Trigger warning for abuse and rape.
Waaaaaay to welcome me back from the con, assholes.
[Transcript: Suck suck suck horror suck horror suck suck oh God is there a single JOKE in this trailer strippers drunkenness abusive parenting suck horror suck. Title card: Adam Sandler's That's My Boy.]
Adam Sandler has perpetrated his latest abomination unto cinema. Inexplicably, the fabulous– and actually funny– Andy Samburg is present. How terrible is his agent? Starring in Keeping Up With The Kardashians would preserve his dignity more. I mean, I approve of his shirtlessness, but couldn’t he be shirtless in a better movie?
Fortunately, terrible movies and the burning question of why Adam Sandler still has a career are not social justice issues. What is is that the movie is under the impression that neglect is not child abuse but, in fact, a hilarious series of events the only problem with which is that Andy Samburg is way too uptight. Seriously, feeding your kid cake and lollipops for breakfast every day? Getting your eight-year-old to drive you home because you were too drunk? Allowing a third-grader to get a New Kids On The Block backpiece (is that even legal?)? NOT HUMOROUS. CHILD ABUSE. And, yes, that would probably happen if an ordinary thirteen-year-old had to raise a kid on his own… but that’s why we don’t let thirteen-year-olds be the primary caregivers of children! This is not complicated.
Speaking of NOT HUMOROUS, consider the premise of the movie– another example of the erasure of rape of men. Donny had a crush on his teacher, who has sex with him. At this point, Donny is twelve years old. Look, I know that the age of consent is a bright red line drawn through a whole lot of grey area, but “don’t have sex with twelve-year-olds” is not gray area. Twelve-year-olds are not capable of giving meaningful consent to their adult teachers. It is rape.
The movie, however, doesn’t seem to view Donny as a rape survivor, even when the judge puts the teacher in prison. Instead, the entire incident is just Donny being a stud, an awesomely masculine bad boy: he gets high-fives from his friends for impregnating his teacher, and the trailer calls it a crush that went too far. Can you imagine a movie treating the rape of a (privileged*) twelve-year-old girl– even if she ‘consented’– as proof of how beautiful and feminine she was? Or calling it a “crush that went too far” (except, I guess, as a horrific contrast between her innocence and the predator’s evil)?
Call me a no-fun humorless feminist, but I think some things shouldn’t be a topic for jokes in Adam Sandler movies. The idea that men always consent to sex– even children– has been used to defend actual rapists and to blame actual rape survivors. To perpetrate that in the service of a shitty movie– dude, that is not funny.
*Poor girls and girls of color are often over-sexualized and treated as “sluts” who “knew what they were getting into.” Fuck rape culture, seriously.
About ozyfrantz
Remember Click and how tear-jerking the father bits in there were? Remember how adorable Fifty First Dates and The Wedding Singer were? What the hell happened to you, Sandler?
And I can’t even begin to rage at the rape thing. Thanks for doing it for me, Ozy.
I’ve come to the conclusion that for every 10 terrible fucking movies Adam Sandler does, he makes one that is fantas.. erm.. great… okay, not eye-gougingly bad.
Agreed.
I saw this movie in theaters the other day (I think because I secretly hate myself) and the whole thing isn’t at all better than the trailer portrays it.
That courtroom scene essentially paints the judge as a sort of curmudgeonly old killjoy while everyone else in the courtroom is appalled that this is for some reason against the law. The movie tries to redeem itself near the end by explaining that Adam Sandler is really truly “in love” with his teacher. Tries and fails miserably beyond words, but, err… D- for effort?
Lets see… Other gems [spoilers]: The kid getting diabetes as a kid due to malnutrition is played of as a joke, one of the “friends” at the bachelor party hasn’t had sex with a lot of women and that is mocked, alcoholism is a character quirk (Adam Sandler is drinking a beer in every scene), fat person winning a marathon is hilarious, making fun of your kid because he is fat is hilarious as long as you genuinely love him, using sex to get promotions/cheating is hilarious, incest is hilarious (though at least here it is between consenting adults, so a bit of a step in the right direction… sorta :-/)… The list goes on.
There is potential for humor as advocacy in a lot of these notions were the humor done, well, properly. The goal is to laugh at the bigot, not with the bigot, and for all of Adam Sandler’s movie we pretty much laugh with the bigot.
Congrats to the national effort to get the commercial that glamorized and honored the child-rape, changed. Millions more will see the commercial that did damage that will ever see the movie. The studio pulled the commercial that fully leaned on the rape as “funny,” as soon as the public pressure began. But FAR too many people looked at us with blank stares trying to see what the “issue” was, before they could fake decent reply.
I posted this on another thread for Adam Sandler and Rape Culture. I’m reposting it because it’s another way to look at it. I was underage, but the aggressor at least initially.
I think that when it comes to questions about protecting children, we should all err on protecting the child. I’ve had two experiences in my life that were sexually traumatic, one as a child and one as an adult. I’ve had one that was dubious as a teen. I’ve never used a particular 4 letter word to describe even my adult experience, but I have acknowledged that my experience as a teen would be statutory rape. The reason was that I didn’t feel that anything bad happened to me. I’m not saying that it isn’t a bad thing or that everyone is going to experience it unscathed. I suppose the childhood experience could have messed with me and I just can’t see it for what it was.
I started school when I was 4 so was younger than what the school administrators would think for my grade. About a week before my 16th birthday, my school rented two floors in the dormitory of a women’s college. The college was struggling financially so started renting out its space, then went coed and finally merged with a coed college. Anyway the high school girls were housed on the 4rth floor, the high school boys on the 3rd, the college women on the 2nd and the first had the shared amenities like the lunch room and gym. My religion teacher and the counselors were all women so were housed on 4. The boys were told that if we were caught on 4 we’d be immediately expelled, but they never said anything about 2.
Anyway I spent my first lunch break hitting on every college woman in the cafeteria, which led to a talking to by my religion teacher (she basically said cool it with the girls) and a scheduled rendezvous. Anyway I had sexual intercourse twice as well as some other things. It would have been 3 times. A friend arranged for a lady to meet me in my room at 1:00 AM, which was fine because I took my showers at 2:00 AM. I got up around 12:30 and shortly after my door opened. It’s a good thing I cracked my eyes open and didn’t leap out of bed or decide to wait for her nude because it was my religion teacher peeking in. The next day she summons me for a chat and asks if I knew anything about a group of college girls getting caught leaving the elevator on 3. She said that they wouldn’t get in trouble. She didn’t say anything about me so I denied knowing anything. It’s weird how I assumed that I would be in trouble. Years later I realized she was protecting me (I think).
The retreat activities took place on the 3rd floor so the girls had access to 3. They used it to torment us. We didn’t get keys so the dorm rooms weren’t locked. They would steal our clothes and hide them. They eventually gave them back. They threatened to raid our showers hence the 2:00 AM showers. They said they didn’t have to go to 4 to use the bathrooms and 3 of them followed me into one. I guess to show they could do it. It didn’t bother me that much because they stayed by the sink and everything was stalls anyway. I was more traumatized by the high school girls than the college women. I’m sure part of it was that they were feeling ignored and we invited them to our rooms to hang out for awhile our last day there. That calmed them down a little.
The Con? Anthrocon? Are you a furry, Ozy?
Nope, I went to an anime con last weekend. There is, surprisingly, more than one convention in existence.