Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Extract

Judd Apatow is like a clumsy cartoon elephant, laughing at his own flatulence & drunk to the point of being painfully sentimental, trampling over piles of money he's made. Though he doesn't necessarily know it, Mike Judge is like this elephant's put-upon zookeeper, trying to explain why the beast behaves like he does. Both are 'poets of contemporary America,' if we understand that the America in question involves endless strip malls, traffic jams, prolonged adolescence, dismal wage (and salary) slavery, needless sexual frustration, McMansions, Mom's basement, and a constant casual interface between folks who do illegal drugs, folks who do legal drugs & folks who say they don't touch either.

7 comments:

Daniel said...

Granted, but you only defined "America" and not "poet," because I saw EXTRACT and there ain't much poetry there.

ZC said...

True sir, I agree - insofar as the movie isn't particularly good. (And 'poetic' only in the most facetious of ways.) Idiocracy was even a bit of a challenge to defend (over its dumping on video, that is) because it wasn't nearly as fine a film as it should have been. But I nevertheless have a persistent affection for Mike Judge at this point.

Alex said...

"the America in question involves endless strip malls, traffic jams, prolonged adolescence, dismal wage (and salary) slavery, needless sexual frustration, McMansions, Mom's basement, and a constant casual interface between folks who do illegal drugs, folks who do legal drugs & folks who say they don't touch either."

I just watched Cassavetes' Husbands for the first time, and can't Husbands be equally well described by this sentence? Certainly the prolonged adolescence part.

ZC said...

Alex - quite possibly, been a while since I've seen it; though Husbands (aside from being much greater than the Judge & Apatow oeuvres) belongs to a different moment--the thing that I think characterizes films like Judge's and Apatow's (in their objects, esp. Judge, and in their assumptions, esp. Apatow), and that I was trying to pinpoint, is a matter of 'the way we live now.'

But that's an interesting road to go down - yet another hat for Cassavetes: observer of the idiocracy.

Jake said...

Mike Judge! Still waiting to see Extract. I hope it's half as funny as this post.

Office Space > anything by the Coen Brothers. Right?

ZC said...

Better than anything by the Coens? I dunno - that depends on how I'm feeling about them on any given day (it varies wildly) ... but I just took another look at Office Space a few weeks ago, and it's a film that holds up quite well over time and repeated viewings.

jake said...

Some thoughts: I think now that Apatow's first two movies (40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked-Up) are like bachelor parties. The participants in a bachelor party are engaging in outrageous activities that are supposed to represent 'the life' they hold as the ideal bachelor life they don't really lead but like to imagine themselves leading -- and are now sacrificing for a life time of responsibility and citizenry that marriage supposedly brings.

I think this is why Apatow's movies are structured in a "having one's cake and eating it too" way, with the beginning featuring vulgar humor and the like until it ends with traditional family values being promoted (generalization alert): they mirror how fairly young-ish men view relationships today, always needing that time where boys can be boys even though good values are important.

Men probably like the status and security marriage brings but also want flexibility that their wives/partners are just going to have to deal with.

I'm now thinking of that upcoming Hall Pass movie which makes bachelor parties a periodic thing in a marriage rather than something that happens before it. Perhaps we can trace this stuff back to earlier sex comedies like Old School, where again grown men engage in frat-party behavior as a kind of release from the social pressures of Job, Marriage, Family, etc. and that this is necessary for them to function.

This seems like a middle class version of the hippie phenomenon in American history where there is much free love for men but for women? Not so much. I don't watch a lot of American sex comedies or comedies in general but damn do they seem to be exclusively male-oriented. Have you seen 17 Again? Spoilers ahead: the father ages back into a kid, and gets a chance to closely monitor his kids, and he is adamantly against his daughter's boyfriend but utterly passionate about his son landing the school hottie -- that pro-male paternalistic attitude seems to be the spirit behind these Apatow/Men Will be Men comedies.

Are there any FlowTV essays that cover this ground better? I remember you linking to that site before.