Dysfunctional Ping Pong
by Guest Contributor M. Dot, originally published at Model Minority
I like Judd Apatow. In fact, I think it was a year ago that I wrote about how he convinced me that I should do stand up.
I have written about him here, here and here. I thought about this while reading Brandon Soderberg’s post on how Judd doesn’t like Hip Hop.
On one level, I enjoyed the fact that Soderberg’s post was analyzing how hip hop was being used as a vehicle to allow Apatow’s largely white characters express their vileness at the expense of hip hop.
On another level the post was incredibly misogynistic. I will deal with the two issues separately.
Soderberg’s general thesis is the Apatow uses hip hop as a vehicle to allow the characters to express the most vile things about society which implies that this is what hip hop represents in our culture. He cites a Apatow’s use of hip hop in “Walk Hard” and “Knocked Up” and “40 Year Old Virgin” as evidence. Full disclosure, I haven’t seen “Walk Hard”. He writes,
Recall the intro to ‘Knocked-Up’ which uses Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s classic ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’ (Armond White: “white boys clowning to Old Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”) with emphasis on Dirty’s “Ooh baby I like it raw” hook to make it really obvious and funny what this movie’s already going to be about. Think of the constant hip-hop slang used by everyone but Steve Carrell’s character in ‘The 40 Year-Old Virgin’ and how it’s essentially used to represent just how vulgar and crass everyone’s become and how stupidwhite people are for adopting any part of this culture.
He also goes on to write that,
In the Apatow and company universe, which is one that despite all the blowjob and weed jokes is incredibly conservative- dumb critics say this is why his movies “have heart”- rap music and culture are one of the biggest signifiers of how low things have sunk and how distant people are from their “real” emotions: Rap as ruiner of everything.
I think that the situation is a bit more complicated than that.
I would argue that the vileness ( hyper violent masculinity, hypersexuality) in hip hop started off in mainstream society, was adopted by minorities and is reflected in hip hop. Furthermore, it is being used by Apatow via the characters in his movies to express dysfunction, albeit flippantly.
There is a tendency to separate the pathology of the mainstream from the pathology from the hood, however, at the end of the day they will always be connected.
It is one big dysfunctional ping pong game.
Now for the misogyny in Soderberg’s piece. The misogyny is there period point blank and it sat there glaring at me. In the following excerpt, Soderberg intended on describing how hip hop is used as story support for a scene, and that unlike country music, it isn’t presented with empathy. He writes,
Leslie Mann’s bar-slut in ‘Virgin’ is speeding home, too drunk to drive, blaring and singing along to Missy Elliot’s ‘Get Ur Freak On’, which is sort of real-drunk white sluts love Missy Elliott- but it’s sort of the icing on the cake for why this girl’s so terrible. It’s not presented with any of the sympathy given to a whiny loser who collects action figures, rides a bike, and hasn’t ever dropped his dick in a pussy.
While his intentions were to point out the discrepancy between Apatow’s treatment of hip hop versus country I couldn’t help but notice that the term slut was used not just once but twice
in the same sentence. Was that necessary? Was he trying to be provocative?
The second thing that stood out to me in that paragraph was the phrase “and hasn’t ever dropped a dick in a pussy”.
What? P*ssy’s aren’t sitting around like ashtrays waiting to receive a deposit. A p*ssy isn’t a garbage can, basketball hoop or an ATM machine waiting for a deposit. P*ssy’s are attached to people.
These people are women.
(All bold emphasis M. Dot’s.)
M.dot is a blogger based in Brooklyn and the Bay Area, she can be reached at m.dotwrites@gmail.com
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Bored Kidz!!!! wrote:
why am i the only one who dislikes Judd Apatow’s movies?
Posted 22 May 2008 at 9:35 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
@BoredKidz!!! –
I’ve never seen one. I don’t really find them compelling enough for me to sit and watch them.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 9:50 am ¶
BoredKidz!!!! wrote:
lol. I went to see Knocked Up with my mom, unaware of how crude Judd Apatow’s humor was. Needless to say, my poor mother was not amused and I felt very humiliated for bringing her to a movie, because we were bored and there wasn’t anything else to see.
But yeah, his movies, from what I’ve seen, are pretty lame.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 9:53 am ¶
gatamala wrote:
co-sign with BK & Latoya. Knocked Up was on the other night and I passed right on by.
M.dot – 100% with you on the misogyny. What was the point?
Frankly, I’ve had enough of subpar men getting chicks they have no chance of getting in real life and having the nerve to disparage others that they would actually get down and thank Yahweh to get!!
Posted 22 May 2008 at 11:27 am ¶
cat wrote:
Hmmph. Some people just don’t see the log in their own eye.
I’ve only ever seen Anchorman and 40 year old Virgin. I turned my brain off for most of it, but was actually surprised/happy at the relationship between the main characters in 40 Year old Virgin. It was a small consolation in a sea of crude jokes.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 11:31 am ¶
Fatemeh wrote:
This is a perfectly-written out thesis on why I always feel so disappointed after seeing Apatow’s movies. I liked Anchorman, but I haven’t been impressed with anything since. Did he do Blades of Glory? I liked that one, too. But, if I had it to do over again, I would rather give myself a hysterectomy than watch Knocked Up again.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 12:34 pm ¶
Lisa wrote:
One more who can’t stand them here. It took me several goes to get even part-way through “Knocked Up”, and most of the things that were “supposed” to be funny just made me cringe.
The film is like every loser boy’s fantasy, every ambitious woman’s nightmare. The message is that men should have insanely high expectations for women, and women should be greatful for whatever caliber of male attention and company we can get. Ew. Adding to the fantasy: most kids in their early 20s can’t afford to keep an accidental pregnancy, don’t conveniently have lots of rich relatives willing to support them.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 12:48 pm ¶
Daomadan wrote:
@BoredKidz!!!!
You’re not alone. I do not understand the appeal of his films, especially among some of my feminist sisters.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 1:16 pm ¶
sylvie wrote:
i’m a huge fan of judd apatow. if you’ve only thought of him as a dick and weed joke auteur, you really should rent “freaks and geeks” on dvd, which has more heart and genuine humor than most tv series out there.
with that said, i admit, that apatow and company cater to a certain demographic, being white, male, and middle class and the presence and representations of people of color in his films aren’t always plentiful or can be derivative. so i can see kind of where soderbergh is coming from. but in my opinion, i think his use of hip hop in films is more to point out the “uncoolness” of the characters who are trying unsuccessfully to imitate a cultural form that is thought to be cool, i.e. the scene in Knocked Up when Seth Rogen is dancing with Katherine Heigl to a hip hop song, and his friends comment that he only has one lame dance move.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 1:21 pm ¶
Keren wrote:
Judd Apatow is a misogynist, and his films are too. So many of his characters make light of rape, how can anyone like this?
Posted 22 May 2008 at 2:07 pm ¶
Jay Smooth wrote:
Freaks and Geeks was one of the funniest and most compassionate shows ever, with the truest understanding of, and respect for, each character’s humanity. But in retrospect I gotta think this was despite Apatow’s presence, not because of it.. the heart and understanding provided by Paul Feig and the other co-creators..
Ever since F&G, though I think all his films are very funny, Apatow has fallen further and further from any understanding of what human beings are and how they would interact or react to any situation. Especially female human beings. And it’s weird cuz I think he’s still trying to be compassionate towards the characters, but it’s compassion completely devoid of insight, like he’s drving the compassion car with a blindfold on..
I disagree with Brandon’s take on Apatow being anti hip-hop though, not seeing that (haven’t seen Walk Hard). And I see no reason to doubt that Seth Rogen is anything but a sincere hip-hop fan..
Posted 22 May 2008 at 2:39 pm ¶
bertie wrote:
Co-sign with Sylvie. I don’t think hip-hop is uesd as an indictment on the vileness of hip-hop culture and the people who love it.
I think it’s just used as an updated version of the old gag of white folks latching on to whatever is percieved as “cool blackness” as visual goof of seeing black cultural signifiers coming from a white person for comedic effect. Before rap equalled black, it white characters talkin “jive” , botching high fives or some complicated “soul”shake, and/or walking with an overpronounced strut.
And Jay Smooth is dead-on about the women in the films. The shrillness and desperation to be considered “hot” by the wife of Paul Rudd in Knocked Up was pretty sad, and not really funny. I dunno, maybe I’m just lucky enough to not know any married grown women in their late 30s hanging out at eighteen and over clubs whining about competing with “young b%@ches” like the character in Knocked up.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 3:28 pm ¶
JustChaz wrote:
First off, Brandon’s posts are usually pretty sexist and homophobic. Sadly, that’s just how he writes and I think he does it purposely, but it’s also pretty weird because he ’s pretty adamant about shooting down racist stuff.
And while I really think all of Judd Apatow’s films are pretty funny, I can see where some may take issue with his female roles being underwritten. And since humor is objective, of course I can see how people can say it’s not funny. But I have to admit, it’s a little odd to me that there’s so many claims of the man being a misogynist.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 3:50 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:
The film is like every loser boy’s fantasy, every ambitious woman’s nightmare. The message is that men should have insanely high expectations for women, and women should be greatful for whatever caliber of male attention and company we can get.
Lisa~I2I. Like King of Queens and Family Guy and Shallow Hal.
Wow Bertie, I like the way you put that. It is the 21st century jive-talkin’.
In all honesty, I did think Anchorman was hilarious…jazz flute killed me.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 4:10 pm ¶
marge twain wrote:
I can’t speak to the reputed awesomeness of Freaks and Geeks since I saw the first episode when the show came out and was too turned off by the man=subject/woman=object themes(one thing I remember was the geeky white boy lusting after the beautiful popular white girl)
I can see enjoying Apatow’s movies if one is a white male who thinks farting is hi-larious but I get increasingly frustrated with the marginalization of women and the near invisibility of PoC in his world and overall in the movies that get made. I mean, the whole premise of Superbad was that the loser guys wanted to get girls who wouldn’t otherwise be willing to have sex with them drunk so they couldn’t express consent.
I would have more of a problem with Soderberg saying “bar-slut” and “drunk white slut” if that woman hadn’t been clearly meant to be seen and laughed at as a slut with no standards, despite being beautiful herself(older women and women with less than perfect bodies having been swallowed up by the earth already) I don’t see why one would have a problem with the misogyny in Soderberg’s piece and not be disturbed by Apatow’s movies.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 5:17 pm ¶
jvansteppes wrote:
I rented Knocked Up and stopped watching at the point where one guy decides to grow a beard on a dare and the others all tease him about being a terrorist…
Posted 22 May 2008 at 7:22 pm ¶
Jay Smooth wrote:
Lisa, Apatow basically confirms in the Knocked Up director’s commentary that his films are loser guy revenge fantasies, pretty much just as you describe..
Worth noting that the actress who plays both the err “bar slut” and then paul rudd’s wife is Judd Apatow’s wife in real life, Leslie Mann..
Apatow talks in the Knocked Up commentary about how Seth Rogan and K. Heigl’s relationship mirrors how he always feels insecure and unworthy around his wife, and feels like she’s barely tolerating him.. so i def. think there’s a lot of uhh baggage being displayed on the screen,
(but marge, I’d highly recommend watching more of F&G before drawing that conclusion! Linda Cardellini’s character is the central protagonist, and IMO far from peripheral object.. better developed female character than anyone in Apatow’s films, as is Busy Phillips.. my only complaint would be dearth of non-white faces but perhaps that’s true to life wherever they grew up..)
Posted 22 May 2008 at 11:11 pm ¶
RainaWeather wrote:
I hate most of his movies but I actually LOVED Superbad. I don’t know why, I just do. “hasn’t ever dropped his dick in a pussy” was what I found most offensive. Kind of reinforces that every woman is just waiting for the first man who looks her way to fuck her.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 1:10 am ¶
Black Canseco wrote:
there’s a distinct vibe of WBC–WhiteBoyCrass in Knocked Up. And in SuperBad (even the title nods at this). As well as BabyMamma (despite the involvement of White Women).
The WBC movement of stupid + loud as defense mechanism, culturally myopic, social rebel without a clue, co-opt (insert here) just for fun is nothing new. You can see it every week on SNL, in pioneering films such as Animal House, not to mention every Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell flick ever, plus modern TV fare on just about every channel, including the much over-hyped Entourage. Apatow’s work is just the latest dip in the pool.
It’s nothing new, really. Limp Bizkit made money off it. Jay Mohr did. Jamie Kennedy does it. Most mainstream entertainers do it. And we all work with at least 20 people–male and female—who play this game in their daily lives. And if you expelled all the students who engaged in this behavior, every Big Ten college campus would be empty along with several dozen other colleges and universities nationwide.
it just is what it is and its not going away, like 28 Days.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 8:06 am ¶
Celeste wrote:
I loved Anchorman, “Sex Panther!”. I refused to see Knocked Up. I agree with Lisa’s #7, that situation in no way seemed funny to me. Getting pregnant by a guy that you’re not really interested in while you’re trying to build your career and still hoping to find a guy that you’d actually want to be with sounds like a horror movie to me.
Where are the movies with “subpar” women getting guys they’d never get in real life? The closest I can think of is Phat Girlz or maaaaybe Bridget Jones. This is not to say that I think that non-superskinny women are truly “subpar” that’s just the values that are assigned in movies.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 9:14 am ¶
Black Canseco wrote:
The mysoginy in these flicks reminds me of Sex In The City:
Years ago when Sex In The City was hot my mom constantly called that show “Whores on The Town”. My mom is a 70 year old black woman from the south, raised in Chicago.
Whenever she’d say this, I’d ask her to explain what she meant. She talked about the hypocrisy of the portrayal of White Women vs Women of Color, specifically Black Women in film. Her contention was that if you showed 4 black women who seem to do nothing but shop (Carrie), marry for money/status(Charlotte), sleep around (Samantha) or complain/self-sabotage/put careers ahead of relationship, (Miranda), etc. that these black women would be eviscerated as “typical black women”—materialistic ungrateful bitchy.
She felt the same about most movies/serials with key white female characters.
As mysoginistic as Apatow’s attitudes may be, there’s a certain charm in that the negative portrayal of his female characters come exclusively through the eyes of loathsome immature males and not out of some empirical, absolute “character study”.
Like SITC, the women in Knocked Up don’t seem to represent anyone other than themselves. And there’s a certain shock value in seeing white women characters engaging in behavior that is traditionally and consistently considered the domain of WOCs.
It’s almost a joke within a joke with the punchline of “we know white women don’t really act this way, but it’d be cool if they did.”
Posted 23 May 2008 at 11:46 am ¶
marge twain wrote:
Black Canseco wrote:
“Her contention was that if you showed 4 black women who seem to do nothing but shop (Carrie), marry for money/status(Charlotte), sleep around (Samantha) or complain/self-sabotage/put careers ahead of relationship, (Miranda), etc. that these black women would be eviscerated as “typical black women”—materialistic ungrateful bitchy.”
“Like SITC, the women in Knocked Up don’t seem to represent anyone other than themselves. And there’s a certain shock value in seeing white women characters engaging in behavior that is traditionally and consistently considered the domain of WOCs. ”
Didn’t they make this show and wasn’t it called “Girlfriends”? I agree with your mom that black women in media have to deal with a massive burden of representation(I think Oprah is exhibit A), much more so than white women, although the white women in Apatow’s movies are almost all well-established female stereotypes.
These portrayals of white women are by no means new or novel to me. SATC, despite it’s many shortcomings, was groundbreaking for it’s depiction of women as whole characters with thoughts, desires, and varying degrees of feminist leanings. They weren’t the sum of their stereotypes. Girlfriends continued this theme, unashamedly valuing women’s stories and making nobody a saint or a whore.
Damn, I miss that show.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 1:38 pm ¶
marge twain wrote:
BTW, “materialistic ungrateful bitchy” is a frequent criticism of SATC.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 1:41 pm ¶
Wanderinglady wrote:
Black Canseco wrote:
“Her contention was that if you showed 4 black women who seem to do nothing but shop (Carrie), marry for money/status(Charlotte), sleep around (Samantha) or complain/self-sabotage/put careers ahead of relationship, (Miranda), etc. that these black women would be eviscerated as “typical black women”—materialistic ungrateful bitchy.”
And marge twain wrote:
BTW, “materialistic ungrateful bitchy” is a frequent criticism of SATC.
Of course, if a movie or TV show was made about men doing the same things, it wouldn’t be seen as negative, but rather “boys being boys”, and many male viewers would actually envy that lifestyle. Haven’t seen “Entourage”, but are the characters similar to the above description?
Posted 23 May 2008 at 2:24 pm ¶
Black Canseco wrote:
BTW, “materialistic ungrateful bitchy” is a frequent criticism of SATC.
yes but it’s a criticism of the individual characters, not of the women.
Girlfriends got jerked/ignored by many of the same people who loved SATC. Ironically, Girlfriends had less sex and shopping as show themes than SATC. And unlike SATC, Girlfriends didn’t treat black males as sex toys and didn’t equate screwing everything moving with feminism.
probably why it didn’t get the love from the mainstream that in deserved.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 2:44 pm ¶
marge twain wrote:
“yes but it’s a criticism of the individual characters, not of the women”
Funny, I thought the individual characters WERE women. To quote Melissa McEwan:”not separable identities”
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/04/clinton-woman-vs-clinton-person.html
Wanderinglady correctly observes that it’s white men who get the privilege to be judged on their merits on an individual basis. As I said above, white women do get much more leeway for expression than black women, but are still a marginalized group, underrepresented in the media.
Also, it’s a feminist issue that women get called “whores” ,”screwing everything moving” when they own their sexuality and pursue pleasure. Men, as a group, do not. And for the record, in the one episode that featured a black man as a love interest for Samantha, she did not treat him as a sex toy. She fell in love with him and was reticent to talk about their sex life, which was very rare for her. I thought their relationship was very sweet, although they gave him a stereotypical jealous black woman for a sister.
The reason Girlfriends got less press surely was about race/being on UPN. That doesn’t detract from my earlier contention that depictions of female characters on Girlfriends and SATC are the opposite of women in the Apatow-verse.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 4:48 pm ¶
jvansteppes wrote:
Apparently they’ve given Sarah Jessica Parker a black assistant [Jennifer Hudson] which I suspect is a dim attempt to address all the comments about how white the show is. As if this will make up for storylines about using black men for sex, yelling at one of their immigrant maids for sexually repressing her, pathologizing bisexual male suitors and that bullshit about the ’spicy’ manhating Latina lesbian with a temper…
Posted 23 May 2008 at 4:49 pm ¶
JustChaz wrote:
It wasn’t called “Girlfriends.” It was called “Living Single.”
Posted 23 May 2008 at 6:14 pm ¶
Black Canseco wrote:
i didn’t mean “the women” i meant women in general. sorry for the typo…
As for Girlfriends vs. Living Single–LS actually ran 1 whole year before Friends launched yet was largely dismissed by people as a Friends knock-off. LS’ characters had actual jobs, relationships and dialog built around more than random pop culture references and pseudo-”quirky” behavior.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 7:58 pm ¶
Black Canseco wrote:
As for J. Hudson, i’m hoping Samantha doesn’t sleep with her then blame Samantha for hiring her. lol…
then again, J. Hudson gets to sing. Again. Must be the Beyonce school of acting–play singers or marginal characters who can sing.
another thing that always bugged me about this show is listening to every cast member talk about NYC as the “fifth cast member” yet you needed a magnifying glass to find people of color even as window dressing. Everybody who’s lived in NYC finds this hilarious given how overwhelmingly the diverse the city is. I’m shocked all of them didn’t get drunk and go black/brown c**k hunting on the first episode… Just to get it out of the way.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 8:13 pm ¶
Maddy wrote:
I’m with Bored Kidz; I’ve never seen a Judd Apatow film I haven’t disliked, with the exception of Anchorman.
And @11 – Paul Feig? Mr. Pool from Sabrina the Teenage Witch? (I’m sorry, I’m…really young).
Posted 23 May 2008 at 9:22 pm ¶
m.dot wrote:
Kind of reinforces that every woman is just waiting for the first man who looks her way to fuck her.
==========
The problem that I had with the statement is that the first step, with regard to being able to dominate & oppress is to treat a person like an object.
@JustChaz
but it’s also pretty weird because he ’s pretty adamant about shooting down racist stuff.
=====
It’s actually NOT weird. Feminists frequently do Gender, and NOT race, B-boys do RACE and not Gender. Then theres moi, of Mobb deep and bell hooks. Life is trife on the margins.
And don’t EVEN get me started on the fundamental lack of understanding of Capitalism.
But, that is life on the Margins. There are uhhh…three seats in the third pew on the left!
@ Fatemah
Fatemeh wrote:
This is a perfectly-written out thesis on why I always feel so disappointed after seeing Apatow’s movies.
========
Thank you.
@Black Canseco,
it just is what it is and its not going away, like 28 Days.
=====
Good to see that you came through.
Uhhh…This comment has me on some “Glad he ain’t on the 1843 commission to abolish slavery otherwise we would be picking cotton somewhere right now.
Posted 23 May 2008 at 10:06 pm ¶
marge twain wrote:
Oh, and Jay: I surely will rent Freaks &Geeks one of these days. I didn’t mean to imply I’d written it off. You’re only the latest person to recommend it to me
Posted 24 May 2008 at 11:16 pm ¶
Phrone wrote:
How he talked about women made them sound like holes waiting to be filled…not actual people who, you know, would have their own sexuality.
That line seriously killed the rest of the piece for me. I didn’t see a lot of Judd Apatow’s movies because they seemed to be so blatantly misogynistic, but for a similar reason I don’t really want to follow a blogger who doesn’t even seem to notice his own misogyny, either.
Posted 25 May 2008 at 1:05 pm ¶
m.dot wrote:
@ Phrone,
It is so interesting that you say that because
Soderberg commented on my original post, saying that language that I found misogynistic wasn’t his, it was Apatow’s. I responded saying that if a writer fails to distinguishes the various voices in his or her piece, and the reader is confused, then it is the writers fault.
The interchange was an interesting in that it demonstrated the different ways we hold ourselves accountable to readers.
Posted 25 May 2008 at 1:35 pm ¶