ILX, coach me up: the "White Straight Guy Who Sucks" Narrative and corresponding lack of "... Who Sucks" in anything other than indie snooze

collectively, the multiracial/ethnic/gender Bad News Bears

(well, Tatum O'Neal is an ace pitcher throughout, so not her)

(but her complicated girl/surrogate dad relationship w/ Matthau is not resolved til Act 3)

Adventures in Babysitting is a great pick.

It's probably always a good thing to investigate whether certain narrative tropes tend to favor straight white dudes.

― Night Jorts (Old Lunch), Tuesday, July 12, 2016 11:29 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it is NOT a revelation that things favor straight white dudes, unfortunately
but why not use that as a given to EXPLORE other things NOT about them
rather than insist other people prove things NOT about str8 white dudes exist

we can all explore new things i believe in us

there are so many great things by and about lgbt, poc, non-male-identified, etc, people!!

and expecting them to fit a shitty archetype where 'lol oops wrong place at the wrong time accidentally saved the day' is...insane? like that is a really dumb plot archetype
and if it only exists w/cis white het men that is probably because they are the only people privilieged enough for that dumbshit magic to happen to

so...
why look for it?

Abbott is the unlikley hero of this thread

i just showed up...thanks for the crown

Brown / LGBT / Girl Who Sucks stories?

I thought the answer was going to be Wanda Sykes, but then I realized that wasn't a movie.

It's probably always a good thing to investigate whether certain narrative tropes tend to favor straight white dudes.

― Night Jorts (Old Lunch), Tuesday, July 12, 2016 11:29 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it is NOT a revelation that things favor straight white dudes, unfortunately
but why not use that as a given to EXPLORE other things NOT about them
rather than insist other people prove things NOT about str8 white dudes exist

we can all explore new things i believe in us

― the lava-staring club (Abbott), Tuesday, July 12, 2016 10:46 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think we might be saying similar things in different ways. It's pretty unquestionable that straight white dude tropes dominate the narrative landscape. It's examinations like this and largely unsuccessful attempts to jam round non-SWD character pegs into square SWD narrative holes that underscore, for me, how many other underexplored kinds of stories there are outside of the standard SWD dude experience.

and expecting them to fit a shitty archetype where 'lol oops wrong place at the wrong time accidentally saved the day' is...insane? like that is a really dumb plot archetype
and if it only exists w/cis white het men that is probably because they are the only people privilieged enough for that dumbshit magic to happen to

Totally agree with this! IMO movies like Inside Out or Clueless are generally better and more interesting than the "loser miraculously rises to the occasion" stories, because most people aren't completely ineffectual losers, so it's easier to relate to stories where are a fairly competent person has to overcome a problem caused by some personal flaw in her, or by outside forces pigeonholing her, rather than ones where some utter slacker magically saves the day, so that even the laziest of straight white guys would feel they don't need to better themselves in any way.

most people aren't completely ineffectual losers

Speak for yourself, Tuomas.

(Seriously the bit about how "utter slacker magically saves the day") is lazy straight white guy fantasy-fulfillment pr0n.

The relevant xkcd is http://xkcd.com/693/ ; you're welcome.

Yeah, Narnia seems a bit of a template for these.

Maybe I'm just trying to steer us this way, but I sort of thought we had veered away from protagonists who entirely suck (or are "utter slackers"), which is kinda more a thing in comedy things that make fun of their heroes anyway (Bill & Ted, e.g.)... and towards people who are in some way special and don't luck into their success, but do start the story at kind of a low point, unappreciated, put-upon, just got fired, whatever. But at this point I should probably bow out of the thread since the subject matter is so elusive anyway.

Abbott's list is good; Kristen Wiig's character in Bridesmaids, also. she doesn't suck at everything, but she experiences a spectacular confluence of failures/missteps over the course of the movie.

yeah the Narnia suggestion reminds me that this archetype is unsurprisingly Biblical (often fleshed out in the Middle Ages): several of the apostles, Mary, Joseph, Mary Magdalene, Jacob, and so on.

people who are in some way special and don't luck into their success, but do start the story at kind of a low point, unappreciated, put-upon, just got fired, whatever

Worthy point. Pursuit of Happyness protagonist is more like this than "utter loser who suddenly achieves miraculous levels of competence."

adventures in babysitting has really fucked up 80s reaganite crypto-racist politics. i can feel what a drag i'm being because i loved it as a kid--vincent d'onofrio!--but i can't help it. it's true. i think i wrote a post about it like 11 years ago on this here ilx.

"(Seriously the bit about how "utter slacker magically saves the day") is lazy straight white guy fantasy-fulfillment pr0n."

the adam sandler formula is deathless. and it is mostly men who get to play the part. though with t.v. now you get to see women play the part. on all the awful people sitcoms. the daughters of AbFab.

Citizen Ruth?

― pleas to Nietzsche (WilliamC), Monday, July 11, 2016 10:31 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a good one but obv prob not to show to a young daughter.

also 'young adult', charlize still def sucks at the end but there is a realization/maturation and its valid/important imo

this is not exactly the same thing, but I realized a couple of years ago that the movie Adventures in Babysitting is a huge apologia for Reaganite politics. There are a bunch of different ways this manifests itself (including "scary" black people on the El and the fact that Elizabeth Shue=good guy because she's a virgin), but the scene that most fully drives it home is when the Elizabeth Shue character is on the phone with her friend, whose rescue is the whole impetus of the film. The friend is at a bus station which is portrayed as the deepest level of hell. The friend has commandeered a phone booth which is usually occupied by a homeless man. While friend is on the phone with ES, homeless man returns and knocks on the door of the phone booth, imploring, "that's my home!" ES's friend, with whom we're meant to sympathize, kicks the homeless man's personal effects out of the booth (I remember slippers) and shouts, "you just moved!" I used to love this movie, but it is some chilling shit to rewatch.
― horsehoe (horseshoe), Sunday, February 12, 2006 4:42 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol "chilling" i was such a drama queen in 2006

wait, does molly shannon win at the end of Superstar? i forget. i think she wins. i don't know if she saves the day. i guess comedy is different though.

but if mr. smith goes to washington is an example, there must be movies where women use their wits to save the farm. but someone already discounted legally blonde. which is the updated version. was mr. smith really a fuckup and a loser before he passed a bill? i thought he was just a greenhorn who didn't know how to play the game.

Hah Places In The Heart is totally a version of this.

Miss Firecracker is one of my favorite movies about a loser who doesn't win at the end. but who ends up feeling okay anyway. HollyHunter4ever

Re: Adventures in Babysitting: I only remember the bit where she "sings" the "blues" assisted by appropriately sympathetic black musicians, to appropriately wild acclaim. Which totally happens all the time, in the clubs. You know, those blues clubs that I totally go to. All the time.

xp Or Woody Allen. And then he was able to create again!

this is not exactly the same thing, but I realized a couple of years ago that the movie Adventures in Babysitting is a huge apologia for Reaganite politics. There are a bunch of different ways this manifests itself (including "scary" black people on the El and the fact that Elizabeth Shue=good guy because she's a virgin), but the scene that most fully drives it home is when the Elizabeth Shue character is on the phone with her friend, whose rescue is the whole impetus of the film. The friend is at a bus station which is portrayed as the deepest level of hell. The friend has commandeered a phone booth which is usually occupied by a homeless man. While friend is on the phone with ES, homeless man returns and knocks on the door of the phone booth, imploring, "that's my home!" ES's friend, with whom we're meant to sympathize, kicks the homeless man's personal effects out of the booth (I remember slippers) and shouts, "you just moved!" I used to love this movie, but it is some chilling shit to rewatch.
― horsehoe (horseshoe), Sunday, February 12, 2006 4:42 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol "chilling" i was such a drama queen in 2006

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 9:35 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha amazing. I like your close reading, but I also think this was just kind of an 80s movie trope about NYC.

er, about cities, rather. I think it was Chicago.

it was chicago. you're probably right that it was all of those movies, but it feels particularly brazen in Adventures in Babysitting. particularly cold in its calculations about whose safety and well-being viewers are supposed to care about? i don't know. this is really not what this thread's about. good to discover i have had no new thoughts in 10 years.

"Fish out of water" is a hallowed comedy trope. In 80s movies it (at least sometimes) cut both ways, with the uptight whiteys being redemptively loosened by their surprise interactions with more-diverse influences. Cf. Beverly Hills Cop etc.

if i were going to write a book of cultural criticism about the 80s and reagan's cultural legacy and white flight and representations of blackness and the city, i would devote at least half a chapter to adventures in babysitting

i'd read it

Yeah. Maybe the whole trope is sort of conservative -- barbarians (homeless/"crazy people"/knife-wielding thugs) breaching the gates of the city and such.

i guess i should watch AiB!

i thought he was just a greenhorn who didn't know how to play the game.

This is certainly the contemporary inside-politics def of "loser" -- even a non-neophyte like Bill deBlasio gets tarred with a version of it.

Dr. Morbs, I wish you would! I think it's sort of valuable in its crystal-clear articulation of a really fucked-up ideology. like hitchcock films are for laura mulvey's feminist criticism.

(i understand that hitchock films are better than adventures in babysitting.)

However no Hitchcock film included a cameo from Albert Collins, so therefore your argument is invalid.

prob not Topaz

omg that scene! so cringey. maybe another half-chapter about white people singing the blues in 80s movies. or maybe that's the same half-chapter.

yeah you could definitely get a lot of mileage out of "soul" in 80s movies

"Soul Man" is a chapter in itself.

weird science has a scene like that too
why am i still following this thread

there's one "good" black dude in the scene with the knife-wielding black people on the El. if i remember correctly, he sacrifices his own personal safety to save Shue and the kids she's babysitting.

"Blues Brothers" obv

i promise i will stop posting about this soon, but there's a kind of bipolar philo/phobic interaction with blackness and black culture even within AiB. (i've actually never seen Blues Brothers; maybe its politics are different)

i mean i guess it's philo toward black culture and phobic towards actual black people unless they value white lives over their own.

that makes it seem a lot older than the 80s...

ugh, i'd forgotten all that stuff about Adventures in Babysitting - but horseshoe otm, it is all cringe-inducing.

I feel like this could be its own thread but I don't know exactly how to define the parameters

Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead seems like an (I think?) less problematic film that fits this thread's premise. She is basically the equivalent of the SWD slacker loser who "finds inner strength" when thrust into a situation.

Even White Suburbanites Sing The Blues: Reaganite audience-identification in the "Adventures In Babysitting" narrative and corresponding lack of "a thread about this" in anything other than probably some old threads we can't find now