Bear Faced Cheek

I went to see Ted at the weekend. As a long term fan of Family Guy I was expecting great things, and I have to say, it didn't disappoint. A very, very funny film. But there was something about it - I couldn't have told you exactly what it was at the time, but it left me feeling...annoyed. Maybe that's not the right word, but I definitely came away with a rather sour taste in my mouth.


It wasn't until yesterday that I realised what the problem was. I was thinking about the great performances that everyone gave, and I thought "Mila Kunis did really well considering the role she was given." The role she was given. And that's when it hit me; I've seen this film before. Over and over again. Peter Pan bloke doesn't want to grow up, spends time having fun with/getting stoned with his buddies, when in marches the wicked witch, his girlfriend/wife, and stomps all over his fun in her stilettos by trying to make him grow up and give up said buddies who are clearly such a bad influence on him. Cue scenes of intense hilarity, before a compromise is invariably reached; Peter Pan reluctantly hands over his bong (boo! hiss!) and the girlfriend/wife realises that she was being unreasonable (at last!) and that in fact she should realise how lucky she is to have her charming irresponsible loser rather than some boring stuffed shirt who could pay the bills and eventually support children. (yay!) Some sympathy is doled out to the girlfriend/wife in the form of a few weakly comic lines (awwww! she did a funny!) and she is invariably a complete stunner à la Mila Kunis or Katherine Heigl. If she were a decent size fourteen with a spot on her chin I imagine the audience response would be even less favourable.





Seth Macfarlane, comedy genius though he may be, has essentially just jumped aboard Judd Apatow's misogynist train. Ok, the best friend in this case is a talking Teddy Bear which is good for a few laughs, but substitute him for a glassy-eyed Seth Rogen and you would find the whole premise of the film wearily familiar. It seems there is nothing men love more than seeing themselves as fun-loving, whimsical individuals, who through love and respect for their demanding womenfolk, allow themselves to have all their spontaneity and creativity crushed out of them as they knuckle down to the daily, joyless grind that is the reality of life as a couple.
And when the defeated boyfriend finally does accept his lot and start taking responsibility for his life, it is never because he has finally realised that he is 35 and that is what normal adults do, it is because he doesn't want to lose the girl.

Hilarious.

I think Mr Apatow, Mr Macfarlane et al should grow up and take some responsibility as well. Responsibility for the relatively recent phenomenon of our society that is the Man Child. The Man Child simply refuses to grow up. Oh he likes the benefits that being a grown-up brings; being able to buy alcohol and cigarettes, being able to watch porn, have sex and drive cars, but he has no intention of doing any of the other things grown-ups do because it's boring. If he has a job it is merely to finance his fun; a salary to him is pocket money, A savings account is unheard of. He will move house rather than pay council tax and throw clothes away rather than wash them. He is proud that he doesn't know how to work an iron, and he lives on Chinese takeaway. He has not been to the dentist since his mother last took him when he was twelve and he turns his underpants inside out so that he can wear them again. He plays video games until two o clock in the morning, but doesn't have time to mend a door handle. He doesn't vote, not because he doesn't care about politics, but because he has never bothered to register. His credit rating is in tatters, and yet when he is refused a loan he is outraged, and blames the fascist system. The Man Child is in his twenties, thirties, forties or fifties, yet still thinks he has plenty of time left to grow up and settle down.


The Man Child can be found everywhere, in every strata of society, and on screen he is celebrated, fêted, held up as a shining example of the strength of the human spirit. And woe betide the poor woman who dares to try to change him. She may be standing there wearing Prada, all dewy eyed and wobbly lipped, but in his mind's eye every Man Child sees a massive be-aproned woman called Doris, with arms like tree trunks and a wart with hair in, gimlet eyed, slowly, menacingly thumping her red, meaty palm with a hefty rolling pin.





Of course Judd and Seth didn't create this cliché. It's been around for years, in cartoons and film. Think of any of the Carry-On films, or the cringing Howard in The Last of the Summer Wine. What they are doing is excusing it. The awful thing is, I love their films. Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and now Ted. And I have caught myself recently, when I have been making a perfectly reasonable request for the eleventh time to my other half, suddenly thinking "My God, I'm a Nag." I am clearly becoming indoctrinated. It is unacceptable.

We women don't help ourselves, of course. We spoil our sons and make excuses for our boyfriends. We hoover under them and wipe up after them. We remember their mother's birthdays and sign the card on their behalf. And we like nothing better than meeting up with our girlfriends for a good session of 'my man's more useless than yours." All of which helps to perpetuate the endless stereotype.

You may not believe it, having just read this rant, but I'm not a feminist. I think that women have their faults just as much as men, and I think that, despite their faults, men are great. My boyfriend is the best thing to ever have happened to me. BUT it really gets my goat when I see women being portrayed as the villain of the piece simply for being sensible and responsible, and I, for one, refuse to Grin and Bear It.

Fevered Pitch

Unseemly literary rioting going on today, as the good folk at Penguin have gone out on a limb and announced that Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby, is shortly to be added to their list of Modern Classics.

“Prithee sir, tell me it cannot be!” shout the reactionaries, casting themselves gracefully onto their chaises-longue and raising silk hankies with trembling hands to mop their brows. And yet it is so.

They have many arguments against this inclusion, specifically regarding the rather nebulous definition of the word classic. "Classics don't just cross time, they cross frontiers … Fever Pitch is a very good novel…but are they reading it in Paris, Berlin, Moscow?" asks John Sutherland, professor of English literature at UCL. Well probably, yes. Fever pitch has been published in 26 languages, and I can’t imagine the publishers wasting their money doing this if no-one were reading it. It has sold millions of copies, and been made into an internationally acclaimed feature film.

Boo sucks Mr Sutherland.

Their next quibble, which at first glance seems to be quite valid, is that a book which was published only twenty years ago cannot, by its very nature, be a classic. This theory was beautifully expressed by Dr Patrick Hayes, fellow and tutor at St John’s college, Oxford. "Whether something is a classic gets judged over an awfully long time, by readers who return to the work again and again and repeatedly discover in that work something compelling or powerful."  

Personally I think my mother might take issue with this theory. She is an avid reader of many genres, including the “classics”, yet I have never, ever known her to re-open a book once she has finished with it. Over! Done! Whether she enjoyed it or not, off to the charity shop it goes. She hasn’t got a photographic memory, far from it; often she will have trouble remembering whether she has read a certain book at all. She simply has no desire to re-read a book when there are so many others out there waiting to be discovered. So, does this mean a classic is a book read many times by a certain type of person?

Regarding the actual date of publication I can see his point; is it fair to include such a recent book in a list, even of Modern Classics, which includes 1984 and Ulysses? But wait, what’s this? The Scent of Dried Roses, by Tim Lott, was published in 1996, and yet it has been on the Penguin Modern Classics list for years. Did we hear any outcry at the time? We did not. Suddenly that neatly crafted little argument begins to sound rather specious.

Could it be that a novel dealing with family trauma, depression and suicide in post-war Britain is deemed worthy to be named a classic, but a novel about – heavens preserve us – football – is not?

Do you know, I think that might just be it. When one considers the people doing most of the squealing, one can understand that this might just not be their sort of book. Far be it from me to generalise, but English professors and fellows are not conspicuous in the stands at matches, pie in one hand, pint in the other, team colours flying with gay abandon.

                                                                      

The popularity of Fever Pitch and the inclusion of football in the Olympics may lead you to believe that football is now classless. Not a bit of it. In the eighties the Times summed it up as “a slum sport for slum people”, and despite appearances, attitudes have not entirely changed. Pretty it up how you will, football is never going to join rowing, cricket and rugby on the “must do on a Saturday” list of the upper middles. Watching David Cameron’s awkward Chelsea victory celebratory “dance” was up there with listening to Gordon Brown eulogising about the Arctic Monkeys for sheer YEURCH factor. Fakery and fabrication.

One has to wonder; if this had been a novel about show-jumping – think Salman Rushdie meets Jilly Cooper – would there have been the same level of outrage?

Fever Pitch was about much more than football. It was about the preoccupations and lives of a certain type of man at that time, it was about the ethos of a generation. The culture of a country is not merely shaped by art, literature and music as some would have us believe. It is made up of many, many things: food, jobs, consumer durables, industries, leisure pursuits. When you study the finds from an archaeological dig and try to learn the culture behind them, what is it you’re looking at? Pots, hair accessories, oyster shells. Trivialities, you may say. But they speak volumes.

In these days of the coalition governance, much is being made of snobbery and elitism. But it does not always have to refer to lineage or wealth. In my experience, nothing exceeds the dismissive arrogance of the over-educated cultural “elite”, and I truly admire Penguin for sticking to their guns on this one.

Like it or not, football is a huge part of our cultural heritage, and, I suspect, our future. Football, or a version of, has been played for hundreds of years and it doesn’t look to be losing its popularity anytime soon. Penguin Modern Classics:1 – Mr Lott and Mr Hayes – 0.