Stuck On You: Dumb and Dumber, Take 2

Anxious masculinities

 

This is bound to be little more than a rehashing of the earlier post on Dumb and Dumber, that other Farrelly brothers film that preceded Stuck On You and offered the exact same formula followed in this film. This time, the gimmick of conjoined twins is added, although many of the jokes and the overall plot don’t really depend on this element. In fact, this is simply Dumb and Dumber reloaded, minus some of the toilet humor. And like the earlier film, this one is chock full of images of suppressed male homoeroticism. The added element of fraternity – the fact that the two bros really are brothers – is a rather negligible detail, since the only way to explain two men literally joined at the hip is for them to be brothers. We could psychoanalyze the Farrellys themselves, noting that they are brothers who apparently need each other to make a film. Certainly the parallel there is obvious enough. However, the physically conjoined status of Bob (Matt Damon) and Walt (Greg Kinnear) is, more than anything else, the next logical step in the progression that began in the Farrelly’s oeuvre with Dumb and Dumber. The humor that depends on suppressed male desire for another male can never really be consummated in these films, lest the the ultimate threat of homosexuality be realized in all its imagined horror. Since it can’t be consummated, but since the comedy depends on the continuing threat of consummation, the merely emotional attachment of Harry and Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber needs to move into a physical and spatial realm in Stuck On You.

All rhythm, no blues

 

It’s perhaps most enlightening when looking at Stuck On You to begin at the end and work backwards. By the film’s end, the two brothers have been surgically separated, although they still choose to live much of their life remaining attached by Velcro. They’ve learned the hard way that life without the other is just too empty. The final sequence of the film features Walt getting to live out his lifelong fantasy: singing and dancing in a stage performance of Bonnie and Clyde with none other than Meryl Streep at his side. (If there’s any doubt that Ms. Streep encapsulates everything that the stereotypical homosexual male idolizes, please refer to the character of Cam in Modern Family.) At the end of Walt’s performance, to whom does he point in the front row of the audience? Is it April (Eva Mendes), his supposed love interest? No, it’s his brother Bob, who stands up and points back at him in a phallic salute that gives the infamous last scene of Top Gun a run for its money. As for April, Walt’s sexual disinterest in her is enough to convince the strongest skeptic that a homoerotic current at least runs through Stuck On You if not undergirds it. Sure, they pair up, but not only do we never see the least bit of romance in them toward one another, but their every interaction is indistinguishable from that of simple friendship. In fact, most of their conversations revolve around Bob and Walt rather than Walt and April. The fact that April is played by the buxom Eva Mendes, nearly always clad in a bikini or something equally as supportive, makes Walt’s lack of desire for her all the more emphatic.

Meaningless diversion

 

Taking a step back in time from the final scene, we see Bob alone in the burger joint closing up shop in despondent solitude. The jukebox starts playing a song – unbeknownst to Bob, Walt has returned – and that song is “Baby, I’m-a Want You” by Bread. We hear the first few lines of the song, which are shamelessly romantic. When Bob walks out of the kitchen and sees Walt next to the jukebox, he smiles affectionately and says, “You fag!” Walt, realizing how evident his feelings have become, slams the jukebox, only to have “It’s Raining Men” start playing instead. He then slams it again until some generic classic rock takes over. While most of the examples of suppressed homoeroticism in the film aren’t quite that obvious, they’re still undeniably present throughout. Interestingly, the only physical hint that the Farrellys give the audience of their protagonists’ repression in both Dumb and Dumber and Stuck On You centers on the hairstyles of the characters. Harry & Lloyd and Bob & Walt have strikingly similar haircuts. Lloyd and Bob have brown hair that falls flat and is chopped in the most little-boy manner possible. Harry and Walt, on the other hand, both have blonde hair that is long and kind of shaggy. They hairstyles counter one another in a way that a sexually repressed/frustrated male dyad would, needing to set one another apart. One ends up looking like the (theoretical) source of the repression – a young boy – and the other like a failed attempt to look feminine. On top of that, consider their names: Harry & Lloyd and Bob & Walt. These are not popular names nowadays; at the very least, they aren’t names that you typically find at the center of major studio films. They’re familiar names, to be sure, but at the same time strange and, simply, a little “off”. It’s the “a-little-off” nature of these male couples in the Farrellys’ films that makes them worth focusing on and makes them so entertaining.

Split intimacy

 

And a few incoherent bits in closing. In addition to Meryl Streep’s cameo (and all that it suggests), the other significant extended cameo in the film is from Cher. So, case closed on the the gay-ish cameos. Also, the Farrellys repeat another pattern in this film as well as Dumb and Dumber with the presence of an overly masculine, stereotypical rough ‘n tough guy who bullies the pair of protagonists while, incidentally, in a classic American diner. In Dumb and Dumber, the character is named “Seabass” and later turns out to be repressing some seriously homosexual tendencies when he tries to rape Lloyd in a gas station bathroom stall. In Stuck On You, a similar character tries to bully Bob and Walt, along with a mentally disabled man who works as a waiter in their restaurant. Something about the setting of the diner stands for something quintessentially American, and something about this angry, oversexed male figure embodies something also established and threatening. In both films, the protagonists (who are “freaks” in these settings) outsmart the barbarian. The fact that the characters in Dumb and Dumber outsmart him is particularly interesting. Another point: in an early scene wherein Walt embraces his theatrical gifts and performs a one-man stage play (with the nervous, sweating Bob by his side), he plays none other than Truman Capote. In this case, Walt explicitly identifies himself with a famously gay 20th century figure. One final note worth mentioning is about Walt and Bob’s respective girlfriends: April and May. Coinciding with their close association in name, a scene in a hospital waiting room implies a homoeroticism on their part, too. This takes place when Bob and Walt are in surgery, and there is some question as to whether they will survive. A dissolving montage of the women waiting for them concludes with April asleep with her face comfortably nestled in May’s midriff. Enough for now; the point’s been made.

The threatening heterosexual male

Pretending?

As gay as dance music

Hand check

Hanging on

Contagious homoeroticism

Longing

It's raining men

Livin' the dream

Phallic salute

 

Vengeance Is Mine: New Wave of Blood

Between

Shohei Imamura undoubtedly constructed the film Vengeance Is Mine precisely so that many critics would take a variety of readings on it. The Freudian reading is easy enough, and the social commentary, too. One thing that stands out about the film is its consistency between form and content. The film is very much about its main character, Iwao Enokizu, a sociopath based on a real person in Japan’s recent history who goes around murdering people for rather arbitrary reasons. Just as Enokizu is dispassionate in his killings, so is the film, from the camera to the lighting to the narrative structure. (The narrative structure is so choppy, for lack of a better term, that the above use of the term “constructed” really does seem to apply to Imamura’s making of the film. It’s as if he pieced it together.) Shots of Enokizu killing people with a hammer or knife or his bare hands aren’t distinguished from the shots that precede his brutal actions. The film rejects any sense of causality in its own form and, in this way, cooperates with Enokizu’s random acts of violence. Whereas Kurosawa’s earlier Sanjuro climaxed with the infamous spray of blood when Mifune’s character begrudgingly defeats his nemesis, sprays of blood take place at very anticlimactic moments in Vengeance Is Mine. That the film is considered part of the Japanese New Wave is fitting, and reminiscent of the dispassionate acts of violence in the French New Wave (think Shoot the Piano Player or Pierrot Le Fou). Enokizu has only contempt and disdain for his own past, which stands simultaneously for order and hypocrisy. His father’s association with the Catholic church and his tryst with his daughter-in-law have none of the respect for the previous generation one might find in an Ozu film. On the contrary, just as the rules of cinema are ignored here, so is patriarchal order in general.

Disgraced

Vengeance Is Mine sutures the viewer to the loner Enokizu, not to elicit sympathy for him but rather to force the viewer into an uncomfortable realm in which s/he doesn’t care what happens in the film any more than the film’s character cares about what he is doing. The film’s closing shots of Enokizu’s flying bones, hurled by his excommunicated father and dishonored wife over a cliff, do suggest a kind of terrestrial transcendence or Ozu-like return of things from whence they came. While Imamura seems to have done all he could to expose the harshness of the world from one man’s narrow experience, it’s the film’s own form, again, via freeze-frame, that grabs the viewer’s attention but this time from a different point of view. Enokizu is gone but not gone, become part of the landscape and the horizon, both rejected by his family and bid an affectionate adieu by his family. Much of the film had previously been inscribed with subtitles (original to the Japanese film – not English words) contextualizing the Enokizu’s steps from the vantage point of a police dragnet. Thus Enokizu’s life is cheapened as a manhunt (he is described as an animal by other characters) as he cheapens it by his own actions. Rather than verbal inscription, the finale frames a motionless image that suggests something ineffable and almost nirvana-like about Enokizu’s end.

Inscribed

Dispassionate

Modernized Ozu?

Family

Sadistic

Closet problems

Circle of life?

When pigs fly

Wall-E: Re-viewed

In the beginning man destroyed the heavens and the earth.

Wall-E is startlingly accessible. It carries a few big themes and holds them right out in front from beginning to end. Its symbolism is so basic that it almost isn’t symbolic. Wall-E stands opposed to the Brad Bird-helmed Pixar films The Incredibles and Ratatouille by virtue of its pretty coherent ideology that doesn’t try to be too complex, and thereby succeeds. Not that the others did not succeed, but based on their political incorrectness, ideological holes pop up (particularly in Ratatouille) that render the ultimate message of the film a little conflicting. Wall-E, on the other hand, is a mash-up of the biblical accounts of Adam & Eve and Noah’s Ark that offers both a biblical as well as a politically correct message. This may account for much of the film’s acceptance by diverse audiences. Tack on to that plenty of allusions to cinema history (Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, E.T., etc.) that gratify the films geeks, and you have a product that’s sure to please everyone that wants to be pleased.

Where's the Other?

One little thing stood out during this re-visitation that could be said to be politically correct but a little opposed to the film’s biblical roots, and that is the re-imagination of the nuclear family. The Adam & Eve story begins consistently enough with the Genesis account, with Wall-E (Adam) alone and working in the (dystopic) garden all by himself. Wall-E is a bit more quirky and clumsy than the original Man, as far as we know, but this helps develop quick sympathy in the viewer for his character. Although it’s been ages and ages for Wall-E, it’s not long for the viewer before a big spaceship (God?) sends Eve (duh) to join him. Once this Eve shows up, however, she outshines Wall-E in a way different from her biblical counterpart. Adam lets out a doxology to the Creator after beholding such a creation. Wall-E, however, is instantly emasculated. His Eve is in no way “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.” She’s a Mac and he’s a clunky old PC. She’s not only sleek and sexy, but a whole different creation that renders everything about Wall-E obsolete other than his heart of gold. Perhaps the only potential conflict in the film’s ideology is the role of technology. While humanity descends into a new and pathetic state, the film does rather glorify the arsenal of computers and robots surrounding the humans. Eve is an excellent example. The choice to make Eve look like an iPod is unsurprising (given that Pixar made the film), but her appearance renders Wall-E an obsolete creation. True, he has more personality and ends up helping to save the day, and this contains a message that transcends the glorification of technology. Still, this flips the film’s biblical source material on its head somewhat.

Not good for the "man" to be alone

Further, throughout the film, Eve carries Wall-E (quite literally) and seems to embody the contemporary feminine: focused professionalism and seamless beauty. Wall-E arguably is the post-biblical male ideal: really nice but ultimately a house-husband. He’s domestic while Eve is hunter-gatherer. Wall-E has good ideas here and there, but (1) he can’t carry most of them out without Eve’s help and (2) Eve is the catalyst for action and source of strength. The former is actually strikingly biblical, much more than many adherents to the Bible are willing to admit. The latter, however, constitutes a shift that appeals to the film’s attempt to score points of political correctness than rather than something more consistent with the Genesis account and overall biblical ideology. In fact, Wall-E rather effectively balances male and female roles, embodied in Wall-E and Eve, respectively. There are times when Wall-E protects Eve and comes up with great ideas to save the day. Overall, Wall-E probably teaches Eve more than she teaches him. The point here is not that the film downplays the masculine presence or efficacy from its biblical source material, but rather that the film exchanges the particulars of the two gender roles. By all appearances, he is a traditional (rather than contemporary) woman. He is sweet, kind, tender, and draws his strength from his partner. Eve is efficient, single-task-oriented, strong, and extends care to her partner. At the least, all of this seems to illustrate the common phenomenon (also evident in the gender roles of the film Up) of utilizing biblical tropes and narratives while leaning toward a consistently post-biblical ideology.

Tree of Life

Eve or Evil?

The heavens declare

Evil lefty, or, sinister technology

Leading the dance

Tough broad

Ark landing on Ararat

Covenant renewal

Evolutionary creationism

A new order

My Big Fat Greek Wedding: Xenophobes & Xenophiles

WindeXeno

It’s very convenient source material for a successful romantic comedy: the proverbial European immigrants clashing with their second-generation offspring who are much more plugged into US society than any of them ever plan to be. Mississippi Masala takes this type of premise and dramatizes it. My Big Fat Greek Wedding takes it and pokes serious fun at it. To the casual observer, most of the Greek caricatures in this film remind one of those more commonly associated with Italian-Americans, perhaps Hollywood’s favorite immigrant stereotype. And rightly so, since the eccentric, family-obsessed, food-crazed, and (perhaps most importantly) loud subculture of these Greek-Americans hardly looks any different from the general southern European prototype. There are many assumptions in My Big Fat Greek Wedding about ethnicity, culture, and identity that go completely unquestioned and that appeal directly to the viewer’s preconceptions about such issues.

"Excluded" comes from the Greek word...

The film identifies the viewer with Toula, the female protagonist at the narrative’s center. She’s highly self-conscious about her upbringing and heritage. She sets herself apart from the rest of her family, even as she is utterly enveloped in the day-to-day operations of the family business, lives with her parents, and has no outlet into the rest of the world until she gains special permission from the family patriarch (via the matriarch) to take computer classes at a community college. Some of her first words in the film are, “I have no life.” This sets her apart from the rest of the family, for whom family is life. Just to make sure we get the point, Toula wanders into a back alley behind the family restaurant during a moment of chaos, as the camera isolates her from the rest of the world and amplifies her inner sense of solitude. She’s the ugly duckling that, we know from the formula, is bound to find her inner swan once the right guy comes along. She’s okay with her family heritage, in all its weirdness (and certainly, while the film at some level celebrates the Greek-American subculture, it also sets it apart as decidedly “other”), but she’s detached from it and views herself as a more “normal” American woman who wants to live a more “normal” life. That the American-ness of her identity is presented as normal isn’t necessarily unfair, since the film positions itself on her side, and it’s geared toward a predominantly typical “American” audience.

Isolated

Something a little funny is afoot, however, when it comes to assumptions about what connotes Greek-ness. The film takes for granted that what it says is “Greek” really is Greek, whatever that even means. Go to Greece, of course, or any other country, and you’ll have a plethora of notions flying around as to what it really is to be “Greek” or what have you. For that matter, no one in the United States wants to be pinned down as simply “American” or “East Coast” or “West Coast,” etc. In the context of immigration and expatriation, notions of ethnic identity and essentialism are never more subjectively decided nor more objectively confused. By leaving the “homeland,” a nationalist apparently acquires the unique right to dictate what is truly “Greek”-ness, or anything else. Perhaps further still, it’s the second generation, the person who has never visited Greece and (in Toula’s case) does not want to go, who is most to be trusted regarding what it is to be Greek. Presumably, her own liminal identity, half immigrant through her parents and half native by means of her own American birth, gives her the true perspective by existing between worlds and thereby knowing each world and their relationship with one another.

The woman is the neck

It’s also interesting how every aspect of Toula’s family’s life is completely centered around ethnicity. Whether it’s the food, the naming of their children, the family businesses (a Greek restaurant and a travel agency specializing in trips to Greece), the mates their children choose to marry, or even their religion, literally everything in their life bends the knee to the a priori assumption that Greek-ness supersedes the rest. This is done, of course, to comedic effect, and quite effectively indeed. Part of the reason it works, however, is because built into ethnic stereotypes about European immigrants is the caricature that all immigrants care about is their ethnic heritage. This is enough of a commonplace that the film can rely on the audience’s acceptance of the premise and even find it kind of endearing. A potential problem with this kind of premise, however, is that it reduces immigrant subcultures to a single dimension, painting a picture of them as myopic and monolithic. The film makes an effort to avoid this by making Toula’s family ultimately accepting of the non-Greek husband, even to the point of having her father give a speech that embraces not only differences between the two families but also similarities. The epilogue, however, falls back into the films earlier mode of caricature. It’s six years later, and we discover that the house Toula’s parents bought them is next door to theirs. Toula and Ian’s young daughter is compelled (by the grandparents, it would seem) to go to Greek school rather than Brownies. We see that the giant Greek flag that had covered the family’s garage door is now a mural in-progress of a Greek landscape being painted by Toula’s artistic brother, whose abilities had been poo-pooed by his dad earlier in the film. So in the end, the gestures that the family makes to prioritize their children above their ethnic heritage come with strings attached tightly to the ethnic heritage. It may not be that they value ethnicity above family, exactly, but that they are incapable of separating the two. The only way they eventually accept Ian into the family is when he is baptized into the Greek Orthodox church, a gesture that is clearly devoid of religious sincerity on both Ian’s part and the Greek family. But in this way, both Ian and Toula’s family share an understanding that what they do for their family is more important than religion or anything else.

Enlightened luncheon

On a rather unrelated note, perhaps, is the refreshing aspect of the film that not only engages the viewer primarily with Toula, a woman, but positions the viewer in a place of female desire for a man. The man is not feminized, but he is presented as an object of erotic desire. He has long hair, making him (fittingly) Adonis-like. On more than one occasion, Toula’s female relatives swoon over his physical appearance, which is tall and muscular. He’s presented as intelligent (an adept school teacher) but never more intelligent than Toula. It’s a relative rarity for popular Hollywood films (although, granted, this was an “independent” film) to permit primary erotic desire to emanate from the woman for a truly manly man. Typically when this occurs, the man is feminized and almost indistinguishable from a stereotypical woman – see the Twilight books/movies. As a female university prof once said about Jane Campion’s film In The Cut, it’s refreshing when films acknowledge the presence of female viewers who insist on their own autonomy while also having a palpable desire for a real man. While My Big Fat Greek Wedding is probably nowhere near as complex as the themes investigated in Campion’s film, it may stand as a popular exception to the rule.

As she sees herself

How she sees him

On top

Hands-on baptism

Familial desire

White people are boring

Horrified at a feminine monstrosity

Lambs in the kitchen, tigers in the bedroom

Snow beast

Xenophilia

"Happily" ever after?