Guilty Pleasures

[osprey_archer]

One of my very favorite Russian movies is a Soviet comedy called Kidnapping Caucasian Style (Caucasian here meaning “people from the Caucasus,” not white people). It’s funny; it’s sweetly romantic, but not at all like a romance novel; it has an excellent heroine.

It’s a comedy about bride-kidnapping, though, which does give me pause. It’s a comedy about how backward and awful bride-kidnapping is, so somewhat less skeevy, but still…

But then I was thinking (as I am wont to do) about one of my other favorite comedies, Tropic Thunder, which is a movie about how freaking hilarious landmines and torture and heroin addiction are.

They’re actually about as funny as bride-kidnapping, which is to say not at all. But until I thought about the two movies in conjunction, it never occurred to me that “Ha ha isn’t waterboarding FUNNY?” was quite as questionable as Robert Downey Jr. in blackface.

And, for me at least – this is because it’s Ben Stiller being waterboarded, and Ben Stiller is a guy, and men in pain can be hilarious if presented in a correctly comedic manner. But women in pain never are, because it’s impossible to present violence against women in an amusing manner, because…I’m not sure why. Because women get beaten up so much in real life, whereas men never do? (I’m being sarcastic.) Or if men do get beaten up they deserve it, because if they didn’t they totally would have manned up and beaten down their attacker?

I think this is a cultural standard, not purely my own. I remember the same reaction when the Hostel movies came out. Reviewers thought the first one was in rather poor taste, but eh, since when has anyone cared about that? – but the second one made them distinctly queasy.

This may be the first time I've stumbled across a double standard that works in my favor. It’s kind of unpleasant; not least because I can’t quite shake the feeling that women deserve it.

Comments

[melonbutterfly.livejournal.com]

Actually, I can never laugh about stuff like that. I couldn't laugh about that scene in Scary Movie 3 where that priest is supposed to babysit the boy and brings wine and lits torches and stuff either. All these shows that show homemade videos of people who fall in hilarious way don't entertain me in the least. I can't stand Jerry Springer.
Things like that make me uncomfortable or, at worst, queasy.
Honestly, it worries me that people can laugh about stuff like that. I imagine that in the dark ages, it were those people that would attend an execution and act like it's a party. It were those people that enjoyed watching the shows where slaves tore each other apart in hopes of survival in the colosseum in Rome.
It's ugly. It's scary.
But it's also normal, I suppose. If it's made up in comedy, people don't even have a chance--I'm not sure if there can be tasteful comedy with context like that, but comedy isn't to be tasteful.

I'm not saying this to offend you. I mean, you can laugh about stuff like that, that's okay. It's made to be laughed about, and honestly, laughing can be a healthy method to get over the terror of something. There are some things the human mind can only bear if it ridicules them.
I think as a victim, it's great if you can one day laugh about stuff like that and not get terrible flashbacks.
As a not-victim, it's... sometimes questionable. Because many, many people, I'm sure, don't spend a second thinking about how terrifying water-boarding actually is (reading the definition, I got honestly scared for a moment), they just laugh.
You are, obviously, not one of these people.
It's okay to laugh about something, as long as you are aware that in reality it's not laughing matter, but that's exactly why you sometimes need to laugh about it. (Just like you should laugh about Hitler, or racistic jokes--I enjoy these, and I'm not racistic at all.) I bet you aren't insensitive or sadistic either, and yet you can laugh. Taking it easy is good, if you don't loose your awareness.


Sorry for the long comment xD;
I only wanted to explain why I can't tell why you feel men being tortured (in movies) is funnier than women. Maybe it's because you can relate better to women, or because men in pain sometimes just are ridiculous, probably because most of the time they try so hard to be tough and manly and not show their feelings, while woman have no problem showing them.
Or maybe it's just that most women are too good actors in that aspect and don't manage to pull off pain/torture/whatever in a funny way.

God, all this sounds so horrible xD;;

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oh, ugh, "amusing" videos of people falling down. Those are just too real; they always make me wince and want to cry for my generation and its lack of empathy.

Humor is a touchy subject. I've seen people in other contexts pontificate about how it's never okay to laugh at racist jokes, or misogynistic or violent or - you get the picture. And on one hand I can see the point, because none of those things are funny; but I also think that if you can't laugh at something, you can't really talk about it fruitfully, because it's too big and epic and serious.