Friday, September 17, 2010

The "Guy Movie"

I did not like Dodgeball. Or Superbad. Airplane! didn’t do much for me, and I failed to get more than five minutes into Anchorman.

What does this say about me?

Am I humorless? Boring? Too good for movies that seem guaranteed to get a laugh out of anyone?

I don’t think any of the above quite apply, unless there’s a box I can check for being a woman.

Because maybe that’s what it comes down to – does my gender predispose me against the humor of the “guy movie?” * Applied to movies that appeal to a largely male audience, “guy movies” seem geared towards the stereotypical male. By that I mean the ultra-heterosexual, non-intellectual man’s man who apparently hasn’t stopped laughing at fart jokes since the 5th grade. ** The humor in these movies tends to revolve around slapstick, body functions, sex, hot (or ugly) women, homophobia, alcohol, and did I mention sex? For example, a running gag in Dodgeball is being hit by, you guessed it, a dodgeball. Although this could be excused given the subject of the film, other jokes include inflatable crotch-enhancers, sexual harassment, and of course, fat people.

Is this really humorous for so many people? Box office revenues say yes. This raises a few questions. First why do some people (mostly men) enjoy the “guy movie,” while others (mostly women) can’t stand it? I’ll explore this in a later post. What I want to discuss today is the broader significance of why American men and American women find different things funny. In my opinion, one reason for this is that Americans have different conceptions of what it means to be a man (strong, unconcerned with appearance, brawn and not brains) than we do of what it means to be a woman (weak, superficially motivated, focused on appearance.) In order to consciously or unconsciously fulfill our gender roles, to “perform” our correct gender, we seek entertainment that reinforces our stereotypical inspiration. We are conditioned to laugh at certain things. I believe that this conclusion may hold true for gendered humor, such as “guy movies” and “chick flicks” but what about humor that appeals to a broad base of both men and women? Is this “true humor” in that it subverts gendered expectations to be uniformly funny?