I had a lovely night having dinner with some friends tonight, when a nice roommate of my friend entered and mentioned that he just saw Knocked Up. I of course immediately rave about what a fantastically clever and hilarious movie it was, and he then acted all blase, and said "you know, I found it really offensive the way they treated men in the story as over-sexed slobs, the whole thing was so stereotypically gendered." Needless to say, this guy (friendly as he was) is some billionth-year English Ph.D. student, and another academic leftie that gets under my skin. Now, I'm quite left-wing myself, but have grown to despise much of the academic left, particularly in the humanities. Regardless, leave it up to one of those people to throw a damper on an edgy, but nonetheless clever movie. Just because all men are not like the oafs in the movie does not necessarily render them bad or unrealistic characters. News flash: lots of men are exactly like the characters in the movie to some degree, and that's what makes so many of the jokes resonant.
Granted, despite being a pretty left-wing, politically correct guy, I still find movies like Knocked Up (and tangentially related, racist jokes) funny because there's usually a kernel of truth to them, yet often such humor is more about mocking the stereotype (which may still be accurate in a demographic sense) than it is about exalting it. And there's no way the academic left is going to take the sense of humor away from this philistine.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment