Classic RITS- Mary's Musings: Ladies in Comedy/Take That, Horatio Sanz

Hey dudes! I've decided to "recycle" (or wait, let's call it "upcycle"; nothing obnoxious about that word) some classic Rip it To Shreds posts. I enjoy rereading them from time to time, and perhaps you will too! Now, a post about Comedy from 2008.

I started to read this Vanity Fair profile of Tina "The New American Sweetheart" Fey, and like three-quarters of the way through it, I realized it was entirely, entirely about the way she looks. She used to be 150 pounds! Ohmygod, so fat! And by "fat', we mean normal but of course that's unacceptable and she'll never be on the cover of VF half-nude! That scar! We have to know! But now she wears low-cut tops and Seven jeans and looks "like a really pretty graduate student!" Not old, guys! Kind of hot! She and Sarah Palin are both "hot librarian" types! Guys, she's smart and funny and PRETTY, did you hear? Inititally she was told she wasn't hot enough to be on SNL, haha! Keep in mind that's a show that featured Horatio Sanz! Then she went to Weight Watchers! Steve Martin used to ignore her but hit on her after she lost weight! That's fun and flattering, right? Not gross that an accomplished, talented writer and comedian can only get attention for being hot, right?

(By the way, Rachael Dratch was supposed to play Jane Krakowski's role on 30 Rock, but was nixed for not being hot enough. Also, whatever happened to Cheri Oteri? Also, is Jimmy Fallon really getting a late night talk show? Really? Is he going to start cracking up at his own weak delivery? Maybe bust out the acoustic guitar and forget some lines? Oooh, I hope Horatio Sanz will be involved. Have we heard from him since that movie with Cuba Gooding Jr. where he pretended to be gay on a cruise ship? Snow Dogs?)

At first, I was like, "Obviously a dude wrote this," but of course it was actually Maureen Dowd, who is one of those weird writers like Camille Paglia who are labeled as feminists but have dubious cred and kind of seem to hate women- Dowd, of course, once accused Al Gore of being so feminine (because he cared about the environment!) that he was "practically lactating." And, of course, Vanity Fair is a totally obnoxious, sexist magazine that I have always hated, long before I actually read the editor's letter about women not being funny. Which I did read, and not that many people seemed to concerned about at the time.

It barely needs to be said that funny women are rarely represented in comedy. Mostly they are the sexy girlfriends who roll their eyes at their hilarious manchild of a boyfriend (hey second coming of Seth Rogan's career), or, if they are in a romantic comedy, or tween comedy, they are the sexy but prat-fall prone hapless moppet, someone charmingly clumsy but with perfect hair. And then, the real female comedians are few and far between, and can rarely match the success of their male counterparts. And, of course, if they do, they are constantly subjected to an in-depth examination of their looks and/or massive amounts of airbrushing.

Anyway, I could go on about how I hate Sarah Silverman's ditzy "I am five years old" delivery (hey, even if you're making a "funny" pose, you're still just posing in Maxim in your underwear) or how we are sadly lacking the salty, older-woman comedy stylings of such luminaries as Phyllis Diller (up there in the yellow) and Joan Rivers, but what I'm really, really trying to say is that Amy Sedaris should be more famous, not only because she is hilarious and unique, but because she is one of the few comedians who actually challenges what it means to be a woman in comedy, and does not rely on being cute or airbrushed to make her point. And, unlike other female comedians who still try to hard to entice their male (and female) fans, she actually makes an effort to fearlessly gross people out, which seems to be one of the number one of- limits topics for female comedians, because it shows that you are more than your boobs and/or your potential hotness. At the same time, Amy does not deny that she is a woman and women are funny; she just celebrates ballsy, overlooked female archetypes in a way that distances her own looks from her characters, at the same time illustrating that women can be just as loud, campy, revolting, sexual, and funny as any other comedian.

PS: If you're not familiar with Amy Sedaris, I'd like to recommend both her TV show, Strangers With Candy, and her book, I Like You, which is a take-off on retro household hints types books. Speaking of which, I am obsessed with retro household hints-type books and will be doing a post on them soon!

The Jenny Archetype: Greasy Hair, Broken Dreams

Remember Jenny? Sure, Forrest Gump himself had adventures a-plenty, but poor Jenny just had bad stuff happen to her. The quintessential crappy female character, Jenny was there for Forrest to save, much like the woman Sling Blade saved in that terrible movie. Lank and downtrodden, Jenny was constantly being abused and exploited. Sadly, Jenny never gets her own story or power. The movie ends with her getting pregnant with Forrest's child and then dying. 

This sort of downtrodden, abused and passive female character is an archetype in American cinema. Often from the wrong side of the tracks, the Jenny can be anything from an abused hooker to an abused housewife. She has lived hard, and she will probably have sex with/be saved by the main character, who may or may not be mentally deficient. Her lank, greasy hair and unfashionable-by-Hollywood-standards wardrobe are also keys to her inner pysche. Generally considered "low class", the Jenny probably won't be getting married any time soon, being much more likely to die in some harrowing way before the movie ends.

Speaking of women who are abused and have sex with Billy Bob Thorton, here's Halle Berry in Monster's Ball. I remember seeing this movie for free cause my friend worked at a movie theater, and then my other friend was like, "This is the worst movie ever" and we left. True story.

In Broken Flowers, Bill Murray wonders why all the women he used to date are like, such old bitches now even though he's still so cool and great. He briefly has an encounter with a Jenny type, played by Tilda Swinton, but luckily she fends him off with a shotgun.

Here's Emily Blunt in 2012's pretty boring Looper. Okay, she does some stuff, but mostly the stuff involves protecting her son who happens to be magic, which has some convoluted connection to the plot of the movie. And she's only abused by her magic son. She does have sex with the main character, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, and she sure is downtrodden!

What are some other examples of this character? I know there are a ton more, but this was all I could think of. Gaby suggested "every role Jennifer Jason Leigh has ever played."

Merely a Coincidence????

I guess all this art is inspired by the Marc Ryden school, but as, Hot Topic-y as Marc Ryden's art is, he also seems to be squeezing in some funny references and social commentary amongst the bobble-headed nymphets:

I don't know, it's not like I have a problem with campy or decorative art, and I can appreciate the big-eyed Margaret Keane style homage, but it is just annoying to see all these women making this cookie-cutter, naughty little girl with a twee baby fox stuff. As I mentioned in my post on child actor/models, it seems like we place quite a lot of value on an idealized, barely pubescent body as the perfect canvas for any situation. And also, the heads, they are so big, like those Steve Madden ads or Bratz dolls or every endless copy. We have reached the limits of what big heads can show us, you know? Bring on the tiny heads and huge bodies.

Designers Love Little Kids

Above are some fashion ads (and one editorial) starring the Fanning sisters for Marc Jacobs and actor Hailee Steinfeld for Miu Miu.

Fashion designers act as though they choose very young teens for their ad campaigns because of each girl's innate style and unique, muse-like ability to inspire them- when, clearly, the real reason designers like children is because they represent a coltish, unsullied female ideal (of course, most women can tell you that, as a very young teen, they felt neither coltish nor unsullied.)

These young ladies fit right in with the current (current meaning several years, but it's not like fashion has come up with anything new lately) fashion model, who also has a distinctly un-womenly look, and is usually put out to pasture before her teens end. Perhaps we remember Gemma Ward, whose distinctly childlike look catapulted her to fame and then disappeared once she grew into a less childlike body?

Not that all this is new; we all know models are young and it's not like you can't find equally creepy photos of young Brooke Shields. But designers act as though the young girl's agency and not her childlike looks are the reason behind her newfound modeling career. If the deisgners were really into the fact that these young women are actors, maybe they would ask them to do something in these photos instead of look scared, big-eyed, and limp.

At least the first round of Marc Jacobs photos with Dakota Fanning emphasized the fact that she was a hammy little kid playing dress-up (speaking of which, god Marc Jacobs ads are fug with their deliberately "undone" look):

Whereas, for round two, she is just your run-of-the-mill Lolita type with a perfume bottle between her legs:

The fact that these girls are supposed to be talented actresses comes in second to their position as highly styled pubescent fashion plates. Ideally, we would find young women inspiring, but not because they look so baby prostitute-like when they peer out sexily and vacantly from behind a pricey purse, but because they have other, real talents to offer. Also, girls of this age are supposed to be wearing two different-colored Converse, which they Sharpied on themselves, not getting their hair and make-up prepped for six hours by some stylist.

Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg Are Gross

Since I moved to New York especially, it seems 60's French pop is inescapable. Sometimes I think if I hear that song "Bonnie and Clyde" with Jane Birkin or whoever* it is singing in that French accent I'm gonna kill someone. It seems like everyone can conveniently play this shit because it is retro and French and seems vaguely stylish and won't offend. I am also tired of seeing photos of lank, blank-faced Jane Birkin and disturbingly frog-like Serge Gainsbourg all over fashion inspiration posts like he is not old enough to be her inbred father.

It's as though we've forgotten these canonical relationships of past eras were informed by the extreme sexism of their day, especially the 1960's era musicians and "their women."

Seriously, these look like people you'd see getting into a violent altercation in a dollar store.

Ugh! What is this nasty chauvinistic shit? May I remind you he sang a song called "Lemon Incest" with his teenage daughter? Aside from the fact that people still seem convinced the French are superior fashion-wise to Americans even though I see French people everyday who look just as shittily dressed as those of us in the US, with the advent of fast-paced modern technology it matters less and less what the story of the images we are posting as inspiration on our blogs are.

I recently read Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull, and for much of the book, she talks about being depressed, drug-addicted, anorexic, angry regarding how she was used and only valued for her beauty, all the while this fiction of her as a person and especially Mick Jagger's girlfriend was being created. But these aspects don't show up in our inspiration posts.

It's not like we can't post photos of Marianne to inspire us, but if we have the internet to repost photos we know nothing about, we also have it as tool to find out about these people and not gloss over the fact that Serge Gainsbourg is gross, you know?

*I guess it was Bridget Bardot. Whatevs.

Seal of Approval: Michelle Rodriguez

I'm always happy when Michelle Rodriguez shows up in a movie, even though she usually gets killed off because she's not the main heroine- she is, after all, too butch to be the main heroine. Mouthy, surly, and tough, as she herself says, Michelle doesn't play the delicate, easily-offended girlfriend. It's kind of like she can't, because her own personality always seems to come through. Sure, she doesn't have a lot of range, but the character she always plays is a great one.

As a fan of the action genre, it always sucks to see the female characters getting sexily raped or almost raped, spending the entire movie captured/stuffed into car trunk/in coma/tied up, crying pitifully, or needing constant rescuing. In a perfect world, Michelle would be the own star of her own (totally gay) big budget action movie, with lots of explosions and murders and no panty shots.

Sayeth Michelle:

"Well, could you really imagine me playing the girlfriend that needs rescuing? Or the girlfriend?"

"I don't want people thinking of me sexually. I don't want people to be like, 'She's hot-looking,' you know? I want them to listen to me for what I am saying. And I think the best way to do that is to sniff my armpits, and like, sit and burp every now and then. It just completely throws people off.

Mary's Musings: Ten-year old Steve Martin fans, RomComs are for Losers, etc.

As a kid, I loved comedy. My main favorites were Bill Murray and Steve Martin, whose dry wit I both related to and adored. I was also a fan of John Candy, another comedian I felt I grew up with. I loved The Three Amigos (something tells me this movie would be significantly less watchable as an adult) Ghostbusters, Wayne's World, the non-corny parts of Father of the Bride 1 & 2 and L.A. Story, Twins starring Danny Devito and Arnold Scwarzenagger (I also have my doubts about that one holding up) and the work of Leslie Nielsen. Many of these movie were copied for me from video-store tapes to VHS tapes, and when the FBI warning would flash on the screen I would be terrified, anticipating a team of FBI agents breaking into my home and seizing my copy of Joe Vs. The Volcano as I watched it for the twenty-second time.

The Naked Gun series, as well as Hot Shots 1 & 2 were movies I rushed to see in theaters. My family saw Naked Gun 33 and 1/3 while traveling through Europe. We first chose to see it in England, but the British wouldn't let me see it as a ten year old, though I was with my parents. (Maybe because of the scathing Queen Elizabeth parodies such as this one?) We ended up seeing it in the formerly communist city of Prague, Czechoslovakia, in an extremely Soviet-style, all-cement movie theater. The theater creepily echoed the cement apartment we were staying in, where the lights would shut off if you didn't make it fast enough down the hallway, and at the end of the hallway, we were rewarded with an always ajar-door with red stuff on it leading to the apartment next to ours, where Czech people had violent domestic arguments. These terrifying settings did not spoil my enjoyment of the movie, which I loved. And Anna Nicole was in it, and I thought she was so beautiful. I also selected it as a film to watch at the very last birthday party I remember having, age ten or eleven, a sleepover where I felt alternately embarrassed at the crassness of my selection and annoyance that people weren't watching it.

I also remember when Wayne's World came out. It was really exciting. I was eight, and my mother and I went to see it, but we got there really late and missed the first half, so we stayed in the theater to re-watch it. I later received free or cheap copies of both Wayne's World and the equally excellent Addams Family on VHS from McDonalds as a pack. What a combo!

On a more 90's note, I enjoyed Tommy Boy and the works of Adam Sandler. I loved Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. Saturday Night Live as one and a half hours of pure enjoyment. At the end, when the cast waves goodbye and the credits roll, I would feel a great loss. It seemed extra sad because of the dramatic farewell, and I wished I was up there on that stage with my fellow hilarious castmates, signing off at the end of another great show. I didn't have cable, so there were no reruns. In vain, I would stay up, hoping something good would be on. I usually ended up watching the beginning of Showtime at The Apollo, which didn't really satisfy, just as Soul Train or Professional Wrestling would come on after cartoons and I'd watch it much more out of desperation that enjoyment.

Some of these movies have certainly held up- Bill Murray's Groundhog Day (besides Andy McDowell)/Ghostbusters 1 & 2/What About Bob? type movies are light years better than all his stupid mopey Wes Anderson/Jim Jarmusch/Sofia Coppolla roles. Dumb and Dumber is another I will not hesitate to watch if it happens to be on TV, and obviously the aforementioned Wayne's World and The Addams Family are some of the Greatest Films Ever Made. I still like Seinfeld, a middle-school age obsession neatly fitting in with my other dorky passions.

I think most comedy is really age-appropriate only for a precocious nine-year-old, whereas now the retard tingles you get after watching Michael Cera stammer his way through the same movie for the eighteenth time tend to overwhelm any "funny" aspects the movie promises to contain. Luckily, the trend of wacky sports movie died (Thank god the one starring Andy Samburg bombed) but looking at the comedies still set to be released in 2010, it doesn't look pretty. More romcoms starring Kristen Bell, and then more movies starring Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd as a duo, and then Owen Wilson is the live-action Marmaduke movie. Looks like the studios are taking some crazy, creative chances yet again!

Most comedies are geared toward men. Comedies geared towards women are called "romantic comedies," but they're not really comedies. Romantic comedies are not funny. I'm tired of women on feminist blogs being like, "We have to stop criticizing romantic comedies because they're for and about women. There's no shame in loving romantic comedy. Why aren't people ashamed of action movies instead?" Romantic comedies are insulting to women, that's why. The very format of a pathetic fairy-tale romance combined with the forced wacky hijinks of polite society makes me want to kill myself. They are simultaneously boring and embarrassing. They are almost always about women feeling stupid/ugly/single/uncool/bad about themselves. The women are never crass and funny. I think Tina Fey can be very funny, but to me 30 Rock is just like a romantic comedy- it's about hating herself (Like Chelsea Handler, I often get the feeling Tina Fey actually hates all women.)

The last time I regularly watched romantic comedies was in middle school, when friends would take me to see them. Even then, I cringed. I thought about selecting the The Wedding Singer as a movie to see for my birthday party, but after the final scene, wherein Adam Sandler sings a song called "I Want to Grow Old With You" to a very non-80's looking Drew Barrymore, I was glad I hadn't. It made me uncomfortable to watch such such treacle, and it still does.

Sure, action movies are retarded too, but they are exciting and exhilarating, and not always based on some series of horrible, cutesy, faux pas. I don't know how you can compare an entire yacht blowing up or someone getting stabbed in the face with some girl worrying whether she is too fat for her date with Hugh Grant. Only one of these scenarios should be fulfilling some kind of primal urge.

A lot of these modern, "I Love You, Man" style comedies kind of blur the line between romantic comedies and wacky retard comedies, both because the men in them appear to be in long-term, committed relationships with their male friends, and because they also have to resolve a problem with their nagging but inexplicably hot wives or girlfriends. Plus, they are always talking about their feelings. So many women seem to have embraced these kind of comedies, even laboring under the delusion that the men who star in them are attractive and sexually appealing due to their "comedic" "talents." I recently heard a young woman say she would have sex with Jonah Hill if he asked her to. Do you think, fifteen years ago, a lot of guys would be like, "Hey, she's such a great comedian, I'd have sex with Roseanne, wouldn't you?" Talk about a double standard.I mean, it would be cool if a guy said that in a way the opposite would never, ever be cool.

Also, I know I've been ranting a long time now, but I also am so sick of the faux-documentary style format I want to puke. It had already been perfected with the British The Office, some Christopher Guest movies, and Arrested Development, but, instead of thinking of something new, everyone just jumped on the bandwagon to play out a bunch of third-rate versions until it looks really dated and everyone hates it. I feel like I am the only person on earth to hate Steve Carrel and the U.S. The Office. The last commercial I saw for it promised Jim and Pam or whatever their names are having a baby and they were having a baby special episode! Way to stay true to the dry, realistic, melancholy spirit of the original, American colonialist TV producers!

Needless to say, I also hate Judd Apatow and think he directed all the most sexist, trite parts of Freaks and Geeks, which he wrongfully gets credit for and is the greatest show ever.

In conclusion, it's really hard to find funny comedies, and if you want to get high and watch a retarded comedy you haven't seen, please check out Spring Breakdown, starring Amy Poehler, Rachael Dratch, and Parker Posey, which manages to be feminist without being patronizing (alright, I can't recommend the scenes with Amer Tamblyn, but still, the movie is good.) If you are like, "Why is Jonah Hill in all these movies but these famous, established female comedians can't get their much funnier comedy released?", obviously the answer is the patriarchy, and I guess that is also the answer to the question about why I never watched any female-driven comedies or remember liking an female comedians, but we all know that.

Mary's Non-Zombie Movie Review Korner

I apologize for being a negligent blogger lately. Here is a post about documentaries I've watched recently, which you should also watch!

Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story, 2000
This documentary is about Brigid Berlin, AKA Brigid Polk, who tends to fall under the umbrella term of "Warhol superstar" though they were in fact peers and he stole ideas from her. Unlike many documentaries about women with connections to famous men, Pie in the Sky is truly about its subject, not her relationship with Andy Warhol. She has had a fascinating life, from her rebellion from the wealthy WASP society she was born into, to her self portraits, Polaroids, and other artwork, to her relationship to food and her body and her family. She is definitely one of the last holdouts of the old, truly artsy weirdo New York. Though she came from a monied background like Edie Sedgewick, Brigid was the anti-Edie in so many ways, and she will never be played by Sienna Miller or be canonized by fashion magazines because she was no muse- which I mean in the best way possible.

Brigid is still an artist: look at these fucking needlepoint pillows! I have come to the conclusion that I hate 99% of art, but these pillows are something I would want to own myself. Also, her apartment is mind-blowing.

Paris is Burning, 1990

Many liberal-artsy types have seen this film, but for those who haven't, you should really see it. It's another New York story (living in New York has made me nerdily obsessed with all aspects of NYC history), depicting balls, which encompass a wide range of drag performances, as well as the origin of voguing, participated in by mostly poor, gay and minority youth. Like Pie in the Sky, I think this movie subverts the idea of what art and artists are, as well as what drag is, and plenty of other stuff: the people in this movie are nothing if not artists, constantly creating and making something out of nothing.

I've read plenty of criticism of Paris is Burning (by bell hooks, among others) which asserts that the touch is too lighthearted and trivializes these people's lives. I disagree; the first time I saw this movie, it seemed more depressing than anything else; it was upon second watching that I was so impressed with what the people in the film were accomplishing. Also, this movie features kids hanging out on the legendary Christopher Street piers, which for a long time were a hangout for gay kids who often had no other place to go. I don't really know what they are like now, except that Simone and I saw a documentary about them being "cleaned up" that played the Madonna song "This Used to be My Playground" and we laughed in a theater filled with self-righteous types.

(This is a dude, man.)

Decline of Western Civilization, Part 2, 1988
When this movie started, I was like, "Oh no, another movie glorifying rapey dudes", since glorifying rapey dudes is a big part of many movies. Hair metal, after all, (though rife with the contradiction of men essentially dressed as women, who also hate women) shares a lot with modern gangster rap, in that money, hos, and flashy lifestyles reign supreme. But as it progressed, director Penelope Spheeris (Wayne's World, man) probed more deeply and the results are amazing.

While male vulnerability is constantly avoided in most films, Spheeris spends much of her time getting these macho braggarts to admit they are alcoholics with no discernible skills who make music even they know is second-rate and whose whole life is predicated on being a huge star. When Paul Stanley of Kiss (depicted above surrounded by soft core-looking ladies) is asked whether he could fall in love with a groupie she pans over the faces of the groupies themselves to see their reactions. Many of the men admit that they not only dress like stereotypical prostitutes (see assless chaps photo above), they also basically prostitute themselves to women for food and a place to stay, despite being huge misogynists. The interview with some guy from W.A.S.P., who starts out bragging, eventually confesses he hates himself as he chugs vodka in his parents pool as his mother looks on.

Also, it's obviously worth watching for stylistic reasons. By the end, you don't even notice the hair. Speaking of which, maybe my hair should look more like this. What the hell happened to doing your hair? You literally cannot tell what gender people are half the time. Also there is one guy whose hair is half blond and half brown and the most amazing hair I've ever seen but I don't have a photo.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot, 1986

I don't know, this might be, like, one of my favorite all-time movies, I've mentioned it here before, but it's truly amazing. Just watch it. It also fits in with my assertion about guys being foxier in the 70's. Even though this is from 1986, it has a 70's vibe. I'm too tired to write any more, except that the girl who says "Hell yeah," repeatedly and has the personality of Wooderson in Dazed and Confused is my hero.