticism. While I cannot deny that homoeroticism exists in the film, I believe the homoeroticism serves to show the narcissism of the narrator’s character rather than imply a homosexual relationship with Tyler.

            Brookey and Westerfelhaus argue that through the use of DVD “extra text,” namely the commentaries by the cast and crew, the principal players in Fight Club deny, dismiss, and distract from the film’s homoeroticism to help the film appeal to a more mainstream audience. The authors focus on four key segments of the film—Tyler and the narrator’s first fight, the first real Fight Club meeting, the narrator’s fight with Angel Face, and the film’s ending—highlighting how the DVD commentaries attempt to erase homoeroticism from Fight Club.

            First the authors analyze Tyler and the narrator’s first fight. The narrator calls Tyler after his apartment explodes, and they hang out in a bar. Tyler tells the narrator he should just ask to stay with him, and out of nowhere asks the narrator to hit him as hard as he can. Brookey and Westerfelhaus code the bar scene as a “coy, homoerotic flirtation” (p.33). The segment also calls attention to penises and male bodily functions multiple times as the narrator reveals that Tyler splices pornographic films into family movies and pees and masturbates into food while working as a waiter. Additionally, Tyler tells Jack his situation could be worse—a woman could have cut off his penis and thrown it out of her car window. Finally, Tyler enjoys a “post-coital cigarette” (p.34) after their first fight. While these flirtatious elements are homoerotic, Brad Pitt’s commentary treats the scene as a joke, essentially dismissing the importance of the moment, while Chuck Palahniuk calls the scene “weird” (p.34) because of its romantic implications. Director David Fincher simply ignores the content of the scene and focuses on the technical aspects of filmmaking.

            The second segment features Tyler listing the rules of Fight Club. Men fight without shirts, shoes, or belts, and are not allowed to speak of the club, implying that “these fights carry a sexual tension that makes them seem more than mere brawls; they signify a relationship that dares not speak its name” (p.35). In the commentaries, the actors and director ignore the homoerotic elements and attempt to distract the viewers by talking about other concepts related to the film. Fincher talks about how funny Edward Norton looks while Norton compares the film to The Graduate.

The third segment, and perhaps the most blatantly homoerotic scene in the film, revolves around the narrator’s jealousy that Tyler has struck up a friendship with a young Fight Club member, nicknamed Angel Face. The narrator is envious of the attention Tyler pays to Angel Face and can tell that Tyler is planning something without him. In a jealous rage, the narrator challenges Angel Face to a fight and beats his face until he is unrecognizable, claiming that he wanted to “destroy something beautiful” (p.36). This is the only scene in the film where Fincher addresses homoeroticism; however, he denies it as a story of “self-love” rather than homosexual love, while Norton refers to the narrator’s emotions as “a brotherly jealousy” (p.37). Interestingly, though, the screenwriter concedes that the scene “obviously has homosexual connotations” (p.37); however, Palahniuk, the author of the book Fight Club, laughs off the suggestion, even though in the book, the narrator meets Tyler for the first time on a nude beach.

In analyzing the ending of the film, Brookey and Westerfelhaus argue that even though Tyler is the narrator’s narcissistic projection, the narrator is incapable of entering a loving heterosexual relationship until he destroys Tyler, coding their relationship as a metaphor for sexual confusion. Norton and Fincher dismiss the inherent homoeroticism by claiming that the narrator’s concern for Marla saved him.

            Perhaps my inner 13-year-old fangirl makes me biased, but there were a few weaknesses in the article, including one big oversight in its premise. Brookey and Westerfelhaus argue that “the supplemental material included on the DVD is used to make the product more marketable to mainstream audiences by framing the homoerotic elements of the film as homosocial behavior” (p. 22). However, in order to see these extra-text elements, one has to buy or actively seek out the DVD and be interested enough in the film to watch its special features. As the authors acknowledge at the beginning of the article, the film was intended to “piss off a healthy number of people” (p.21). From that argument, it is safe to assume that a healthy number of people will dislike the film and not seek out its bonus content. Only truly diehard fans will listen to the DVD commentary in the first place. Additionally, the film only made about $37 million dollars in the United States. This is not a mainstream movie, so why appeal to the masses now? The authors may be overestimating the mainstream appeal of DVD special features in general.  

            Additionally, the film undeniably has homoerotic content. The narrator is weirdly fixated on Tyler, and jokes that they live an “Ozzie and Harriet” life together. As someone who has watched and read Fight Club several times, however, the homoeroticism does not represent gay content. To me, the entire point of the film is that the narrator is a horrible narcissist. He invents this charismatic, hypermasculine alpha male alter ego who looks like Brad Pitt at the height of his attractiveness. The narrator is not in love with Tyler; he’s in love with himself. I had always assumed that was the entire point of the film. While some of the fight scenes with other men border on homoerotic, that is a natural side effect of featuring men fighting. All wrestling is homoerotic—the basic premise is that physically fit men have to writhe around on a floor together. Homoeroticism is inherent in any form of male-on-male fighting. (For more information, here is a link to a Village Voice article on the history of homoeroticism in wrestling: www.villagevoice.com/2000-05-02/news/grappling-with-homosexuality/). While there is certainly homoerotic content in Fight Club, I feel as though the authors read a bit too much into the fighting and not enough into Tyler and the narrator’s relationship.

            That said, the article has many strengths. In particular, the authors’ concept of DVD special features as extra-text worthy of examination is brilliant. Everything about DVD special features sends a message from the movie trailers they choose to include to the design of the menus to the DVD commentaries and interviews. While watching a 30 Rock DVD for my final paper, I saw an ad at the beginning of the DVD that framed Tina Fey as unattractive to men—which is one of the major themes in my paper. DVD content certainly has the power to frame readings of the text, and I applaud Brookey and Westerfelhaus for highlighting this.

            Finally, this article connects nicely with the readings from the past two weeks. Interestingly, like Bonnie Dow’s article on Ellen and Helene Shugart’s article on Rosie O’Donnell, Brookey and Westerfelhaus illuminate “the rules” for portraying gay characters in pop culture. In line with Dow’s arguments, they point out that in many cases, gay characters reinforce heterosexuality by serving as asexual or apolitical comedic foils. They are often defined most by their relationships to other straight characters. Additionally, the piece fits nicely with the theme of visibility and invisibility. If you buy Brookey and Westerfelhaus’ arguments, then the cast and crew of Fight Club work hard to dismiss, deny, and divert attention away from the visible homoeroticism in the film. They are implicitly hoping for the film to pass as a heterosexual (love) story. Like several of our readings this semester, it operates on the assumption that mainstream audiences are uncomfortable with homosexuality or homoeroticism.

Ellen, Matthew, and Lynndie as Scapegoats and Poster Children

The media relies on shortcuts, as exemplified by the three readings for this week. Throughout these readings (which, it has to be said, I thoroughly enjoyed), various media outlets used the stories of Ellen Degeneres, Matthew Shepard, and Lynddie England to create scapegoats and poster children for various social problems. I will explore the roles scapegoats and poster children play in larger culture.

In their article, “The Politics of Negotiating Public Tragedy: Media Framing of the Matthew Shepard Murder,” Ott & Aoki view Matthew Shepard’s killers as scapegoats. While the Ott & Aoki article explicitly utilizes Kenneth Burke’s theory of scapegoating, Gronnvoll also sees Lynndie England, and to an extent, all of the women at Abu Ghraib, as scapegoats in their own right. England, and really all of the Abu Ghraib guards, were also scapegoated, allowing the American public to ignore pressing social issues—should there be a more strenuous screening process for prison guards? Does the military encourage the feminization of prisoners, and what does that mean for gender constructs? Scapegoating cleanses the public of any blame. Laramie, Wyoming did not have to confront its discriminatory attitudes, and the U.S. Army did not have to face its gender discrimination. Furthermore, the American government and larger public were able to avoid their larger prejudices. 

Scapegoating is infuriating, and it also appears in the film Boys Don’t Cry and helps articulate my biggest problem with the film. By making Brandon Teena’s killers visibly psychotic, the film absolves its audience and the larger public from any blame for Brandon’s death. The portrayal of Brandon Teena’s killers is comparable to the media framing of Matthew Shepard’s killers. Ott & Aoki wrote, “Hatred and homophobia… would come to be framed primarily as character flaws of the chief antagonists, rather than as wide-scale social prejudices that routinely result in violence toward gays and lesbians” (488). Our culture’s discomfort with gender ambiguity was not Brandon’s killer—these two violent, mentally unstable men were. Case closed. Furthermore, since the film clearly presents Brandon as an all-around great guy, the public is not disturbed by him nearly as much as they are disturbed by his killers. Once again, the American public does not have to examine its own beliefs and prejudices.

            In addition to scapegoating, all three articles deal with media-imposed poster children. By coming out at the same time as her fictional character, Ellen Degeneres became the poster child for lesbians. Dow notes that “she is, in fact, the ultimate user-friendly lesbian for television purposes,” and she still is, along with her gay male counterpart, Neil Patrick Harris (127). Matthew Shepard became the poster child for hate crimes against gay people, and Lynddie England “went on to become the poster child for bad behavior and a cautionary tale for thousands of women soldiers on active duty,” through the media’s portrayal of England as simultaneously aggressively over-sexed and submissive to authority figures (Gronnvoll, 375). Why does the media rely so heavily on poster children?

Scapegoats serve a clear narrative purpose—after their punishment, they restore social order. Poster children, however, are less functional and serve as testaments to the power of the media. They allow the media to generalize. Poster children simply allow the media to create shortcuts. They become archetypes for the cause or personality trait that they represent. In terms of narrative functionality, though, poster children add nothing other than a face to a cause. Ellen Degeneres makes lesbians look friendly and non-threatening. Matthew Shepard makes gay people look innocent and reminds the public that hate crimes can happen anywhere. Lynddie England makes female soldiers look oversexed and malicious. They have symbolic power more than narrative power; however, they can stir up intense emotions. Interestingly, poster children can only be created by the media, which need shortcuts to help show their viewers how to feel.

Scapegoats and poster children are both utilized regularly in pop culture. While scapegoats serve the narrative function of cleansing and restoring social order, poster children serve as shortcuts and symbols. Both can be used for manipulation or to shed light on social issues. It’s up to the media to choose wisely.

A Second Opinion of Boys Don't Cry

In her introduction to her essay on Boys Don’t Cry, Brenda Cooper wrote that the film offered its viewers “narratives that challenge and confront societal boundaries related to gender and sexuality” (45). In last week’s reading, however, John Sloop criticized the ending of Boys Don’t Cry, noting that the ending is yet another example of reinforced heteronormativity in gender troubling cases. While the film does challenge some aspects of gender and sexuality, I have to agree with Sloop. Some aspects of Boys Don’t Cry, particularly the ending, reinforce heteronormativity rather than challenge gender binaries. Through its final love scenes and its portrayal of Brandon’s killers, the film seems quite closed-minded.  

Kimberly Pierce, the director of Boys Don’t Cry, adds small details to the story of Brandon Teena that imply that he (and arguably Lana) is a true lesbian by the end of the film. After Brandon is exposed as a biological female, Lana and Brandon have their first honest sexual encounter as two women. Pierce added this scene to the film despite Brandon’s friends and family’s insistence that Brandon was disgusted by lesbianism and considered himself a heterosexual male. He would never have had sex with Lana as a woman. The final sex scene implies that Brandon is ready to live a life as a lesbian, as he and Lana are prepared to run away together. This scene shatters Brandon’s ambiguous gender identity and reveals him to be a lesbian female, which would also allow him to perform female masculinity without punishment. Problem solved.

As Sloop wrote in Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in Contemporary U.S. Culture (2004), Lana and Brandon’s final sex scene “clearly opens an interpretive door that allows reading the two as now occupying a lesbian relationship. Such an interpretation both refigures Brandon’s life ‘as a man’ as fear of her own homosexuality and maintains a gender-as-genitalia equation” (72). To a mainstream heteronormative audience, Cooper’s more liberal interpretation that Brandon and Lana’s fluid sexuality challenges the dominant heteronormative ideology does not matter. Audiences will choose the interpretation that sticks to the status quo and does not challenge their worldviews.

Pierce’s portrayal of Brandon’s killers is also troubling. While I absolutely agree with Cooper that the film de-mythologizes the American heartland, I have trouble accepting other claims. Cooper noted that the film also problematized heterosexuality through its portrayal of Brandon’s killers, John Lotter and Tom Nissen. Cooper explained, “Heteromasculinity as exhibited through the characters of John and Tom, therefore, seems not only unnatural, strange, and lacking in virtue, but also a serious threat to society” (51). Indeed, John and Tom, the only significant heterosexual male characters in the film, are monsters; however, I believe that this portrayal oversimplifies the Brandon Teena case. John and Tom are portrayed as undeniably unhinged and dangerous. Tom self-mutilates and tries to convince Brandon to cut himself, too. John encourages Brandon to outrun the police and then throws everyone but Lana out of the car after Brandon receives a speeding ticket, even though it is not his car. John has a weird sexual obsession with Lana (whom we are told wrote letters to John as a child while John was in jail) and her mother. John and Tom are clearly mentally unstable, so it is no surprise that they kill Brandon. The film loses an opportunity to have its killers wrestle with moral complexity. The audience cannot identify with the killers and has no reason to think about why John and Tom feel Brandon has to die-- John and Tom are just insane. They never debate whether or not to kill Brandon. They never explain why they feel Brandon needs to die. The film could have directly confronted America’s discomfort with gender and sexual ambiguity with a well-placed monologue, but instead the killers simply kill Brandon because they are crazy. The end.

 While in many ways, Boys Don’t Cry and the Brandon Teena story complicate gender binaries as well as heteronormativity, the film also reinforces the dominant ideology by arguably turning Brandon and Lana into a lesbian couple and by coding Brandon’s killers as simply crazy. By refusing to stick to Brandon’s self-perceived heterosexuality, the film allowed the audience to interpret Brandon as a lesbian, simplifying his gender and sexual identity. Additionally, by making Brandon’s killers psychotic, the filmmaker sacrificed the opportunity to explore John and Tom’s discomfort with Brandon and perhaps turn a mirror on the America as a whole. Audiences could not identify with the killers, and thus, did not have to confront their own homophobia. I viewed the film as an enormous missed opportunity.

Playing Gay is Not Okay, But Not Playing Straight is Worse

“In short, the truthful lesbian is far less troubling than someone who challenges bi-gender semiotics and whose objects of desire are unknown” (Sloop, p. 85).

Gossip undeniably shapes celebrity culture and has become a powerful industry in itself. Blogger Perez Hilton was considered a major celebrity cameo when he appeared on The Voice earlier this season to cheer on one of his friends. Perhaps nothing sets the gossip community abuzz more quickly than celebrities’ love lives. It is common to give celebrity couples cutesy nicknames before they have officially come out as a couple. As any celebrity who has ever played gay or any actor who has appeared on Broadway can attest, gossip sites love to speculate about celebrities’ sexual orientations; however, nothing seems to frustrate gossip sites more than a sexually ambiguous performer.

Sadly, even in 2012, it is hard for actors to play gay characters without immediately being questioned about their sexuality. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were both questioned about their heterosexuality while starring in Brokeback Mountain, and while Ledger was absolved after having a baby with his female costar, Gyllehaal’s true sexuality is still debated fairly regularly. That said, actors who play coy about their sexual orientation are widely criticized.

As John Sloop notes in his book, Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in Contemporary U.S. Culture, “Although ours is no doubt a heteronormative culture, it is also a culture that insists on a clear delimitation between male and female as separate genders, on heterosexual and homosexual as distinctly separate spheres of desire. It is a culture, then, in which knowing where to place someone in the matrix of gender and desire is valued over confusion” (pp. 84-85).  Sean Hayes, who played the flamboyant Jack on Will and Grace, was criticized for years for refusing to comment on his sexual orientation. When he finally came out in 2010, Hayes criticized gay media publications such as The Advocate for pressuring him to come out. Even this year, White Collar star Matthew Bomer was criticized for not publicly addressing his sexuality (i.e. confirming the long-standing rumors that he is gay). He officially came out of the closet last month.

While Hayes and Bomer have both confirmed their sexuality, stars like Jodie Foster and Queen Latifah, both reported lesbians, continue to aggravate the media. Both stars refuse to comment on their love lives, and when either speaks about her personal life, the internet lights up. In fact, Googling either celebrity alongside the word “sexuality” brings up several different blogs claiming to confirm that she has “finally” opened up about her sexual orientation or is showing off her girlfriend.

It is unfortunate that in 2012, the media does not afford sexually ambiguous performers more privacy. Even more unfortunately, these performers do not directly threaten heterosexuality. They do not lead outwardly homosexual lives, but they do not lead outwardly heterosexual lives. Why not allow the Jodie Fosters, Oprahs, Sean Hayes, and Taylor Lautners of the world to challenge sexuality binaries? Does it really affect our lives and our relationships, or is it, as one Newsweek columnist wrote in 2010, “the big, pink elephant in the room?”

P.S. I agree with Scarlett’s post. J Watching Boys Don’t Cry made my confusion worse.