If I May Return to In the Company of Men, for Just One Second

So, I already covered the misogyny present in Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men in an earlier post, but now might be a good time to discuss the misanthropy that’s in there as well. I was racking my brain trying to think of a great cinematic example of white privilege and for better or worse, one scene kept coming to mind.

Perhaps you will remember Chad, Aaron Eckhart’s character and all-around douchebag. It should not be surprising that the scene in question involves him as I think I’ve already detailed how sociopathic his character is. I think that what makes Eckhart’s portrayal so captivating is how he displays his cruelty so casually. It’s autonomous at this point for him, the way you or I would breathe. There’s something that strikes me as incredibly realistic about that. Now, Chad is ostensibly a psychopath. Not in that Alfred Hitchcock, kill-you-in-the-shower-and-dress-up-like-his-mother sort of way, but in the legitimate psychological sense where he seems to have no capacity for remorse and does whatever he has to to get what he wants, completely and utterly objectifying other people, despite what his charisma might suggest about his character. So I’m not saying that pyschopathy is realistic necessarily—it’s not really a pathology that affects a vast swath of the American population. But in reality cruelty is often casual. Most conscious, pointed maliciousness is the domain of comic book super-villains. Much as we discussed the concept of passive racism in this class, it seems to me that the majority of the evil acts that happen are the result of casual, tossed-off, hardly-contemplated-or-dwelled-upon-for-any-length-of-time cruelty.

But anyways, I have no way of proving that. It’s just a hunch. Back to my main point, the scene in In the Company of Men I’m talking about occurs about halfway through the film. In keeping with that tone of casual cruelty, it occurs apropos of nothing. It does not further the plot. I suppose it adds to the characterization of Chad as callous and predatory, but the film has ample proof of that already. Perhaps this is why it sticks in the mind so much, it’s incredibly uncomfortable to watch and it feels over the top in a movie that is, by nature, over the top.

Essentially the scene (which was recently removed from Youtube unfortunately, otherwise it would be linked to here) revolves around Eckhart intimidating a young, black intern, and of course, his character can’t just glower and shout. He has to berate the intern, and then sexually harass him. He literally makes the man prove that he has the balls to do the job. So it’s uncomfortable to watch someone in Chad’s position flex his power over somebody who does not have that power. Once again though, we know this already. The whole movie is steeped in that discomfort.

The racial undertones (and I hesitate to use the word undertone here because the scene is effusive with so much charged racial history that undertone doesn’t seem to do it justice. The feelings are omnipresent. Chad even lectures the man on the proper pronunciation of the word “ask”) are clear though. Chad is a stand in for white, corporate power over just about everybody in this movie and black Americans in this scene in particular. It’s a sad and disturbing fact that in real life if a black man wants to rise on the corporate ladder in America he is probably going to have to do so at the permission of a white man. White men are overwhelmingly the ones in power. Chad makes this dominance clear. If anybody wants to advance, they’re going to have to go through him.

Chad is also a great example of the reactionary fear that many people in power feel when they sense that their power or privilege is being questioned or challenged. His treatment of other people is predatory, much as the history of white men for the last few hundred years has been predatory, but there is also the sense that Chad is trying to cut something off at the pass as it were, that his predatory nature is now more preventative than anything. Much as his game is orchestrated under the pretenses that women have forgotten their place in the world, we can see this scene as Chad’s reaction to anyone other than white men trying to improve their station in the world.

So I promise I’ll stop writing about In the Company of Men. It’s not even a movie I particularly like (it makes a person way too uncomfortable to watch it more than once or twice) I just think it does a pretty good job of illustrating the fundamental inhumanity of white, male privilege. I would say though that if there’s any hope it’s that everyone I know who has seen the movie has been equally as repulsed by the characters onscreen. Whether this is because we all as humans tend to recoil from such a raw and naked depiction of a human being’s capability to do damage to another or because as a society we have grown to reject that capability is unfortunately not up to me to say.

On Proper Frames of Reference

I recently rewatched Boyz n the Hood for class and was almost instantaneously reminded of how frustrating that movie is for me. Part of the frustrating is on a technical level. I can’t really explain it, but everything from the 90s strikes me as distractingly gaudy and hideously dated. And it’s only that decade. Anything made before it can range from kitschy to classic, and anything after registers as, I dunno…modern maybe. Regardless of what causes it, I find it hard not to be turned off by the mere aesthetic of Boyz. The clothing and the cars and the haircuts--it all reminds me of when I was a kid and apparently that sets of some subconscious annoyance. On a more serious level though I’ve always found the film somewhat facile—a simple morality tale set to film competently, but not especially masterfully. Every time I watch it, it feels like I’m watching an after school special or something.

On the other hand, I cannot deny that the film is important as an historiographical piece, that it works towards creating a marvelous illustration of a culture that up until the 90s had remained marginalized and largely ignored by white American society. It’s also apparent to me that many of the themes that run throughout Boyz (its assertion, for example, that young black men are in need of strong father figures to help them rise above their oppression) are still present in whatever national discourse (however limited it may be) we still have regarding race in this country. More than anything I think I feel like Boyz isn’t a particularly challenging film, even though it tackles issues that are patently challenging. I think that’s where the frustration lies—I can see that Boyz is a culturally significant film, I just wish it were more like Do the Right Thing.

Spike Lee’s directorial debut does for Bed-Stuy what Boyz does for South Central, but rather than follow several black characters throughout their adolescence, Do the Right Thing focuses on one very intense week, during a heat wave, when tensions that have long been simmering under everyone’s surface are beginning to rise. It is, as you may have guessed, an allegory for America’s racial tensions. Much like Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character in Boyz, Lee’s character in Do the Right Thing is largely trying to find his way in the world, tugged at by a million different influences. Gooding Jr. does his best to keep his head down, get an education and get out of South Central. Lee’s character eventually acts as the catalyst to a mob riot, and yet he doesn’t come off as any worse than anyone else in the film. Lee seems more concerned with letting the audience determine where it stands at the end, and the film almost challenges the viewer to take a side, the direct implication of Lee’s actions in the movie being that no matter what you believe, action is what speaks volumes.

Do the Right Thing, paints a portrait of black, interurban culture in the 90s that seems slightly at odds with John Singleton’s even though the same discord and strife are undercurrents in each society. Whereas Singleton’s South Central is plagued by almost omnipresent violence and decay Lee’s Bed-Stuy is vibrant and undeniably alive, if slightly on edge. Now, part of this is due largely to the functions that these films seek to fulfill, and to a certain extent I feel like it’s even slightly inappropriate to compare the two. Boyz seeks to send a message to black, urban youth about how to escape the violence of their surroundings. That’s probably why it comes off like a morality play to me, by it’s very nature it seeks to portray the world in black and white terms. Do the Right Thing on the other hand is trying to shrink the national racial tension (and every viewpoint that comes with it) in America down to one neighborhood. It has to pack a lot of life into a few blocks.

But then, that’s why Do the Right Thing feels like a more mature, accomplished work to me. The world isn’t black and white, and the older I get the more I appreciate Lee’s attempt to show how every point of view regarding how race should be handled in this country may be both right and wrong in its own way but how the real necessity is to get those viewpoints out in the open. Boyz has a very clear sense of what is right and what is wrong, but Do the Right Thing seems obsessed with the ambiguity of what right and wrong may be. That ambiguity feels more real to me, because the tensions that exist in America to this day are real, and they remain tucked below the surface of every national discourse even though we may not want to address them directly.

That ambiguity bleeds over into my reactions to both films though. I’m left wondering if maybe I just don’t get Boyz n the Hood. I’m left wondering if I’m even qualified to speak about films that by their nature are not necessarily for me. I don’t adhere to the conceit that since I am a white male I have no voice in the conversation of race relations, but maybe Boyz doesn’t speak to me because I have no frame of reference for it. It’s set in a time and culture that I will never be part of. And I know that when we evaluate anything we do so fully ensconced in our personal history and viewpoint. The touchy ambiguity of Do the Right Thing though…I obviously have a frame of reference for that. In the end I can only hope that by taking Lee’s cue and adding my voice to the conversation that I’m helping in some small way.

Nice Guy Syndrome, John Krasinski’s Stumbly-Bumbly Dirty Mouth, and I Lose Control of My Parentheticals… or: This Weekend I Watched Some Movies

This weekend I watched a movie where Jim from The Office calls his girlfriend a "fucking bitch". Suffice it to say my world was rocked. Surely he would turn to the camera with an impish smirk and shrug, right? But alas, this was the only face I got:

That is one sullen-looking Jim.

The scene was clumsy, one of the monologues that worked the least in a movie that was full of spotty monologues. On a certain “meta” level however, hearing Jim from The Office say that reinforced the underlying thesis of the film.

Let me back up though and start from the beginning. The film was John Krasinski’s directorial debut, an adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. (Perhaps some of you have seen me lugging around all thousand-plus pages of Wallace’s Infinite Jest? BIWHM is (perhaps as a result of its brevity) an even denser book, harder to unpack and, arguably, less rewarding when one does so). Some people—and by some people, I mean me—said Krasinski was crazy to try and adapt this book to film. They (me) were correct. It shows chutzpah I guess for a guy who’s mostly known for playing bland, sheepish everymen to release a piece of cinema that plays more like experimental theater and while it doesn’t pan out completely there are certainly enough interesting ideas in it to make it the sort of film that at least begs discussion upon viewing.

Wallace’s book is largely a collection of character studies loosely tied together by brief interludes (the eponymous Brief Interviews) which feature various men being directly interviewed or overheard. Much like the film (and, let’s be honest, almost every collection of short fiction ever) some of these pieces work and some don’t, but the largest difference between film and book has to do with the scope of their underlying messages. Whereas Wallace’s collection seems to expound on his pet theme of our inability as humans to effectively communicate with one another or to accurately interface with the world and society around us, Krasinski’s film cuts out everything but the Brief Interviews. In doing so Krasinski turns our focus to the ways in which men communicate (or fail to communicate) in a post-feminist world.

The men of the Interviews are hideous, but they are neither uniform in this regard, nor entirely unfamiliar personalities. They are not aggressively violent sociopaths or rapists or murderers. They’re just guys. But the conceit that makes Krasinski’s film nigh unwatchable (it’s basically two straight hours of monologues) is also a genius method of conveying his message. By portraying monologues with very little action or scenery Krasinski forces us to confront very language used by these men. Language that is peppered with “enlightened, feminist” wording but that ultimately belies its speakers’ total inability to comprehend women. Will Forte waxes (creepily) rhapsodic about how he just loves women—the way they smell nice and all. Max Minghella and Lou Taylor Pucci engage in a movie-long debate about what it is the “modern woman” wants, and how she struggles to achieve it. Will Arnett begs his girlfriend to let him back into his apartment as he tries to explain his indiscretions. The Guy From Death Cab shows up and mumbles.

Ultimately these men, and their inability to communicate, are all meant to embody an archetype that seems to have arrived hot on the heels of the internet (and the subsequent “geek is chic” scene)—the Nice Guy. The Nice Guy is polite, some might say gentlemanly, around women. He cares about them in the way nooooobody else does, and serves as a close friend, confidante, shoulder-to-cry-on. He can’t understand why women always go for the “asshole tough guy”. (Webcomic XKCD sums the Nice Guy up…nicely). Deep down though the Nice Guy is really just a Guy and—so Krasinski argues—not really any different from the “asshole tough guys” they decry. They may even be worse, because they’re covering up their inner hideousness under a veneer of progressive enlightenment. The problem with their attempts at communication stem from the fact that while they’re using the correct words, they’re not using the correct meanings. Krasinski seems to suggest that the result of the feminist movement was only that men gained new tools with which to oppress.

That’s why Krasinski is such a perfect choice for the film’s final monologue. Krasinski is famous for playing the ultimate Nice Guy on NBC’s The Office. (Come to think of it That Guy From Death Cab was another enlightened casting choice in this regard—their music being the soundtrack to many a Nice Guy’s life (it’s also interesting that That Guy From Death Cab wrote a song about how he basically sweet-talked some girl into sleeping with him even though he didn’t like her very much (that would be Transatlanticism’s “Tiny Vessels—a song which is discussed on the Death Cab tour documentary Drive Well, Sleep Carefully very briefly by (and I’m paraphrasing here) the band basically saying, “This is going to make you look like an asshole,” and That Guy From Death Cab saying, “Yeah, well”.) (If we’re being honest with ourselves, by the by, That Guy should maybe stick to making music, and, at that, stick to maybe trying to go back in time and making his last two albums something I would want to listen to more than once (I am saying, you see, that he is not a very good actor))).

After I saw this movie I was all, "More like Ben Gibberish, amirite?"

So the Big Twist is that we’re conditioned as an audience to view Krasinski as a sympathetic, humble, decent dude. That’s why it’s so jarring to see him get so worked up when he’s explaining to his girlfriend why he cheated on her that he calls her a “fucking bitch”. It’s totally counter to the character of Jim on The Office. But out in the real world there are plenty of Nice Jims from The Office who have no reason not to act this way. Krasinski stumbles over the line enough to make me believe that he may actually just be a nice guy (as opposed to a Nice Guy) who has never called anyone a bitch in his life, but the damage is done. As an audience we can’t put our trust in the Nice Guy anymore. (As another aside, it’s really a shame that Krasinski mangles this monologue because it’s really an effective story in book form (though in the book the speech is not directed at a girlfriend and the “fucking bitch” outburst reads more like a man so stunted by the societal expectations that he remain emotionless that he cannot communicate on any level what for him was an actual spiritual, enlightening moment rather than a spoiled asshole trying to justify his infidelity)).

My favorite monologue in the movie though (barring Frankie Faison’s story about his bathroom attendant-father—a monologue that doesn’t fit thematically into the movie that exists, but would fit beautifully into the movie that would have existed if the movie could reasonably have been expected to hew any closer to the source material) comes via Detective Stabler. Christopher Meloni plays an oily executive who is overheard discussing a recent business trip with his friend, wherein he encountered a woman at the airport who was completely devastated by her lover not showing up on his flight, and, effectively, ending their relationship. Stabler spins a yarn about how he consoled that woman and the way he tells it one would assume that he connected with this woman on an intensely deep and personal level. That he was so overwhelmed by the sight of her grief that he sought to console her to offer her a moment of respite and humanity in a world lacking both. Spoiler alert: he was just trying to bang her. Meloni in that scene reminded me of Aaron Eckhart’s character in Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men and it was then that I was reminded that the myth of the Nice Guy was being debunked as far back as 1997.

In the Company of Men details a "game" that two executives, Chad and Howard (played by Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy, respectively) take it upon themselves to play in order to bring some dignity back to their lives as men (dignity robbed from them by the world at large, but mostly "these women, getting out of line" as Howard puts it). The rules of the game are simple, Chad and Howard will seduce a woman (deaf secretary Christine, played by Stacy Edwards), then reveal to her that they were only pretending to love her, leaving her devastated and putting her (and by proxy, womankind) in her place. (It's been almost fifteen years since this movie came out by the way, so I'm going to be pretty liberal with the spoilers, such as they are.)

Anyway, ItCoM is ostensibly about power structures in general, really more a scathing indictment of the corporate, capitalist structure that puts white men in power and constantly struggling for more than anything else (its most uncomfortable scene doesn't even have to do with the "game", it involves Two Face casually harassing a young black intern)--especially given that the real focus of Chad and Howard's "game" turns out to be Howard himself--but it cannot be denied that LaBute reserves a special amount of ire for the way he views men to fundamentally be.

Early in the film Chad and Howard bemoan the state of their personal and professional lives, the troubles in which they blame solely on women and not, for example, their own need for power and control. In this way ItCoM echoes BIwHM, insomuch as it examines how men have reacted to growing up in a postfeminist world. (Another film that examines this is Fight Club, but FC doesn't really have any place for women in its world so it can hardly be considered postfeminist). Where Krasinski suggests a subtly insidious world lurking beneath the Nice Guy exterior however, LaBute sees only venom and rage.

The really scary thing about ItCoM though is how complicit the audience is made in the "game" that's being played on Christine. We're let in on the details at beginning and it's like a secret that we keep with Chad and Howard. As we the movie goes on we are forced to watch Chad and Howard and Christine's courtship knowing full well what the endgame entails. There's even a scene early on where Chad leaves Howard and says, "Let's hurt somebody," but Howard is already gone. Chad is speaking to himself sure, but he's also speaking to the audience.

That scene and its borderline breaking of the fourth wall reminded me of Michael Haneke's Funny Games and much like that film, ItCoM seems more that willing to blame the audience for its participation--not only as a passive audience watching a movie but as a passive audience (and thus enabler) of an unjust and hideous world. We're going to feel Just Plain Awful and it's our fault for being there in the first place.

Howard is ItCoM's Nice Guy. He's introduced as a spurned lover (or really, if you listen closely, more of a stalker, as he describes sitting outside his ex-fiance's house at four in the morning) and he's the one who seems ambivalent about the whole "game". He's even the one who feels like he's fallen in love with Christine. We've spent the whole movie with him so we're privy to the cracks in his Nice Guy facade, but until the final act he's portrayed as weak enough that we cannot be faulted for seeing him as merely a pawn in Chad's scheme. Maybe he's not bad, we think, just easily led.

But then Howard comes apart at the seams and it's every bit as jarring as Krasinski's "fucking bitch". Malloy has portrayed Howard as a pathetic, milquetoast schmuck up until this point so it's shocking when we see him violently confront Christine in his car:

He explodes, pressing Christine up against the window, berating her "stupid retard voice" and then giving away the "game". And yet Howard maintains that he's the Nice Guy. That Chad is the evil one, and that he's the one who deserves to be with her.

There's a Big Twist Ending in this film too, and it's a bit of a mindfuck when you realize that Chad (who, it turns out, is happily married, has never really been wronged personally by women and was sort of just playing the "game" because he felt like it) is a Nice Guy as well. We just don't get to see him throughout the movie with his Nice Guy face on, suggesting that one of the most revolting characters ever put on screen could, if we caught him at a different time, have come off much differently.

The outlook is bleak then, if we take these movies to represent reality. Are we doing comments for this blog for this class? Because I'd love to hear from anybody who had a view regarding how they feel the world has shaped up after the introduction of the modern feminist movement. Personally I'm still mulling it over, but for my part I was not entirely surprised by the men portrayed in these films, hideous as they may be.