The Adventures of Superior Man and Lesser Girl

I normally can’t stand teen comedies. Mostly due to the fact that they seem exclusively marketed to and, nay, even designed for male audience members. Despite the fact that I am a part of this much pandered-to group, teen comedies strike me as unforgivably stupid. Why EmoBoy, you paragon of wisdom and common sense in this dark time*, do you believe this?

Well, it goes on the premise that, to appeal to people who were once teens but are not currently, the characters must be believable losers like much of your targeted audience are or, more importantly, were. This makes common sense as the weren’t-really-cool-kids is a much larger demographic than pretty-boy-gets-everything-he-wanted types. Fair enough, I suppose.

Then, while designing the female characters, a similar but also obnoxiously offensive system is used. Believability is still the desired outcome, and these female characters are very often fulfilling the role of “unrequited love/want” of one of the male leads, so you need someone who can arouse the audience into believing the desire they see the male actors portray. The sad truth is, though, if you toss a few gangly/ungainly little girls up there to match the tubby/pasty boys you’ll only be appealing to a very small and frankly creepy portion of the market. So, instead of portraying the women as reasonable fascimilies of the girls you, the audience, unfortunately lusted after, you instead get women of such unsurpassed beauty that you would cut off one of your testicles just to be in bed with them for half an hour.

But that isn’t the way it went down. Have you looked at the women you wanted in old yearbooks with even the slightest critical eye? The difficulty you should have in developping an erection about them is a fucking testament to your sexual health. And, let’s just make the obvious and necessary leap here: Why is it that these movies are solely marketed to men? And how do some women end up empathising with these movies? Do they honestly believe they were the gut-wrenching bombshells they see on screen? Or are they just so used to not being marketed towards that they simply do not notice the discrepencies?

To get specific, even ignoring the retardation-wank that was watching the stupid police characters for half the fucking movie, Superbad is a stellar example of just why teen movies today suck. The two leads (Michael Cera and Jonah Hill) are hysterical and believable as long as it is only them on screen, and their banter is the only reason I am even remotely thankful I saw that film. But the instant the two leads are confronted with their female counterparts, my suspension of disbelief flies out the window. Martha MacIsaac is twenty four and looks it and I would totally do her in a heartbeat. Emma Stone is twenty, also looks it, and, while I might feel bad about it in the morning, I would not think twice about knocking boots with her. Both, seriously yummy women who do not look young. And in this regard, the primary audience (males who are not teenages anymore) are served. However, it doesn’t represent the situation even remotely reasonably and strikes me as patronising. Sadly, it seems its audience does not deserve more credit.

Juno, on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air. While Hollywood continues to reign supreme, and the two lead girls are both gorgeous, they at least fit a category that seems much more reasonable which I can roughly described as “Yeah, I would have done them if I was sixteen, but really, ewwwww”. And their sexual habits are the source of a huge amount of mirth throughout, instead of being serious and heady, they are kinda funny. And really, your sex life was a joke at that age too. Specifically, the conception scene in the comfy chair is sexual but in a weird childlike way, which I appreciated, and Juno’s best friend’s teacher-fetish comes off as downright nasty (which, you know, IT IS).

There’s lots of other reasons that Juno is awesome, that I won’t belabour here, but that specific distinction is enough for me and I don’t think it has been mentioned enough.

* Blatant homage to Zero Punctuation.

Due to plague on the part of many of the creators, the strip is, as obviously observed, late. Strip will be done soon as plague is beginning to wear off.