Lowbrow humor is all about the body. From Rabelais to Apatow, there’s something irresistible about poking fun at what hungry, horny, embarrassing bags of filth we are.The world (as embodied by many a coed social situation) has long felt it necessary to protect women from some of the more explicit references to all those laughably unpretty bodily functions. This doesn’t make a ton of sense, considering that the gentler sex is just as familiar with the nasty stuff below the brain as their male counterparts. Not to mention those other messy female mysteries the slightest mention of which still cause some men to recoil in shock and disgust. Fortunately, it looks like we’re all starting to get over it.
Recent years have shown a burgeoning trend of female driven contributions to some of the more ribald, male-dominated movie genres. The success of these movies demonstrates that women hold their own in the realm of potty humor, while simultaneously combating that other regrettable stereotype that women are not funny.
We’re taking over all the Old Reliables: the “last hurrah before the wedding” shenanigans of “Bridesmaids” and “Bachelorette”. The buddy cop movie in “the Heat”. And most recently the desperate-to-lose-your-virginity-before-college romp in “The To Do List”. Sometimes they are done well, hitting the optimal balance of raunch, wit, and heart. More often, they are gratuitous. They are adolescent and needlessly gross, losing laughs along the way. Just like when the guys do it.
You won’t hear much from these genres during award season, because they aren’t built to make it past Friday night. At best they're an enjoyably forgettable one night stand. When such movies are made for-women, by-women, stereotypes are challenged and progress is made, inspiring Sundance-ready phrases like “ground breaking” and "fearless". On the flip side, when one such movie is a critical failure, it is judged much more harshly.
Most movies that roll around in the mud of sex and potty humor are likely to be dismissed as insipid and offensive regardless of how they do at the box office. But when such movies are made by women, the criticisms dig a mite deeper. The implication seems to be that women, even when they’re dealing with the trashiest of topics, should maintain a certain measure of decorum. If they refuse to do so then they should make sure that the movies have some wit and insight to offer beneath their noxious exterior, as an act of contrition for stooping to the level of poop jokes. This is like saying that gay couples who can now legally marry have a higher responsibility to not get divorced than their straight counterparts. As though, because they are finally given the right to do something, they have to earn it by doing it exceptionally well.
I believe that women are just as entitled to produce offensive movies with no redeeming qualities as men are. Sure, it would be better if all movies were good, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. In the mean time, it’s important that women be allowed to make tasteless, humorless, pointless sex comedies. Because women can do anything. Otherwise, the pressure to be “feminist” will be the inhibition that replaces the pressure to be “ladylike”. In truth, when women feel free to express themselves however they want (even appallingly) then feminist work is still being done.
Granted, it doesn’t look like feminism, at least not as it was envisioned. (Would Mary Wollstonecraft shed a joyful tear at the sight of a Vera Wang clad Maya Rudolph shitting herself on the side of a highway? Maybe not.) But what does feminism look like? Feminisim looks like a world where no woman is denied the opportunity to do something she wants to do simply because she’s a woman.
To hold female driven R-rated comedy to a higher standard is to impose an unfair tax on a hard-won victory. Equality is not meant to be a shrill schoolyard taunt of “anything you can do I can do better”. It’s “anything you can do I can do, period”.
So let them have their yuks, their fucks, their drunken brawls, their sexual disasters, and their farts. Feminism has never been a pretty fight.
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