I would love to play the slob in a comedy like Knocked Up. Hollywood needs a female Seth Rogen. It’s just not fair that men always get to be the crude, dirty-joke-telling slackers, while the female characters are the uptight prudes who always spoil the boys’ fun. It’s such a dumb, sexist portrayal. Ok, so it probably reflects real-life dynamics to some extent, but in real-life women aren’t always the fastidious, humourless, responsible ones. And surprise surprise, I’ve even met a few blokes whom one could describe as easily offended, even (gasp!) humourless. And isn’t the goal of cinema to represent as many realities as possible, no matter how anomalous? (I’m not even sure the female slob/male germphobe is that much of an aberration, at least not these days when some male Gen Yers may’ve attended feminist boot camp and their female counterparts are equally as likely to be so indulged by doting parents they’ve never had to lift a finger around the house, but that’s a rant for another time).
I’ve wanted to play the slacker in a screwball comedy since age twelve. I’ve always identified with the Playstation-addicted, unemployed couch potato who got kicked out of his girlfriend's apartment at the beginning of the movie, gazing morosely at the suitcase she’d chucked in his face before gathering up his stuff and leaving to go on a crazy adventure without the bitch. And we know she’ll get her comeuppance: As the credits roll, he’ll be cavorting around with a bevy of titular babes, and she’ll be the humourless sow who has to spend the rest of her life alone because she didn’t love him for who he was. I loved those movies as a kid. It never occurred to me to wonder at their somewhat dodgy gender politics. It was only in my late teen years that I started thinking, ‘Ok, where are all the women in the funny roles? Why do they just stand there looking pretty/offended/pretty offended, while the boys tell all the dirty jokes? Well, that fucking sucks.’
Cameron Diaz was never going to cut it for me. Yeah, she was bubbly and fun-loving, and she did win a burping contest at the Nickelodean Kids’ Choice Awards, but, the odd smutty double entendre in There’s Something About Mary and Charlie’s Angels aside, Diaz’s role in virtually every comedy she stars in, romantic or otherwise, is clear: she is The Pretty Chick. In your standard Hollywood comedy, The Pretty Chick is the girl the slacker lusts after and either obtains through trial and error, or willingly relinquishes for a generic blonde non-bitch who understands him and loves him warts and all. Oh, she may get the odd rude line here and there (never as rude as the guy), but mostly, she’s strictly for decorative purposes.
I want to know why so few screwball comedies grant their female characters full human status. I want to know why male comedy writers seriously expect female audience members will identify more with the Katherine Heigels and Jessica Albas and Michelle Monoghans than with the Steve Carrells and Will Ferrells and Jonah Hills and Jim Carreys and (yes) Jason Mewses. And if anybody seriously believes that these Pretty Chick pieces of eye candy are perfectly acceptable substitutes for fully-realised female characters, please give me her number so I can get her over to my place stat and commence the corruption process. Cheers.
