No cure for this “Hangover.” (On the difficult search for intelligent humour on Planet Patriarchy.)

I recently followed the recommendation of a friend and finally got around to seeing “The Hangover” – a film about a bachelor party in Las Vegas that goes terribly wrong. Now I need to talk to that friend about how I might go about getting those 100 minutes of my life back!

It is difficult for me to think of a greater waste of time than sitting through that train wreck of racism, homophobia, and misogyny masquerading as humour. About the only appropriate element of the whole movie was its title. Enduring the film really felt like suffering through a bad hangover.

Now, before we run down the path that declares that all feminists and their allies lack a sense of humour, let me say that the movie did in fact make me laugh. A grand total of three times. But an average of 33 minutes between guffaws is a pretty bleak performance for what was supposed to be a nonstop laugh riot.

And as further evidence that I do in fact have a sense a humour, let me share with you a joke I heard several years ago. It’s one of my favourite one-liners: “If men got PMS, how would you ever know???”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, I just love that one! It cracks me up every time!
And if you don’t find that line funny, then maybe you need to take the advice that feminists and we feminist-allied men are given all the time: Just chill out! Get a sense of humour! I mean, c’mon – it’s just a joke!

(See how that works? I have just declared that if you are offended, or if you don’t find the joke funny, then there is something wrong with you! That it’s your problem, and not a problem with the joke – and that, my friends, is not a very nice thing to say to someone who does not happen to share your sense of humour.)

Now, back to our movie...

Offensive, but still widely admired. Perhaps I should not be too harsh toward my friend who recommended that I watch this ridiculous film. After all, the movie received positive reviews from most critics, including a 79% favourable rating on the website rottentomatoes.com. The site claims: “With a clever script and hilarious interplay among the cast, The Hangover nails just the right tone of raunchy humor, and the non-stop laughs overshadow any flaw.”

I suppose to the folks at Rotten Tomatoes that the issues of racism, homophobia, and misogyny are not flaws that one need worry about, so long as the laughs keep coming. But I certainly don’t agree with that stance. I have reached a point in my life where misogyny, racism, or homophobia actually make any joke very unfunny.

Unfortunately, Rotten Tomatoes was not alone in its praise of this film. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association – normally a rather sophisticated bunch – awarded the film a Golden Globe in the category of Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.

And all of this leads me to scratch my head and wonder.... Just what planet am I on?

The answer, of course, is Planet Patriarchy, where mass-market humour tends to have all the sophistication, the subtlety, and the depth of the banter that one hears in the boys’ locker room after a high school football game.

Misogyny, sure. But who cares? Didn’t anyone else view this movie the way that I did? Did people not see the outright misogyny in this supposed comedy?
It turns out that some people did, but they just didn’t care. The UK’s Daily Mail published a story called “The Hangover: It might be misogynist, but it's still the American comedy of the year.”

Continuing in this oh-so-enlightened vein, the reviewer wrote: “The Hangover is 100 minutes of men behaving incredibly badly, shameless ethnic stereotyping, gratuitous violence and unattractive nudity. It's also extremely inventive and entertaining, providing the most consistent source of laughter since Dodgeball. Rude, crude and defiantly male, it's the ultimate phallocentric antidote to Sex and the City, and easily the funniest American comedy of the year.”

Huh?

I am not sure just how, in a patriarchal context, anything can ever be (or should ever be) “defiantly male.” That would be like something being “defiantly heterosexual.” Or, in a European, North American, or Australian context, being “defiantly white.” Just how does one rebel when one is already in control?

And I certainly don’t believe that the brilliant series “Sex and the City” needed any kind of “phallocentric antidote”! As I seem to recall, “Sex and City” was in fact pretty phallus-friendly. All four of the female lead characters ultimately pursued long-term relationships with men. And when not in relationships, most of the women were certainly not opposed to an occasional romp in the sheets with a strange man. Unlike “The Hangover,” “Sex and the City” was sophisticated, often poignant, usually extremely funny, and it never treated the opposite sex as if they were the enemy!

On second thought, perhaps “Sex and the City” really was the opposite of this terrible Hangover! Next time, rather than taking my friend’s advice and watching another “male-oriented” comedy, I think I’ll just stick with watching reruns of Carrie and her friends.

I like Season 3 the best.

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I have had to defend my position about how horrible this movie to so many people I thought would have known better.