How do Hollywood relationship tropes affect real life social dynamics?
by Ashley Canino
When unspeakable tragedies occur, we naturally ask why. Before he killed six people on the University of California Santa Barbara campus, Elliot Rodger recorded a video in which he answered that question, in part. As he outlines his plan and condemns the people, especially women, who drove him to commit such an act of “retribution,” we are still left wondering how anyone could feel justified in committing such an atrocity. Ann Hornaday asserts in a Washington Post piece that Hollywood is to blame for allowing Rodger to justify his delusions. Hornaday’s article drew fire immediately, notably from Judd Apatow, who she names, and Seth Rogen, who has worked with Apatow on multiple projects. The backlash is well deserved.
Rodger’s spoken manifesto appears scripted; the lighting and backdrop are just so. In Ann Hornaday’s piece on the video, she cites those marginally cinematic qualities as her entry into a discussion where a film critic would not normally be found. She asserts in the article that the film industry heavily influenced Rodger’s state of mind, via his father’s involvement in the industry, and specifically calls out Apatow’s work saying, “How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the schlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, ‘It’s not fair’?” Hornaday takes an extreme leap between mass gun violence and college comedies. Her question is also problematic because it presupposes that there are certain types of men who qualify for attaining women and some who do not. She posits that the problem with Apatow’s features is that they show the wrong type of men getting the girl–men who would not and could not achieve that goal in real life. That unfortunate and dangerous position, which offers women as objects to be won or earned, and highlights superficial qualities as relationship currency, is supported by the unrealistic casting of hunks and bombshells in traditional rom-coms.
Apatow and Rogen routinely undermine that very structure. Rogen currently appears on screen in Neighbors as Mac Radner, a great husband and dad, who gets caught up in a lot of shenanigans trying to prevent the fraternity next door from keeping his daughter awake and comes to terms with his transitioning values as he gets older. What makes his marriage to the beautiful Kelly (Rose Byrne) misleading? Does a man need to be built like Zac Efron to find happiness? Yes, the fraternity guys are certainly getting laid, but their collective role, focused through Efron’s portrayal of fraternity president, Teddy, is a satirical foil to the more mundane and fulfilling goings-on next door.
Hornaday specifically calls Neighbors out: “How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like Neighbors and feel, as Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of ‘sex and fun and pleasure’?” There is no mention of this potential danger in her review of Neighbors, which instead focuses on the film being innocuous and, at worst, not very funny. Both Hornaday articles bizarrely ignore the one scene in Neighbors that gave me pause. Following a tense moment with the frat president, Seth Rogen’s character plans vengeance against the fraternity brothers next door. He imagines shooting all of them, pointing his fingers in the shape of a gun and calling each one out by name before his on-screen wife talks him down. Neighbors was written and released prior to the UCSB shootings, but well into the aftermath of so many other mass shootings we have seen on college campuses. The joke somehow stands out as being in poor taste even between scenes of grown men fighting each other with dildos. Audiences demand that comedians bring levity to the most severe realities, while being careful not to offend, and that is a near impossible line to walk. But it was just too uncomfortable to watch the cast make light of premeditated gun violence in the way it was so difficult to watch Rodger do the same in his video.
Pop culture is powerful. Trends and entertainment are worthy of our scrutiny, especially where we feel there is a strong relationship between what we watch, read and listen to, and what comes to pass in our daily lives. We cannot, however, examine pop culture simply because it is an easier thing to do than to consider our own biases and assumptions that we may be taking to the movies with us.
Image courtesy Glen Wilson/Universal Pictures.
