Sandra. SANDRA BULLOCK. I am talking to you, young lady!
We need to have some words.
This is a poster for a movie in which you play a deranged, man-hungry crazypants who stalks a man that she believes to be her “true love.” After ONE DATE. I have seen the trailer for this movie! As you can probably tell from the “WHOA OH NO CRAZY LADY” looks on the faces of your co-stars, your character, um… does not come off well.
Because there are five years of excellent posts from which to choose! It is not an easy assessment to make!
This one, however, might be my favorite.
Oh! My goodness! Someone seeks relationship advice from the inimitable Dr. Sady! And Dr. Sady is, in fact, me!
I wanted to ask you: have you found that your political views cause ruptures in older friendships? In the last month or so I’ve managed to piss off at least three close friends of mine with either stuff on the blog or things I’ve said–mostly in the “check your privilege” or “not taking things lying down” vein. I always had a tendency to preach and pontificate, and the whole politically activist bent doesn’t complement that well.
So I dunno. I don’t even know what it is I want. I don’t want to lose friendships but I can’t just suspend my feelings about things either.
Good question, Anonymous (Unless You Don’t Want To Be) Reader! To answer this, I will, of course, have to resort to a long and seemingly unrelated personal anecdote. For such are the tools of healing! It starts like this: John Hughes died. I watched a marathon of John Hughes movies. And I just couldn’t bring myself to write about the date rape scene in Sixteen Candles.
EXTERIOR: QUEENS: NIGHT
SADY, a person with poor apartment-choosing skills, calls her landlord. Her GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE attends.
SADY (on phone): Hi, this is Sady? We have a problem. The lock on the apartment door is broken. My boyfriend and I went out for groceries, and now we can’t get in. We could really use your help.
SADY’S GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: What did he say?
SADY: Voicemail.
EXTERIOR: QUEENS: NIGHT
SADY, now drinking a beer from the sack of groceries and sweating profusely, calls her landlord. Her GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE, also sweaty, is still in attendance.
SADY (on phone): Hi. This is Sady. Your tenant? I don’t know if you got my last message, but the lock on the apartment door is broken. We can’t get in. We’re probably going to break the door down? But I just want the record to show that we did try to reach you, the landlord, first. Before we broke the door down. Which we will do. If we don’t hear back.
GA: No luck?
SADY: Oh, look, he’s calling.
Ah, the Slate family of publications. Here I sit, sifting the Internet’s vast riches, wondering if I will find anything interestingly offensive (as opposed to “boringly offensive,” of which the Internet offers a great deal) today. And you are always there for me. With your many criminally silly headlines! Such as this one, on lady-Slate counterpart DoubleX:
The Author of “Lord of the Flies” Tried to Rape Someone When He Was 18. So What?
Buh wha HUH? WHOA!
Why, hello! And welcome to New Tiger Beatdown! The post titles, as you can see, are stellar. But: Mad Men began its third season last night. It began its third season, specifically, with a trip into the wacky carnival ride that is Don Draper’s subconscious, in that he was all squinting pensively and flashing back to The Painful Events That Have Defined Him as if he were somehow under the impression that he was starring in Lost.
As with Lost, his flashbacks were really boring and contained basically no new information! (Did you know that Don’s real name is “Dick Whitman?” And that his mom was a sex worker, and died? And that his dad was a jerk? What’s that you say? You totally did know all these things, and have since Season One? Well, here are all these flashbacks about it, anyway!) Here is the information they did contain: Dick was named after his dad’s dick (an object toward which his mother felt no little antipathy), because now apparently Mad Men has entered the REALLY SUPER LITERAL portions of its gender analysis and Don is named, basically, “Penis,” because calling him Mister P.A. Triarchy would just be too subtle.
So, yeah, Don was really the least appealing part of a fairly unappealing episode last night (also: he looked kind of bloated and drunk all the way through, which I am hoping was intentional and not evidence that Jon Hamm has already lost the flower of his youth). The episode did, thankfully, offer up a few not-Don moments: Cooper has tentacle porn, Betty was casually homophobic, Pete did a little dance, and Sal (FINALLY) made out with a dude. Also, we got to see Roger’s “sad meeting” face, which I, for one, appreciated.
At any rate, all of Don’s pensive flashbacks have caused ME to flash back to a different and better time. A time approximately twenty-four hours before the premiere, when I thought the episode would be awesome. A time when I wrote a piece on it for Comment is Free! Read it, won’t you? Share with me these precious memories.
OH, IT GETS HEATED.
This week: The Importance of Print Media, and whether the Internet and/or Sady are destroying civilization as we know it!
SADY: It’s just. Whenever I read something that says the Internet is destroying print media or whatever. I want to punch a hole in the wall.
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: But it is! It is destroying print media!
SADY: Maybe it is destroying print media. But maybe, also, it is salvaging the idea of media as connection and community! There are all these voices now that are livening up or shifting or challenging the discourse, and without the Internet they would not have access! So if print media is suffering maybe that’s because it couldn’t keep up with the needs of its readers.
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: Good point, Ayn Rand!
SADY: All I am saying is that more voices are being heard! More conversations are being had! Conversations that are not bougie-ass NYT things about how you can’t Tweet at Milk and Honey any more or how hard it is to live on a six-figure salary in New York or how the economy means your daughter will only get one pony for Christmas or whatever.
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: Yes, but with the Internet, you only have the conversations that you want to have. You only hear what you want to. You’re not participating in a national conversation as such. There’s no community!
SADY: No, there are communities, and lots of them, which is great if your community is marginalized or excluded or inadequately represented or addressed by “the conversation” as it stands. Because “the conversation” has historically been straight, white, male, and middle to upper-class.
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: But what about picking up the local paper, and seeing what is on the front page, and conversing with the people around you about what is in the paper? Even if what you are saying is “the paper sucks,” there is a unifying thread. There is centrality.
SADY: Even if what you are saying is “the paper consistently fails to cover the issues that affect me and my community?” There is value in reading the paper if the paper is not relevant to your needs as a person who seeks to be informed?
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: Yes! Because it ties you to place! It creates a sense of where you are! It connects you to the people around you.
SADY: This is ridiculous. This is A RIDICULOUS THING THAT YOU ARE SAYING. The thing you are saying is that the front page of the New York Times could consist of NOTHING BUT PICTURES OF MAUREEN DOWD’S POOPS, and we would all still have to read it. Because it is The Paper.
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: Okay, so… what do you know about what is going on in Afghanistan right now?
SADY: Not much! Maybe I should LOOK IT UP. On GOOGLE.
So, anyway. We let it drop. Then, last Thursday, the New York Times ran a story about how “hipsters” now have “pot bellies” if they are dudes! (It is a rebellion from the PERFECT BODY of President Barack H. “Ab Force One” Obama, apparently.) So here is the conversation I had this morning:
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: So, you know that conversation we had about print media? I think this pretty conclusively proves that I WIN.
SADY: Oh, God.
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: Dear New York Times, I have an idea for your Style section! “Girls: Longer Hair Than Dudes, Most of the Time!”
SADY: Oh, GOD.
GENTLEMAN ASSOCIATE: “White People! They Are In All The Hottest Clubs!”
Why, hello! Welcome to Friday! Friday, in case you have not noticed, is Sexist Beatdown day. It is also the end of my blogcation!
SADY: why hello! i hear the nerds are UP TO NO GOOD.
AMANDA: are they exacting their … revenge?
SADY: this is what they tell me! at least there are no gorilla masks and disturbingly rape-like scenarios this time around, though. only comments on the internet! and UNFORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES.
AMANDA: so, why do internet commenters hate girlfriends?
SADY: well! i have been spending a really regrettable portion of my day looking up youtube clips of men railing against “feminists” on their “vlogs,” so, one idea: it gives them something to talk about? also, the people who rail against girlfriends the hardest give the unmistakable impression that they are angry because they don’t have them.
AMANDA: yes! this is what i wanted to talk about, because i need to figure something out and i think you can help me. i once (okay … 2 hours ago) thought the very same thing: the phenomenon of “nerd sexism” may be a result of guys who think they’re not cool, or attractive, or whatever, lashing out against the people who can make them cool and attractive: girls. and they can sort of get away with this, because it’s not as if they’re privileged or anything, like most men. they’re pathetic nerds, and they’re at the bottom of the social ladder
SADY: right. well, i also think so many of the things that are Nerd are gendered in the dudely direction: video games, comics, internet whozimatronical codes and what have you. not to say that girls don’t use them, but they are generally considered For Boys. so the nerds end up in these all-dude or 99%-dude environments most of the time!
AMANDA: but then, some dude, who is really into kickball, posted this comment on my blog about why he doesn’t like me, and he diagnosed exactly why i don’t enjoy kickball: because i need a good fucking. and i realized that this is something i hear over and over again as a feminist: you “hate men” because you’re single, you can’t get dudes to fuck you, and you’re ugly, etc. and they can tell all of this based on about 300 words i wrote about kicking balls in the air. and not to brag, but i do fuck, so i thought, maybe i am wrong about the nerds? maybe they do all have girlfriends?
SADY: true enough. perhaps there is an unfair nerd stereotype! for example, I will now brag by telling you that i had a roommate who specialized in the internet whozimatronical codes, and he had the various anime DVDs, and he suggested starting a concept band about robots. and i would say that this is Nerdy, but – BUT, and this is important – he was totally cool with all that. and he did have lady friends, sometimes lady friends who worked in the whozimatronical code industry.
AMANDA: the whozimatronical what now
SADY: I HAVE NO IDEA. the computer skills, i lack them! but it’s easy to forget that Nerd or Geek or whatever is its own subculture, and the people therein are enthusiastic and happy about it. it is not like they are all in a leper colony. YET, they are marginalized, and looked down on, and here is a thing i have noticed about dudes who are marginalized and looked down on (and live in a very male-gendered environment): they DO, in fact, tend to lash out at the ladies!
AMANDA: i see. but they lash out at the cool dudes, the football players, too, right? but i guess the problem is that the quarterback is rarely actually an unseen minority lurking in the nerd forum, like female nerds are. although i love the idea of a quarterback wearing his football jersey and crying silent tears when his after-school activity is pwned on some WoW forum
SADY: oh, I BET IT HAPPENS. OFTEN.
AMANDA: haha. oh the layers
SADY: well, it’s weird. because, basically, nerds are culturally emasculated. right? like the stereotype is that they are all unsuccessful, and can’t get ladies, and can’t beat anyone up, and that is what men are supposed to do. ALL THE TIME. like, if you are a dude and you are not either having sex or punching someone in the face right now, you’re a gigantic pussy. unless you’re just waiting for your truckload of cash to show up. so one way for dudes who feel emasculated to, like, reclaim their iron john manhood or whatever, is to talk shit about ladies. OR – just a suggestion – basically bring kelly lebrock to life using a computer and a barbie doll (RIP JOHN HUGHES). whereas, the nerd ladies i’ve met all tend to be really awesome and feministy! which, dealing with the double-stereotyping of Nerd and Lady, I can see why you would get tired of stereotypes and spend a lot of time talking about them.
AMANDA: NERDS.
SADY: oh, and also? some of this might be due to the evils of the internet itself? and not nerds?
AMANDA: that’s true. there are a lot of assumptions made on these internets, and while i like to attribute stereotypes about women and feminists and lesbians or whatever to misogyny, i think a lot of times it’s just carelessness. and it’s still misogyny, but it’s misogyny that can be addressed and explained and all a lot easier in face-to-face conversation
SADY: yeah, exactly. OR – controversial statement here – the fact that you can develop a fake personality on the internet for attention. like the dude you posted about! i am not saying he is not a douche, but the odds are high (in my mind) that a lot of his offensive statements were conceived, not while thinking, “oh how i hate the women of the world,” but while thinking, “this will piss people off and/or prove what a loose cannon i am.” see his shock when his girlfriend read his comments and was like, WOW, you come off as a dick here! if she thought he was a dick of that order in the first place, they wouldn’t be dating.
AMANDA: yeah. totally. he then goes on to say that he’s joked about her being a bitch to her face and she doesn’t care when that happens. but obviously, there was some sort of disconnect where he didn’t understand that the internet is not his real life, and taking the bitch joke behind her back to share with his internet friends she didn’t know existed was not on the same plane of reality as he thought it was
SADY: right. there is a difference between tomfoolery and being like, “oh, ha ha, BITCH” in private and basically showing up in a googlable forum for all the world to see and saying that your girlfriend is a bitch because she doesn’t like bacon soap (???). which: lesson for us all, there! with the twitters and the facebooks and the blogspots and what have you! people post hundreds of thousands of words a day and i think a lot of us don’t understand that YOU CAN NEVER ERASE THEM and ANYONE IN THE WORLD CAN FIND THEM. as someone who has read my bosses’ craigslist ads, i can attest to the foolishness of this endeavor.
AMANDA: and yet, for the people in this googlable forum, it’s perfectly obvious that she IS a bitch.
SADY: yeah, people do show up to call his girlfriend a bitch. but that’s their own form of posturing. like, i am so sure that the “don’t let that girl push you around” “take the stick out” people would not weigh in this way were it a lady and a dude that they both knew.
AMANDA: that’s probably true.
SADY: OR – alternate take – people on the internet are just jerks. i don’t know. personally, i would have dumped him just for having the intense alternate life on reddit! NERD.
AMANDA: NERD!
Anyway, since I will not be here to share my very important reflections on the Ladybusiness, I figured you should meet my substitute. His name is… oh, let’s say Chet. He is Hal Sparks’ weirder-looking cousin, and he has thoughts to share. Here are his thoughts!
Do you know why Chet does not have a girlfriend? Did you guess FEMINISM? Yeah, okay, me neither. It turns out to have something to do with toasters and his grandma, in the long run.
Okay. So, hey, has anyone noticed that they are basically the same trailer?
Weird, right? You can’t attribute the different critical reactions to changing tastes, since they’re only being released a few months apart. Nor can you attribute it to one movie being ripped off from the other, since they were probably being made at roughly the same time. I know that, last week, I did this fun little thought experiment where I compared mainstream frat-dude misogyny (DEPLORABLE!) to cute hip fashionable pseudo-indie misogyny (IRONIC!) and it turned out that they were basically the same thing and the differing reactions to them were attributable only to a phenomenon scientists refer to as “bullshit,” but let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s puzzle out the vastly differing critical reactions to these no-doubt vastly different trailers step by step, with this handy checklist:
1) BACHELOR PARTY: Check!
2) BAND OF BROS: Check!
3) CASTRATING HARPY WHO DOESN’T WANT HER BOYFRIEND TO EVER HAVE ANY FUN EVER, AND THEREFORE EXPRESSES RESERVATIONS RE: BACHELOR PARTY WITH BAND OF BROS: Check.
4) CASTRATING HARPY WHO SCREAMS INTO THE PHONE ABOUT WHEREABOUTS OF HER BOYFRIEND: Check.
5) STRIPPERS AS PUNCHLINES: Check, indeed! (Andy from The Office gets married to one! You can hear him scream the comedy-gold line “I married a whore” in a different version of the trailer; presumably later he gets down with her on the basis that she is not a castrating harpy.)
6) CONFRONTATION WITH POLICE: Check, again! It is getting pretty tiresome running down the list, actually. Oh, but:
7) HILARIOUS FACIAL INJURY: Check, and:
8) PRESENCE OF BELOVED “INDIE” COMEDIAN (WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT MEANS) THAT ENSURES PEOPLE WILL GO SOFT ON THE WHOLE THING EVEN THOUGH SAID BELOVED INDIE COMEDIAN IS BASICALLY SIGNING UP TO BECOME WILL FERRELL (SOME OF US REFER TO THIS AS “SELLING OUT”): No! Sadly, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell lacks this crucial element. Also, Tucker Max is beloved by gross sexist “frat boys” as opposed to gross sexist indie dudes (THOSE DON’T EXIST! INDIE DUDES ARE ALWAYS TOTES SENSITIVE AND COOL AND UNCONVENTIONAL, ha ha, J/K), so that’s a strike against it. This movie looks terrible. Fire away, everybody!
So, there you have it. Zach Galifianakis is basically a pair of gold hologram leggings. Glad I could help you puzzle this one out.