Some thoughts on Bridesmaids, and the Bridesmaids thing
by zunguzungu
Does the whole “see Bridesmaids for feminism” thing (first see Carla Fran and Millicent, then read Rebecca Traister at Salon, Jamie Denbo at Huffington Post, Irin Carmon at Jezebel) distract you from the fact that this movie is a movie? Would that be bad? Good? A non-issue? From whence, in short, comes the fact that this movie is not normal? And where should it go?
A few thoughts. For one thing, as Carla Fran pointed out that Lindy West pointed out, the marketing campaign for this movie has been strange and alienating and stupid. “These are smart, funny women…given room to create indelible characters. Did I just blow your mind!?” would be exhibit A, along with the declaration that women’s movies (“Movies Like These”?) are terrible, because of chicks and stuff, you know, amirite?
But that’s just the beginning. It’s also worth noting that every visual element of the poster on the right is flagrantly untrue to the movie, almost deceptively so (compare it to this representative shot from the movie itself, for example). Start with the perfectly matched set of Barbie dolls we see lined up against a brick wall? (And why a brick wall? Are they supposed to be prostitutes? I’m baffled.) Other than the fairly brief wedding scene itself, the only time we see all the actresses wearing their bridesmaid uniforms is in the fitting scene, when they are each wearing different bridesmaid outfit — since they are arguing over which one they’ll choose — and then we see them vomit and poop on those very dresses in a way that’s so far from the affectedly effortless sexy of the lineup to the right as to be completely perverse. And the poses are also strikingly wrong. Rose Byrne’s character (far right) is a nouveau riche aspirant to an elegance she can’t quite master, such that her out-thrust hip and “hello sailor” look are deeply strange. I shouldn’t need to say much about inappropriateness of the heroin-chic listlessness of the two principle heroines (second and third from the right), but it is worth noting that Ellie Kemper (third from left) is always the very picture of demure modesty in the movie itself — not here — while Wendy McLendon-Covey (second from left) plays a tired, worn housewife, not someone who would wear pigtails of that sort. And Melissa McCarthy’s (far left) inexplicably long skirt is exactly the wrong way to portray the revelation she turns out to be on-screen, particularly because it turns out to be kind of important that we see so much of her legs in the film itself.
Read this first reaction to the poster (written when it was released in January) for a great example of the kind of misinterpretation it must have been crafted to facilitate:
…take five funny ladies, dress them in punky pink frocks worthy of Totally Hair Barbie and watch the hilarity that ensues as they try to get their friend down the aisle.
That’s a competent reading of that poster; that’s not what the movie is about.
So what is the movie about? I think it’s worth saying that this movie is (or should be) utterly normal, in the sense that it basically belongs to the genre of movies that Judd Apatow puts his name to. The ending is not exactly the same as the ending to Superbad, but the structuring conflict is quite comparable: what does a heterosexual bonding do to a homosocial friendship? As Millicent points out,
“When Lillian, hiding under her covers, says she’ll never live in her apartment again, that she won’t be down the block from Annie, that she worries about what’ll happen to Annie, to their friendship … those things are unutterable, unanswerable, and true. Every woman who has watched a friend walk down the aisle and realized that things will never be the same can recognize the power of that scene, the exquisite pain of the private loss that goes hand-in-hand with the celebration of a public union.”
That’s very, very much like the escalator moment in Superbad, down to the kind of public-private distinction (and not unlike what drives the end of Knocked Up, once you’ve corrected for the misogyny). The central dramatic epiphany of the movie is also akin to the crucial moment in Forgetting Sarah Marshall — as I argued here — which is when Jason Segal realizes that he has been his own worst enemy all along, that his refusal to try has been the problem he’s been externalizing onto others, and that he has to get his own shit in order before he can manage a happy hetero-pairing. Bridesmaids also does this same thingm where the fixed-by-love possibility is gestured towards before the protagonist is ready for it: the scene where Chris O’Dowd tries to help her bake (and the souffle collapses) dramatizes exactly the same impossibility of an external solution when the problem is internal, and — eventually — we will see that the hetero-couple only get together after the main plot has been resolved. Only when the protagonist has dealt with her own shit can she be rewarded with a man. Role Models works this way, too, and Forty Year Old Virgin.
I could go on for a while in this vein, but that would be my point: in terms of narrative structure and thematic tone, this movie is similar in enough to these bromance peers for them to be its peers. Only it’s about women! ZOMG! So then… does that fact affect the mode of genre criticism I’m deploying here? Do we celebrate it or do we ignore it? What could we say about it that wouldn’t be as unsatisfying as the poster?
One way to frame the problem would be that while celebrating its innovation makes us overlook the movie’s basic consistency with its genre, ignoring the present unheard-of-ness of a female-centric analog to the bromance (which is what makes the existence of so conventional a movie such a thing) would still cause us to underestimate the minefield it had to walk across to get made, and perhaps, the trail it opens up.* It leaves us in a conundrum: do we deprive the movie of its normality by pointing out the burden of representation it has no choice but to carry, or do we overlook the structural obstacles it’s navigating if we try to stress the basic generic conventions through which it’s written?
This is probably a false dilemma, but the marketing campaign makes more sense if we think of it as a symptom of this problem, a clumsy response to a set of expectations it isn’t ready to manage, and has never really had to think about before. For example, observe how the principal men involved in the production talk about the movie. Paul Feig — the movie’s director — made it clear in an interview that this movie was, from the beginning, framed as a putting-women-into-movies kind of thing, an opportunity for him “to launch really funny women” in a Hollywood that didn’t have space for them:
I always feel that women get short shrift in movies and TV and all that. And we know so many funny women, and I’m also such a big fan of Kristen’s, who is one of the funniest women on the planet, and so Bridesmaids always stuck with me…
[In making the movie] we were really following their lead. It wasn’t a couple of guys telling women how to act and what’s funny; it was the other way around…Neither Judd nor I feel like we can say to women, “No, it’s this!” We can guide the story along and make sure the emotion all works and tracks and everything, but we really wanted their voices and their input, and they gave it to us quite well.
The story comes uncomfortably close to a blow for feminism being struck by the established Hollywood boys club. And we are left marveling at how Paul Feig is just the man for this job: as he told the AV club, “one of my strong suits is writing for women and knowing about women.” That’s a really unfortunate sentence.
Still, to say that Apatow and Feig are finding ways to re-narrate the making of the movie as men-guiding-women-into-expressing-themselves would probably be unfair. It’s partially true, but (movie poster aside) they also seem to have mostly had the sense to realize their relative unimportance and to stay out of the way enough to make the movie work. Or at least that’s my guess; whether they got “input” from Wiig and Co or whether they followed their lead are two very different things, and I tend to suspect that the movie simply wouldn’t have turned out as well as it did in the ways that it did if it had been a lot more of the former than the latter.
So is a “womance” — as Millicent calls it — basically the same as a “bromance,” or is it in some way fundamentally different?
I dunno! I did note, though, that while the movie passes the Bechdel test in something like six minutes, it probably wouldn’t pass the reverse Bechdel test, were such a thing to exist. There are some men in it, kind of, but the closest they come to talking to each other is when Jon Hamm yells/dismisses “Thank you officer!” to Chris O’Dowd, who does not reply. And in that scene, they’re really talking to Kristin Wiig, and the movie declines to allow a scrap of drama between them: Hamm never knows O’Dowd exists (nor cares), and since O’Dowd directs his anger exclusively at Wiig, there’s never a moment when the two men could have found themselves locked in any kind of relation exclusive of Wiig. No mimetic triangle between the men ever obtains.
I wonder what level of intentionality that indicates. It certainly wouldn’t need much, and perhaps that’s exactly the point: when you build a movie around a three woman plot, add four female co-stars, and then lock it in with two hetero-love interests — one good, one bad — the logic of that narrative system will inevitably marginalize the men as a structural plot element. Here, Jon Hamm is simply an oblivious and external manifestation of the protagonist’s internal malaise (dumped by her boyfriend, her bakery destroyed by the recession, all combining to produce her conviction that her life going nowhere), while Chris O’Dowd’s efforts to fix her will fail because he can only represent her successful re-integration/resolution/socialization into the life she has to lead after the two disasters with which she is contending have been fully realized: the loss of her best friend (to Wedding) and the loss of her bakery (to the recession).
The men are, in this sense, exactly what the love interests are in most male-centered movies are, simply externalized projections of the protagonist’s ego. Which is why Melissa McCarthy’s repeated Fight Club reference is so very smart: like Edward Norton’s insistence on externalizing his internal problems so he can be excused from trying to solve them, Wiig’s character is haunted by ghosts of herself — possible alternate ego ideals or nightmare visions of the person she doesn’t want to be or let herself be — and the movie’s conclusion comes as a function of her reconciliation with them (and through them, what they represent to her). This also helps demonstrate why intention is unnecessary, precisely why — in fact — movies built around three men, a handful of co-stars (usually mostly men), and one or two female love interests will always tend to fail the real Bechdel test: not because women were actively excluded from the screen, but because the internal logic of the narrative places them external to the plot’s driving logic of gender. The real plot will be internal to the men — and their male doubles, phantoms, and rivals — while the externalized feminine element can only symptomatize success or failure, temptation or success, harpy or conquest. When every movie is made by Seth Rogen, in other words, he doesn’t have to be a sexist for the female to become an unthinkable vehicle for comedy. But when every movie is made by Seth Rogen — as they were in 2007-8 — the most normal of films, a conventional bromance starring a bunch of funny and smart and indelible women, for example, becomes the most noteworthy of things.
Have you seen it? What do you think?
* As Carla Fran points out, British shows like Pulling have already done this work in spades. also, please see her on the “Sloppy Jane.”
great writing as always aaron.
strikes me like you’re missing a larger meta critique here, the relationship of representation (in this case, in the “media”, and The Movies) to real life/practice. i can be the biggest feminist in the world and not give a fuck about going to pay $12 to see a movie that mainly benefits the hollywood studios i hate, the movie theater complex that i abhor, etc. why is it that normally intelligent feminist bloggers, who focus on labor, capitalist critique, etc, feel that Going To See This Movie would somehow be striking a blow for the feminist movement and set aside all the other interrelated negative aspects of giving our hard earned $$ to the movies?
to me this is a case of tigerbeatdown’s infamous Liz Lemon Feminism, doing something feelgood and easy thats nominally feminist only if it means ignoring labor, race (lets not even get into race in this movie, amirite?) and other markers of structural exclusion broadly and ivory-towered-ly-titled “intersectionality” (yuk).
While it isn’t true that Going To See This Movie strikes a blow for feminism (that’s absurd), it’s hard to deny that media portrayals influence societal attitudes. And this one—for a mainstream film—does that pretty well when it comes to women in their 30s. That’s noteworthy. It doesn’t really make sense to object to how race works in a film if one is unwilling to grant the basic premise that its presence or treatment matters. We so often brush entertainment aside as unimportant or frivolous. That’s a dangerous move, I think, because it underestimates its power to permeate a culture when it’s at its most relaxed and uncritical. Of course, I’m a literary critic, so I WOULD say that.
That doesn’t mean you need to pay $12 to see it; there’s no reason to contribute financially to Hollywood. I take that point.
Millicent,
This really may come down to a disciplinary disagreement. While I (an anthropologist) obviously see entertainment as related/influential in, lets simplify for blogspace, cultural sphere, I don’t grant that a movie, no matter how popular, has a significant role to play in actually shifting structural problems. This is not to argue that only politics (or other traditional male defined and/or controlled spheres like science) is where one affects change, but imho the “dangerous move” here would be to go out in the streets and celebrate anything that purports to be different while in fact strengthening the producers of that culture – male hollywood, male directors/producers, male owners of the media blitz that accompanies these movie releases, etc. i know i can sound like a blowhard here – “why can’t i just accept that its a movie” – and i will probably download this movie when its released, just to be informed, but i think we should always be caution about, like i mentioned in my first post, representation of females and alternative femininity, and the practice that accompanies it.
i’m not saying *you’re* saying this, but: because sarah palin declares herself a feminist, does that mean she’s englarging the role for women in politics? because we invade iraq to Save Women, does that mean feminism has finally obtained in international foreign policy? we just always need to be careful, is all, and the furor over this movie has made me feel very weary and also sad: all this clamoring about how i must do something always makes me nervous.
or, maybe i’m an overintellectualizing blowhard.
Hi gander_roles–hm, for some reason I can’t reply directly to your response. I hope this shows up in the right place.
We might be talking at cross-purposes here. I think you’re understanding the buzz around Bridesmaids as heralding a change to come, whereas I’m reading it as an acknowledgment of something that’s been true for decades (women, like men, are goofy, make each other laugh, fail frequently, are assholes more often than they’re “bitches”). What’s interesting to me about Hollywood is how and when it “mainstreams” that which has always been there. Now that newspapers hare dying and news consumption has fractured into party-specific sites, movies and television are coming to constitute the only real shared ground among Americans as a whole. That gives them (I think) disproportionate power as arbiters of what the culture (insofar as such a thing can be said to exist) admits into its shared vocabulary as “true”.
You’re focusing on the production–male producer, male director–whereas I’m focusing on the female writers and the “text” (both female and female-dominated). I don’t dispute that the gents involved in the film are benefiting from it, or that they’re getting possibly unearned credit from something Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo created and Melissa McCarthy blew out of the water. Nor would I disagree that Hollywood is an awful machine, or that the excitement over Bridesmaids is indicative of great changes to come. After all, Mean Girls (which I didn’t much like, actually) ended up being the blip on the radar.
If your point is that no movie should be celebrated because the industry is capitalist, masculine, and incapable of correction, then no movie is really worth discussing or supporting. That’s a valid position.
But–in defense of some (though not all) of the feminist bloggers out there–it’s just as valid to focus not on the profits that accrue to Apatow et al but on the pleasure the (female, possibly feminist) moviegoer gets from watching this particular film. Which, for me, was weirdly intense. To let the fact that Apatow and Feig are male obscure or invalidate the pleasure of seeing great female comedy seems to me to be throwing the baby out with the … well, you get the idea.
In my opinion, Apatow and Feig have dominated the conversation about Bridesmaids in a way I find irritating, and that approach only amplifies the extent to which they’re overwriting the female creators of the film. That’s why I’ve been focusing on the things that are “non-Apatovian” about this movie, the ways in which you can see what the real creators did right.
Finally, that move is in no way analogous to Sarah Palin declaring herself a feminist. She isn’t. This movie? As a text? It actually is. Whether despite or because of Apatow et al is (for me–and this is where our disciplinary disagreement comes in, I think) beside the point.
Millicent,
its true – i may have talked myself into a corner here with my position that no movie may be worth discussing if i’ll always focus on its production. thats a structure/superstructure argument that i generally don’t like because it forecloses any serious cultural discussions in favor of some kind of abstract big picture. so, allow me to rephrase.
i’m not sure, though, how to find that middle ground that both acknowledges cultural reproduction and dissemination (damn biological metaphors) but also makes room for the other point that movies – all ‘texts’ if you wish – can be read many ways depending on their position, and therefore should not be posited as something that will bring actual change. whatever that ‘change’ would be depends on other kinds of definitions (small r vs big R revolutions, for example).
i guess my main complaint here is not whether the movie, or the text, recognizes broadly something that women (and the men who actually listen to them) have “known” forever, which is the radical idea that they’re equal to men, but that bloggers and other intellectual/elite-types have been urging and begging (and reprimanding-by-omission) everyone to see this movie. and why? what kind of text is this that appeals so much to us (i am indeed placing myself here) while sarah palin’s grizzly mama appeals to others? what about space for low-income women, women of color, etc? again, i am in no way suggesting that you are saying this. but i brought up liz lemon because that was tigerbeatdown’s initial point, right? that certain types of elite feminisms (which is under the surface in all the urgings to see this movie) obscure many other things…
What a good discussion. I feel I have little to add — and no desire to take sides, since I could easily take either of them — but would simply add that while “elite feminisms” might obscure a great deal, it might be overoptimistic to expect more than the unmentioned but unhidden fact of a biracial protagonist (Lillian) and a background reference to the recession from a movie like this. It’s like winning 20 bucks at the casino; it’s not a windfall, but it’s more than you could have reasonably presumed to anticipate, a sort of lagniappe.
gorgeous darl, love this sweet look!! and i’ll take the striped seiuqn jacket to go please!!love the ray bans too – just picked up my new specs yesterday – black ray bans, now i can wear my favourite classic at work!! hehehope the weather’s being kind for the build darl. xoxox
So is a “womance” — as Millicent calls it — basically the same as a “bromance,” or is it in some way fundamentally different?
Some symmetry is certainly there, but I think you’re overselling it a bit. I’d say that, whatever portmanteau becomes the preferred twitterspeak name for the genre, that Bridesmaids incorporates a number of influences that are just alien or at least extremely oblique to the bromance. Actual romantic comedy is one; the scene where Annie and Rhodes are sitting on the hood of his squad car would fit in better in a Julia Roberts film, not in Superbad, where cops are also strangely charming and human. That’s a fairly obvious point, but it’s the kind of point that shifts Bridesmaids away from being quite so contained within the Apatow genre as you seem to be implying. I think the degree to which Bridesmaids *doesn’t* really repudiate or parody romantic comedies is actually one of the more notable (and notably enjoyable) things about it.
Similarly, I would say that the fact that the bridesmaids don’t actually go to Vegas is significant. The film could certainly have contained a Vegas scene, and I don’t really think that the filmmakers were too worried that they couldn’t compete with The Hangover in terms of “doing” Vegas–they did everything else as well or better than the male-centered R-rated comedies. And it’s not as if Annie’s breakdown on the plane substitutes for a crazy Vegas debauch. Instead, I’d read it once again as a way for the film to mark its difference from the bromance genre–this is not a story about mismatches resolving through some crucible-like “trip,” as Millicent pointed out very well in her post. This is a story about mismatches being mismatches–Helen and Annie have very limited common ground, and Vegas isn’t going to overcome that for them.
Lastly, I think we can also see the womance/bromance twinning breaking down by thinking of what it means for a man to move in with his mom, and what it means for a woman to do so. These are not really parallel experiences, nor are they really portrayed as such in the film. As Carla Fran pointed out, Annie’s mom is completely unhelpful, even at the level of making food for Annie (a tuna sandwich at 8:30 am or whatever). Annie’s mom is more of a person than the moms of bromances are allowed to be, but less competent at being a mom, less of a refuge, and thus (I think) less of a blow to Annie’s dignity (I almost typed masculinity, but that’s the point). And the film obviously wouldn’t be more symmetrical if Annie had moved in with her dad.
“Similarly, I would say that the fact that the bridesmaids don’t actually go to Vegas is significant.”
This is such a good point. I hadn’t even considered how the movie slyly gestures at and sidesteps (for example) the Paul Rudd/Seth Rogen Vegas scene in Knocked Up. (And thanks for the kind words!)
Your point about the mom is equally interesting—if she had been the stereotype of momhood, supportive and wonderful, it would have detracted from Annie’s path toward self-sufficiency.
How does the way the mother is — however we might describe her — add to Annie’s path towards self-sufficiency? The more I think about her, the more I love the character, but particularly because she’s so weird; little touches like the painting of rock stars barely even get mentioned, but totally shape her as a strikingly un-flat supporting character. I’m sure the cast’s awe for the actress was part of it, but that still doesn’t help me articulate why I like her so much, or what she brings to the movie.
Excellent points. A more rigorous definition of the bromance vs. the rom-com might have allowed me to do something more along those lines, but I’m not sure I’m clear enough on the dividing lines.
I share Millicent’s appreciation for the Vegas point; in fact, it strikes me that the specter of The Hangover hanging over the proceedings makes that an even more direct reference: even though it was clearly not Annie’s *fault* that she went crazy on the plane (Lillian recognizes that she was mis-drugged by Helen; “What did you give her?”), Lillian’s choice to be more angry about having been deprived of the stupid-cookie-cutter-cultural-expectation-spectacle and to sacrficie the friendship as a result is (especially in retrospect) a kind of moment-where-things-went-wrong. In other words, when she becomes more attached to The Hangover than to her narrative of Best Friends, the seeds of the main conflict are first sown, a kind of tragic choice to eat the apple of bromance or something.
Are you sure that moving in with the mother is less of a blow? Different in some ways, perhaps, but it’s certainly there that she hits rock bottom, and her inability to have a home of her own is part of it. I’m not sure I disagree, but I’m curious how you would defend that point.
You’re right–I think the moving in with mother thing is a little bit more complicated than I initially thought.
To me, Annie’s being forced to move back in wasn’t a sign of regression (or of arrested emotional or sexual development) the way it tends to be when it happens to men in film. I mean, she behaves badly, but as you point out, there are some fairly plausible excuses for at least the plane flip-out if not for most of the other crazy things she does–she really, for instance, does nothing that would seem to be a reason for the British roommates to kick her out. (The one really inexcusable thing she does is scare away customers in the jewelry store.) She does regress once she returns to her mother’s (failing to wash her hair and watching pabulum), but I read that more as a nod to the Apatow genre than a full-on absorption of it.
So I would argue that maturity really isn’t the contested terrain of this move, or of the film in general, the way that it is for a bromance. For the most part, Annie hasn’t failed at being an adult; she’s an adult who has failed. She needs her mom’s stability, but not her mom’s maturity, the way that I think men in film tend to.
Sorry, didn’t directly address your point–similarly to Carla Fran below, I find Annie’s moving back in with her mother to be less about her being infantilized and more about whether she can or will “fight for her shitty life,” as Megan says–Annie has been an asshole, not a baby. Moving back in with her mother is crappy, but it’s crappy because she’s not fighting, not because she has to grow up before she can fight. I think your comparison with Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall is very apt here, although I think even there his maturity is more in play than Annie’s.
Hello Millicent and Gander_Roles,
I was itchy (itchy keeps coming up as the word for this), about the fact that part of the PR for the movie was the social responsibility/revolution angle, especially since it is the same system gaining from these dollars that also makes me audibly groan during most movies. And Apatow producing sums this up for me, mightily. I’m not sure we have witnessed a transformation, but it’s so great to not be pissed on! I agree we have to be careful. I was surprised how cautious I felt about the movie–I felt defensive, ready to not be conned.
The platform reach of movies is large, and why I get so excited when something gets done that is expanding narrative instead of limiting it.
to me what’s most interesting about the poster–and i’m stealing this from ted, but i think he’s right–is not so much that it barbie-fies the film’s heroines (FWIW, i took the brick wall to be a fight club reference more than a prostitution one, and the poses to signal at least as much a kind of aggressive, what-you-lookin’-at attitude as anything else). rather, what’s interesting to me is that the *poster* suggests and represents a comedic and affective camaraderie between the group of women that the *film* never manages to convey at all. in fact, many of the bridal party scenes felt to me as if they were, or could have been, shot in separate rooms w/o the cast interacting as a group at all, and the fact that there’s never any shot of all the women in their dresses is to me noteworthy precisely because it reveals that there’s scarcely a moment of real interaction between them as a group.
if this had been done in the service of treating the annie/lillian relationship more thoroughly, that’d be one thing, but in fact the movie isn’t about annie and lillian at all, but about annie and helen. the fact that this constitutes a failure at all levels (comedic, narrative, political, etc.) is most obvious to me in 2 moments. the first is the single scene in which the fact of the romantic/erotic nature of friendship (and friend-on-friend jealousy) is made explicit, when the word lesbian becomes a slur that annie manically flings at helen. now clearly, there’s something interesting going on here, w/r/t the movie’s attempt to acknowledge the eroticism of long-term friend attachments. but compared to, say, the scene in Superbad when michael cera and jonah hill confess their love to one another while lying in their sleeping bags, and then wake up the next day feeling as awkward as if they’d actually fucked each other, i think Bridesmaid’s implied lesbianism-as-(monetized)-perversion-of-real-female-friendship is a really unsatisfying repression–even abjection–of that aspect of same-sex friendship. (at least Superbad has the sense to remove its triangulating figure of male-male jealousy from the scene, by giving christopher minz-platz his own separate subplot and allowing him to structure, but not supplant, the more interesting dynamic between the two primary characters.) the second scene in which the film fails to really represent or develop the annie/lillian relationship is the final scene between them when annie has to get lillian to the wedding, which i found so unsatisfying as to be absolutely mystifying. the way to fix this rift is for lillian to admit that she can’t afford the wedding helen is throwing her (tho it goes on anyway, natch)? and then for annie to somehow fix lillian’s dress, making it not once but twice that annie offers a mea culpa by performing her maternal domestic skills? again, altho i didn’t love Superbad, the final scene in which hill and cera give one another almost longing glances as they are each whisked away to hetero adulthood by the girls conveys more, and wordlessly, than anything in that sequence. just my (sadly disappointed) 2 cents…
I like that brick wall reading a lot, though the sexed-up-ness of the group is still unquestionably present for me. And yes, regarding the curiously dispersedness of the bridesmaids themselves. My counterfactual-missing scene would be the one where all the bridesmaids come (as a group) to Annie’s house and drag her out of her funk; this is what would have happened in a team-movie (“Whip It”) but the bridesmaids are conspicuously NOT treated as a team. Mary McCarthy’s character comes alone, and engages with Annie in specifically individual terms (you and I can be friends) rather than Let’s-all-come-together-for-the-good-of-the-wedding/team. It would have been perfectly easy for the three secondary bridesmaids to be in that scene as a unit, yet somehow the movie resists that grouping.
Hmmm, I’m not sure I’m convinced by the lesbianism-as-(monetized)-perversion-of-real-female-friendship reading, though it’s true that this is a deeply, deeply heterosexual film; but I’m not convinced by it only because that moment of “we’re all thinking it, LESBIAN” is so thoroughly marked with Annie’s despair and loss of control (like the desperate final insult to the teenager in the jewelry store, its an escalation that fails because it signals desperation). You’re completely right about the last scene (she says she’ll fix it and doesn’t! WTF?). And there really is something to be said about how thoroughly un-queer this movie about seven leaky women turns out to be, which is doubly strange compared to the constant and omnipresent homoerotic banter of the Apatow bromance (is there any homoeroticism in this movie at all?). The more I think about it, the more glaring the absence becomes. So maybe I am convinced by it; I need to ponder some more.
just to clarify w/r/t the lesbian scene: i think it’s interesting the way that annie’s anxiety over helen replacing her in an *erotic* way is identical with her anxiety over helen replacing her by virtue of having more money (the “LESBIAN” thing being attached to the “what grown woman takes another woman to paris?”). as if they both (money and queer desire) represent the same kind of irrational excessiveness—i suggested that the movie treats this as a *perverse* excessiveness, but perhaps i’m being too critical). in any case, the manic hysteria of the scene, and of wiig’s affect, seems to contribute to this more than detract from it.
and the “we’re all thinking it” line is interesting too, for the ways in which it acknowledges (and then abjects/forswears) the fact that the bromance genre is consumed with the romanticization of the male friendship, and thus that the wo-mance must at least be “thinking it”.
i personally found the movie so incredibly disappointing and unpleasant that i can’t help but read this all rather critically, but i do think there’s at least something interesting to be mined here. (perhaps the way to do so wd be to acknowledge that to romanticize male friendship is to run counter to both narrative stereotype and ideology, whereas to sexualize female-female relationships is to run directly into the arms of heterosexual porn.)
Annie, one more thought re: the lesbian issue. It struck me that a couple of reasons lesbianism was excluded (not in the scene you mention, but elsewhere) might be A) Melissa McCarthy was being pretty aggressively offered as a heterosexual female freak who succeeds (and the usual way to signal “freak” in this kind of comedy is to make her a lesbian, so they were, in that sense, running against stereotype and ideology), and B) that the “fight club” scene between McCarthy and Wiig needed to be absolutely about aggression and fighting in a loving way without having the overtones of hetero-porn you mention. Not sure that justifies or explains, but I do think it does a certain amount of counter-intuitive work.
I wanted to jump in and agree with Annie’s (and Ted’s) characterization of the poster, which uses “the poses to signal at least as much a kind of aggressive, what-you-lookin’-at attitude as anything else,” but I’d argue that the aggression is just as weird as the sexualized reading. These women aren’t especially badass or aggressive; Melissa McCarthy has to literally beat Annie up in order to get her to fight at all.
Annie, I think I’m misunderstanding your point about the ending—are you arguing that she doesn’t fix the dress (she does, sort of, though my impression is that the scene in which that happens got cut), or that her fix is totally inadequate to the problem of the wedding costing too much? If the former, I read the deruffling and decouturing of the crazy dress as a means of the two friends recreating some of the shared space they’ve lost in the course of the wedding-planning. Stripping off some of the ruffly Helenness and reverting to the arts-and-crafts scrapbooking quality of Annie’s gift (the frames, the collage).
If the latter, yeah. It’s weird and disappointing that the insoluble problem of a too-expensive wedding gets dropped, because boy, is that a real thing.
I will say, for what it’s worth, that I actually found the last Annie/Lillian scene *more* satisfying than the Superbad version, mainly because the issues underlying male and female homoeroticism are so different. Annie and Lillian don’t need to say “I love you, man;” that’s clear from the cafe scene at the beginning of the film. It’s not uncomfortable for them to admit, so the admission just can’t do the same work. (It’s worth noting too that at least part of that ease comes not from gender differences, but from the fact that they’re adults, not hormone-addled high-schoolers.) It seems to me that Lillian’s concern, her statement that “I need to know that you’re going to be okay” is a real acknowledgment both of how close they’ve been—five minutes away, always available to each other—and how much she’s failed as the friend Annie needed to “talk things through” with after the Rhodes debacle. The mea culpas aren’t Annie’s alone.
Unlike Superbad, where the two friends set off on a final joint adventure, this is a movie about what happens when one friend starts off on an adventure and the other is stuck in the bitterness that follows an adventure that’s gone sour. (This is why her cynicism with all the customers is so right–her happy ever after with her bakery didn’t last.) That’s a significantly different psychological premise.
That moment of friends splitting on different adventures is in Superbad’s future; the Bridesmaids equivalent would have taken place when Jonah Hill goes to visit Michael Cera at college and tries to fit into his new life.
The other noteworthy difference is that, unlike the Superbad lads, Annie and Lillian have failed each other, badly. That last scene isn’t just looking forward to a future challenge to the friendship; it’s also negotiating the difficult task of healing a deeply adult failure on both sides that doesn’t have the idiocy of youth to mitigate it.
Finally, I’d say that Superbad is a buddy movie and Bridesmaids absolutely isn’t, which is why I don’t see the lack of Annie-and-Lillian screentime as a problem. It’s pretty clearly Annie’s story, not the story of Annie and Lillian or Annie and Helen. Helen is an antagonist, and a useful one, but she’s not The Antagonist, she’s not hateable the way Regina George is. She’s just One More Thing, one more symptom of Annie’s insecurity, crappy judgement and inability to function in a world where she’s failed.
Quick thought about the mom: what she brings to the movie is burden. Moving in with her isn’t pathetic because it’s infantilizing, but because it’s supremely irritating. When the mom tells Annie that she has hit rock bottom, but doesn’t even fully understand the code of AA that she is preaching, we can feel the invisible weight sinking down on Annie. It echoes how she has to smile and play along with Helen, and how their is sometimes no escape from people who don’t know how to support you.
And–to make the teenager in the mall an even better foil for Annie.
Oh DJ, did you know you were going to make my heart pitter pteatr with this post? So dreamy, girly, romantic, ahhhh, I just love it! What a doll this model is, I am crazy about the big bow in her pretty blonde hair in the photo of her on the bike. Also, the sweet picture of the couple in the middle of the heart-shaped roses is absolute perfection! I also adore the shot of her on the sweet white porch with those lovely macaroons, and the red blossom hat paired with the purple and precious blue coat are just so chic, I am in photo shoot heaven. Thank you for all the beauty!! xoxox Sweet hugs!
No, that’s not true, for it is believed that the dead are no loegnr inhabiting their bodies, but live as spirits or souls, minds, or consciousnesses. They are seen as being in the care of God, may be enfolded with love and light by our offering of prayers and the holy Mass on their behalf, and they return as spirits to visit their loved ones on November 2nd. The following information is from the University of California:Nov 1 2 Deda de los Muertos or Day of the Dead (Mexico, Central America). Traditionally, it is a day to celebrate and honor one’s ancestors. It’s based on the belief that there is interaction between the living world and the world of spirits. On the Deda de los Muertos, the almas, or the spirits of the dead, are said to come back for family reunions. Many celebrate setting up ofrendas (altars) in their homes to honor the memory of deceased loved ones and to welcome their visiting souls. Others visit their loved one’s cemetery plot and decorate it with flowers, candles and food. The holiday is celebrated with family and community gatherings, music, and feasting, and the festivity of its observance acknowledges death as an integral part or life.
Que montf3n de irresponsables hay por aqui, en otro paeds, ya hurieban sido encarcelados y sus respectivos hijos estaredan bajo custodia del estado. Una cosa es no atender al hijo en la casa y otra cosa es dejarlos encerrados dentro de un automovil, mientras usted se va a hacer ejercicio o diligencias personales.Para muchos de ustedes le podre1 sonar cf3mico, pero para mi ya hubiera llamado a mi abogado y estareda divorciandome de mi pareja, si me llego a dar cuenta de este tipo de situaciones.Y Mofthesea si a usted le suele pasar esto, no sereda mejor que contratara una nana? Antes de que le pase algo a C ya me esta asustando lo que usted escribe.
Yeah—the inadequacy of that AA analogy is so depressing, and so hilariously parental.
Now there’s the first dissenting review!:
http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/bridesmaids-am-i-doing-being-a-woman-wrong
I still wanna see this movie though.
If I might give a reading of the poster:
The poster features the female leads of the movie in cliched “sexy,” “come hither” poses, but — subversion ahoy! — they’re wearing stereotypically “ugly” bridesmaid dresses.
It’s a good point that it fails at accurately representing the characters as seen in the film, but the concept of the poster, I thought, was pretty clear-cut.
Paul Feig has said that the poster is a parody of the Ramones first record cover.
See? http://blog.kexp.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/Ramones_cover.jpg
So like the rest of the film, it is meant to be like, you know, funny. If you need further definitions of that term let me know.
That’s interesting. But did anyone get the joke without knowing that that was supposed to be the reference? Also, what is this “funny” of which you speak? Please explain.
Thanks Kelli! I know right I love the shirt! Was so much fun seeing them and gtinteg to photograph them! BTW your husband loaned me his awesome bus for a shoot and it was PERFECT!
[…] female actresses (as well as Chris O’Dowd from The IT Crowd). I’d recommend reading Aaron Bady, Millicent and Carla Fan‘s critical comments on the movie, because I want to get into the […]
[…] with female screenwriters and a diverse cast of talented female actresses. I’d recommend reading Aaron Bady, Millicent and Carla Fan’s critical comments on the movie, because I want to get into the […]
I loved Bridesmaids, and I’m glad that I never actually watched any promotional teasers for it. The poster makes little sense, in regards to the actual tone of the film, as you’ve suggested. I could see the poster as an ironic portrayal of the women in roles that would traditionally be found in a male comedy. You do often see similar promotional materials starring men also lined up in mug-shot style.
I was too traumatized by the fact that Judd Apatow was producing a female-oriented comedy, to even consider the film. It took me weeks and careful poring over reviews to finally watch the movie. Thankfully, Bridesmaids was blessedly free of the usual Apatow female trope.
I’m posting a series of questions on gender in Bridesmaids later this morning. Would love to hear what you have to say!
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[…] female screenwriters and a diverse cast of talented female actresses. I’d recommend reading Aaron Bady, Millicent and Carla Fan’s critical comments on the movie, because I want to get into the […]
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Roberto CocozzaQue montf3n de irresponsables hay por aqui, en otro paeds, ya hiraebun sido encarcelados y sus respectivos hijos estaredan bajo custodia del estado. Una cosa es no atender al hijo en la casa y otra cosa es dejarlos encerrados dentro de un automovil, mientras usted se va a hacer ejercicio o diligencias personales.Para muchos de ustedes le podre1 sonar cf3mico, pero para mi ya hubiera llamado a mi abogado y estareda divorciandome de mi pareja, si me llego a dar cuenta de este tipo de situaciones.Y Mofthesea si a usted le suele pasar esto, no sereda mejor que contratara una nana? Antes de que le pase algo a C ya me esta asustando lo que usted escribe.
[…] female screenwriters and a diverse cast of talented female actresses. I’d recommend reading Aaron Bady, Millicent and Carla Fan‘s critical comments on the movie, because I want to get into the […]
[…] female screenwriters and a diverse cast of talented female actresses. I’d recommend reading Aaron Bady, Millicent and Carla Fan‘s critical comments on the movie, because I want to get into the […]