I somehow got roped into writing a column for the paper this week even though there is nothing I'd rather do than watch Flight of the Conchords on DVD and stare at Bret's beautiful lips for three hours. But that's not the point of this post.
On a long car trip, I was listening to the audio version of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (a GENIUS title for a book by the way). Chuck Klosterman is a pop culture analyst, looking sardonically at the ways our unconscious desires are shaped by the media. He identified the Woody Allen complex, which many women have struggled with in their relationships (including myself).
"He [Woody] makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn’t. It’s just another gimmick, and it’s no different than wanting to be with someone because they’re thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown. And, it actually might be worse, because an intellectual relationship isn’t real at all. My witty banter and cerebral discourse is always completely contrived."
But what I really wanted to argue here is that men do the exact same fucking thing that women do when it comes to this stuff. If women don't preserve their beauty (or increase it), if they start to feel like their partner is not fitting their mold of an independent, pristine, well balanced, third wave feminist woman, they aren't satisfied. They see women in movies (Kristen Bell, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie), and if women aren't like these role models, they're just as unsatisfied as women are when they realize their partner isn't John Cusak, Jason Lee from Mallrats, Bret McKenzie, George Clooney, Ferris Bueller. So the media has completely ruined love. I think at the end of the day, either the media needs to portray more realistic relationships, or we need to finally decide that it's nature, not nurture, and just go with our biological instincts. Otherwise, we will never be happy in our relationships. It just angers me when men think they are an exception to this and play that "women are evil and only like bad guys" bullshit. It's a sad excuse for a lack of self confidence. If these men ever actually entered into a serious relationship, they'd realize that they wanted the exact same ridiculous and impossible things women want. And it's not our faults. I blame Disney, but I think Woody Allen and Kevin Smith and You've Got Mail can all be blamed just as easily.
7.12.2008
beauty in everything.
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8 comments:
Was he talking about iconic Annie Hall Woody Allen? Because that's not the feeling I get there at all. I mean, isn't the whole thing there that Annie can't relate to him at all?
In some of his other films I can see the complex you describe, but it only seems to happen when there are two people who express the same pretentious narcasism in the same arena; and in reality that's where it seems to break down as well. Throw two people (any two people) together in a room who have experience in radically different fields, and you don't have them competing with each other. You can still have an intelligent conversation, it simply lacks depth over the area you may claim as your "expertise." But that's not really a bad thing, certainly not if you intend on having any kind of long lasting relationship with that person. You have the benefits of knowing you aren't sitting in the room with a dumbass, but you don't have to constantly engage in some kind of witty battle of intellectual superiority.
With respect to media though, you're right. But there's a solution to that too — turn it off. I haven't watched any kind of mainstream bullshit in years. And to tell you the truth, I don't miss it. The kinds of people you mention have no influence on my life (not that they ever really did, but I was aware of their existence), outside of maybe nostalgia for the days when I wanted to be like Ferris Bueller (but who didn't?). The only thing I watch these days are cartoons. Futurama, Adult Swim (minus the anime) and South Park. The best part about cartoons? They have no impact on your perceptions of people. When your roll model is Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force you don't have to worry about it altering the way you think things in the world, other than perhaps wanting a milk shake from In-N-Out, if only they were still open...
I think Annie Hall is the quintessential example actually. Woody Allen is an intellectual, who is completely neurotic, but Annie loves him anyway. She idolizes him in a way, until she goes back to school herself.
In the end, the message of the film is that no one will ever be as good for Woody as Annie was. He doesn't have those same experiences with anyone but her (the lobster example repeated with the other girl).
You fall in love with Woody Allen in that film regardless of whether they stay together. He talks about death and novelists and film, and women eat that shit up. I know I do.
I do agree that it may not be as extreme as he makes it seem, that there are certainly exceptions, but I think these things definitely do subconsciously guide our expectations of relationships and how we define others' relationships (i.e. "they're like Harry and Sally" or "they're perfect, just like Monica and Chandler").
I think even if I turned off my television and stopped watching movies, I couldn't avoid exposure to these cultural values. It's far too late. Even if you don't hold them, others do. So fake love prevails.
But don't listen to me. I'm pessimistic about "love" and therefore need ridiculous theories to justify my own disbelief.
Psh. I don't even know what that word means anymore. It's just an illogical human emotion. Silly humans. You don't see animals dealing with that crap, do you? Nope, they just go around humping each other and having a good time. Only we have the power to make ourselves crazy with our silly little l-word.
ps. can you post your column here? is that even allowed?
I mean, I could link to it, but it's seriously a piece of crap. I threw it together in about thirty minutes at 2 in the morning and my editor didn't even try to change anything in it (which is not a testament to my writing ability, but actually to his novice status).
Just curious. Your call.
Biological instincts?!?! That's not lady-like.
-Matias
haha, oh no! how dare i say such things!
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