Contents
Introduction
Perhaps, many, seeing the title of the article, would say: “Some vulgar, silly comedies. Why write about it? “. Indeed, these films definitely can not teach good. But the fact is that many people watch them to relax, not to strain the brain, considering such creations to be pure entertainment without any goals and meanings. We will try to show that this is not so.
On the example of two seemingly innocuous comedies, you can see some unpleasant things: mocking of culture, intelligence, education. Along with this there is propaganda of vulgarity, rudeness, idle way of life, stupidity. These “values” are being promoted to the masses through very specific methods of propaganda. Thus, in the films described below, they are attached to success and presented as an integral part of it.
Naturally, since the considering films refers to comedy genre, the humor built around certain semantic constructions can also be regarded as one of the ways to create a positive attitude toward the promoting phenomena. Below we will try to show all the highlight of such films in terms of stereotypes and patterns, tied to the image of a successful, held, and simply an adult man.
«Why Him?» (2016, USA)
Plot
Stephanie has a boyfriend for a long time, but for some reason her parents will not know about this until a year later. Why was she so afraid to talk about him for so long? The fact is that her boyfriend is a rather eccentric young man, and he is clearly not the appropriate for her intelligent parents. Besides, Stephanie decides to change her life abruptly after meeting with Laird: she throws a college, moves to him and preparing to become president of his charitable foundation.
Laird and Stephanie invite her parents for first meeting. Each of them has his own hopes and plans for this meeting: Stephanie wants to introduce her parents to her chosen one, Laird wants to receive her father’s blessing for marriage.
Laird (Lay)
How do you imagine a person who has a huge house with panoramic windows, a swimming pool, a personal chef, a large private garden, etc.? Probably, this is a serious, wealthy, very active, intelligent, competent businessman? Alas, it is not necessary.
Meet Laird! Laird is an application developer for various platforms: AppStore and Google PlayMarket. More precisely, he develops not applications, but games. Actually, he is so rich thanks to this activity. In fact, he has no education, although he has been working as a programmer since adolescence. He does not know his father and as it appears, hates his mother, once calling her a bitch.
From the first minutes of meeting with Laird, there is a feeling of shortage of upbringing. He easily allows himself to express some nastiness and vulgarity at the parents of his girlfriend, whom he sees for the first time in his life. Just imagine that the groom of your daughter tells you at the dinner table the intimate details of life with her! Probably, others are used to tolerating his antics because he is so rich. But from the very beginning it is not clear why such intelligent and educated parents of Stephanie suffer all this?
Why such a “free” young man, devoid of any complexes, need the blessing of her father before he ask the daughter’s hands? Most likely, this is another method to make such an “eccentric” (vulgar) person also decent.
However, it is hard to believe that a guy for whom life is an eternal holiday, and his thoughts constantly flock to the field of male dignity, can be decent. It is hard to find such examples in life.
Ned Fleming
Ned Fleming, father of Stephanie, is the head of his own firm, which is engaged in publishing business. He is quite a serious and responsible person. However, his company does not have the best of times. The fact is that the Internet and electronic media are slowly pushing out the printed publishing house. From year to year, this market inevitably becomes smaller. Ned Fleming’s firm is on the verge of bankruptcy.
And for some reason, all these failures of Ned happens because he is not in step with times. At the same time, under the outdated views of Ned, his morals are implied: he does not swear with abusive words, does not make tattoos, and does not allow himself vulgarity. That is the reason for his fall. He, like a fossil from the past, inevitably lagged behind life.
An interesting point is that Ned is the only one who up to the last resists the corrupting influence of Lay. His son and his wife quickly moved to the side of crazy programmer, not to mention his daughter. Eventually, members of his family begun to look at him as a complete hypocrite, who urgently needs to change his views on the norms of behavior, communication and doing things.
The character of the father is important, as others will be persuading him that Ley with his antics is a normal guy, and behind all this outward vulgarity, a good young man and a boyfriend for Ned’s daughter is hiding.
However, the most important character in this story is Scotty Fleming – the son of Ned – because he acts as a conductor of meanings for the youth.
Scotty Fleming
Scotty, being deprived of the “prejudices” of his father, after seeing how Leird lives, immediately succumbs to the influence of a millionaire programmer. From an exemplary, educated, well-read boy, he gradually turns into a parody of Lay. He starts untidy dressing, uses profanity and wastes his time on entertainment. It seems that he does everything right. He wants to be rich, wants to have the same huge house, the same heap of money. It means, he should do the same as Laird.
Thus, very clear guidelines are goes in the young heads: you do not have to bother, study, read books, you just have to be crazy, do unusual things, swear at mate, think more about sex, decorate your body with tattoos, and then you will be noticeable, you will stand out from the crowd, and this is already the beginning of the road to success. At least, such things are definitely not a hindrance.
But all of this is a definite hindrance. You need to work hard to achieve something. If you read the biographies of famous millionaires, especially from IT-sphere, it’s unlikely that you’ll find anything like “I learned badly at school, because I did not like it… I went out with friends to clubs, I spent time at parties, drinking alcohol, tobacco, etc., and then I was lit. I took a loan from the bank, opened my own business and in a couple of years turned into a multimillionaire”.
No, such stories are only in the movies.
What is the result of the transformation of Scotty? As you would expect, these metamorphoses have the most positive effect on his life. His own father begins to take him seriously. Until now, he did not even want to listen to his son’s proposals for business, but at some point Ned Fleming himself instructs Scott to negotiate in company, because he realized that his son understands the questions better than he does. Thus, in the eyes of the father, Scott becomes more adult, and Ned surrenders in his attempts to teach others, especially his son, as in the example of Ley it is demonstrated that the moral principles and foundations of Ned do not work.
The message of the film: Guys, be vulgar, ill-bred, drop out of school – be successful.
Barb Fleming
Ned’s wife, Barb Fleming, is also very quickly influenced by Lay. She was tired of boring everyday life. She wants romance, passion. These desires are warmed by the youth environment in which she found herself. Alcohol, girls, parties do their job, and gradually “poor” Ned’s wife begins to understand all the inferiority of her situation.
Of course, Barb envies her daughter, who leads a carefree and fun life. Therefore, she is easily ready to say goodbye to these hypocritical principles, which only complicate everything, and she start to be “breaking bad.” In this way, she does not see anything bad in Laird’s antics, considering him a worthy suitor for her daughter.
Stephanie Fleming
There is only one question about this character: “How?” How could such a girl find such a vulgar and ill-bred guy? They seem to be from different planets. What could attract her in a guy whose wealth of the inner world is described by three obscene words? It is unlikely that such a girl in general will be interested in such a guy.
Hence one answer – money. If Laird were poor, with all his behavior, he would never have been able to win Stephanie’s heart. She noticed him only because of the enormous wealth.
There is also a certain message, but for the female part of the youth. Eventually, what’s the difference, how is he dressed, how he talks, how he behaves in society and with parents? The main thing is that he has a lot of money, and he knows how to earn them, and the rest is only prejudices and conventions.
The party
Once, Laird arranges a party, where the whole contingent of the American IT industry gathers. Sufficiently young people already own entire companies and manage big money. And what morals do you think they have? Maybe someone of them reads Shakespeare or listens to Mozart? No, the guys joking, express and release obscene taunts, just like Laird himself. In other words, he does not stand out in this society; he does not look like a black sheep. On the contrary, he completely corresponds to it.
Wait! Did I mistake in the door? Is this exactly the American IT-establishment? It is more like a party in a garbage place of some troubled area. Unfortunately, I was not mistaken.
However, such an idea of the elite, of course, does not correspond to reality. And adults who have sufficient life experience understand this, but for a teenager such an image may well serve as a guide to action. Learn to rest, do not bother, forget all these norms of morality, be whoever you want, do what you want and you will become as successful as these guys.
The film “The Internship” (2013, USA)
“The Internship” is another typical American comedy, a film with similar semantic messages. The picture tells how two friends, having lost their jobs, decide to try their hand at the IT industry. They do not know what C ++ is, they don’t know about flash-animation, scripts, they do not fit age to all such work, but the characters have enough life experience.
And it turns out that this experience is really priceless to work in Google, because there are mostly young people who know several programming languages and can easily sketch out the application in a couple of hours, but they do not know anything about life, sales, presentation of their product, organization of their leisure.
Two friends begin to pass their life experiences to the younger generation. One of the mandatory items is the so-called “introducing to adult life.” They lead young people from their team to a nightclub where they teach young people to drink alcohol and behave properly with bad girls.
Naturally, according to the screenplay, such leisure should go to “benefit” for young people. As a result of such a stormy night, guys come up with an application for testing the state of alcohol intoxication. Before that, they did not have any worthy idea at all. Their application is becoming one of the most popular start-ups in the company.
Thus, once again it is demonstrated that excessive seriousness does not give good results, and an idle way of life can bring its positive results.
Naturally, such plots hardly contribute to the desire to learn. They rather setting up to completely different way. Don’t be too demanding of yourself, sometimes you just need to relax. Perhaps, this is a good method of mental unloading, but only if this unloading does not end in a nightclub with a bottle of alcohol in hand. The consequences of such a mental unloading can become even greater apathy, a reluctance to do anything in life. Not to mention the undermined health and prospects to end your life in a drunken intoxication.
Besides, the positioning of such leisure as an indispensable attribute of adulthood can also have a negative impact. In the fragile minds of the younger generation, who, like the characters in the picture, do not have sufficient life experience yet, a certain pattern of behavior is laid: if this is an adult, then he should have fun and spend his free time like this.