Chauntecleer of the Pricking Cock

(This is not the Superman post; I still intend to write about that, but I will save it for another time when I'm feeling braver. :P )

I saw Clerks II with a friend last night, and I had a couple of observations to make about both the movie and the audience. Clerks II is a movie by director Kevin Smith, and if you aren't familiar with his movies, he generally makes raunchy films centered in New Jersey that have recurring characters (i.e. Jay and Silent Bob). I saw the original clerks several years ago, and I enjoyed it. It was obviously a low budget film, but that gave it charm, and the characters and situations were original and funny. I wasn't as impressed with the sequel. Maybe it's because Clerks II is treading over the same ground as the first one, and the characters are getting a little stale. I also did not find the cursing and the sex jokes to be as funny. *Sigh* Perhaps I AM getting older.

The audience that I saw the movie with was kind of rough. Maybe the 10:45 showing was a factor? Clerks II uses a lot of profanity and crude sex humor (such as a man having sex with a donkey), and the crowd ate it up. It seemed that every time the word "fuck" was mentioned, the audience laughed uproariously. The audience was generally rowdy throughout the entire movie, and I remember during a dance scene in the movie several guys exclaimed, "Look at that chick's titties bounce!" The guys who were so excited about that seemed to be around my age, and I couldn't help but thinking, "Why is this so exciting to them? They seem the type to have had experience with women, so why do they find this image so exciting?" I'm a male, and I obviously find women attractive, but I don't understand how lots of men openly sexualize women in public. They make it seem as though women are nothing but bodies and that they exist solely to be conquered by men.

When I was in line for the ticket booth before the movie started, a pretty girl was working at it. Right before my turn to order the ticket, she had to turn around to check on something. The guy behind me said, "Hey, at least she gave us that view!" I was fairly disgusted, so I did not respond to him. The guy who made the remark was with several other (male) friends, and I hate to stereotype, but they looked like the frat boy sort. I'm sorry if my generalizing offends anybody, but I am not a fan of fraternities. (Oh yeah, let me pay and get hazed and lose my individuality to make a bunch of "friends" that only care about how much of a dumbass I make of myself when I'm drunk!)

But the moment that struck me as the most interesting happened near the end of the movie. Clerks II is an odd movie in that it is rank with what I would deem to be immature humor, but yet it also has a profoundly human underlying theme that runs on another level from the crude banter that is bandied about the film. If you can look past the geeky references and lowbrow humor that Kevin Smith is so fond of, you will find a story about two best friends, Dante and Randall. Dante is about to marry up into a higher social class position. If married, he would be forced to start a new life in Florida, and get a new job supervising a carwash (a step up from working as a burger flipper). On the surface, the marriage seems the smart choice for him, because he would FINALLY become something more, he thinks. Randall, however, is distraught about this. He normally never shows it, and he hides his emotions under a shield of machoism, but internally, he is torn to pieces about the prospect of losing his best and only real friend.

*SPOILER IF YOU PLAN TO SEE CLERKS II*

Near the end of the movie, Randall, his eyes glistening with tears, confesses to Dante that he's his best friend, and that he loves him....you know, in a non-sexual way, of course.

*END SPOILER*

The audience reacted to that moment with, what else, mocking cynical laughter and choruses of "that's gay!" I thought that it was actually a touching moment in this otherwise scabrous film, and I was dismayed to witness that cynical reaction from nearly everyone in the theater. According to this audience, and, I assume, mainstream society, it is not normal for two male friends to have a close and emotional moment without them being gay. It is not a masculine thing to do, apparently.

Woe are we as a society if real friendship is seen as uncomfortable!

This audience reaction to that moment, in my opinion, only furthers my opinion that mainstream society has been dehumanized. To jeer at a genuine moment of friendship is not to be human.

I know that I have been VERY BAD at updating this blog, but I shall improve! I now have a mission. Over the course of many future posts, I will examine how we as a society have been dehumanized, and how we can work together to reclaim as much of our humanity as we can.

And I promise to catch up a bit on reading others’ blogs. I’m sawwy!