Superbad is a recent movie involving 3 high school guys attempting to obtain booze for a party and hook up with some girls. However, not everything goes as planned and misadventures ensue. In the end, it's revealed that friendship actually means more to these guys than sex. I can get down with that, but there were a few points in the movie that were throw-popcorn-at-the-screen maddening for me. Here is a selection:
Seth: I honestly see now why Orson Welles ate his fat ass to death.
Evan: Well, you'll have sex in college. Everyone does.
Seth: Yes, but the point is to be good at sex by the time you get to college. You don't want girls to think you suck [edited for the wee ones].
I think at this point, I yelled something like, "I hate that idea!" I've written here about the pressure that young folks face to gain sexual experience. Poor young folks. And even though Superbad is just a silly comedy, it shows how pervasive the idea is. It's so ingrained and so potentially harmful, it makes me want to throw my hands up like some lost Fiddler on the Roof character. Oy.
This next scene is just...sketchy.
Evan: So I should buy Becca alcohol?
Seth: Yeah, that'll be pimp. That way you know she'll be drunk. You know when you hear girls saying, "I was so shitfaced last night, I shouldn't have fucked that guy." We could be that mistake!
It's not really on-topic, but I was totally shocked that the movie was making this out to be funny. Trying to get people drunk so that they're too smashed to say no to you; People actually do this. And it's not just teenagers, either. It's all fun and games until someone gets molested, people. I wanted to like the movie, I really did, seeing as it's a stealth paean to platonic love and all. But some aspects of it just sketched me out a little too much...
5 comments:
I hate to be picky, but the whole movie is about the friendship between Seth and Evan. From the very it is pointed out that these two characters have spent 10 years with each other and they are at a point where they are going to separate. This is not a booze and babes teen flick. Everything that they say and think about sex is influenced by what other people say but the characters clearly have no experiance and are unusually confident in pursuing most of the acts that they talk about. They know the lingo, they desperately hope to be a drunk girls "mistake" because they can't possibly imagine their love interests could view them as masculine (a-la sene where Seth talks about how he can't compare to Jules' ex-boyfriends). I mean would you purposefully makeout with a guy who didn't look like Zach Morris or have a six-pack since they were in kindergartens? (That is a joke) These two characters are working against the ideals of masculinity. The same pressure that you hate is what they hate.
Unlike many other teen movies the main male characters aren't united the next day having lost their virginity, ready to conquer the wide world of adulthood (oddly enough represented by going to separate colleges). At the end of Superbad the characters appear vulnerable, unsure of what lies ahead and longing for the fraternal companionship. They are unsure of the transition into adulthood, and romantic (not necessarily sexual) relationships. I think that you should compare Superbad to a couple of "classics" such as Porkey's.
Yay, I got you to de-lurk! :-) Didn't I agree with you about the film being about friendship? Anyway, if it wasn't clear, I agree. Granted, I have no idea who Zach Morris is, nor any idea what Porkey's is, so I guess I have some research to do.
yea...i just think it was obnoxiously crude...
You know Mads, if I say something like, "ahem, that's crude", I think that people might just think, "she just thinks sex is gross". (Which of course isn't true.) Thanks for saying it for me! :-)
Nicole's comment is spot-on, but I do understand why the moments in the movie you see have upset you.
I do the same thing with, well, just about everything that I see about kink in the mainstream. It's pretty disheartening at times, even when it's a stealth win. Unfortunately, very few people are smart enough (or think about it enough) to understand the stealth message.
In that sense, it's just another crude teen movie about sex.
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