Guilty Pleasures
Jul. 28th, 2009 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerOne 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.
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.
