Against my better judgment and propensity to bear a grudge (Chuck & Larry), I listened to a friend's recommendation and rented Adam Sandler's 9/11 pop psychology movie, Reign Over Me. For those of you who haven't seen it (probably most of you), Reign Over Me is Sandler's homage to the enduring psychological damage of 9/11. Overall, the movie was interesting, predictably Adam Sandler and I might have survived the full 124 minutes unscathed and with calm if not for Sandler's little tribute to Chuck & Larry when he called his best friend a "faggot."
I've never liked Adam Sandler and ever since Chuck & Larry I've longed to see his career fizzle. Sandler brings a stereotypical frat boy arrogance, relentlessly sophomoric sensibility and childish pomposity to most of his films and characters; and Reign Over Me is no exception. Oh, I'm sure this movie has earned many fans among those of us who think Dr. Phil is an insightful therapist, but, although far from being as offensive as Chuck & Larry, Reign Over Me delivers a simple-minded pop psychology heavy handedness to a very sensitive issue in that special Adam Sandler way that makes my skin crawl. Between Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler, it's amazing to me that the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association haven't filed a lawsuit against the entire city of Los Angeles.
Considering that Adam Sandler's core demographic mostly consists of drunk frat boys and teen girls who aspire to a C average, I really shouldn't care about his films, but it is precisely because of the nature of his fan base that I do. And it mostly has to do with the faggot word.
Sandler clearly has this arrogant sense of "I'm a liberal progressive Jew who made Chuck & Larry" that gives him a sense of entitlement when it comes to using the faggot word. After he uses the faggot word in Reign Over Me to affectionately express his view that his buddy is a gutless wimp, he takes a brief and jarring step out of character to deliver a little Adam Sandler pop morality, explaining to his bud that when you call a queer a faggot that's insulting, but when you call a straight man a faggot it's just a way of expressing the fact that he's a wuss. Don Cheadle, the straight dude who has just been called a faggot, accepts this explanation, learns from it and eventually rediscovers his balls, finally fixing his pussy whipped relationship with his stereotypical nag of a wife.
This kind of pernicious and pervasive "good-natured" homophobia runs through our society like lead poisoning; and Adam Sandler is as guilty of homophobia as Fred Phelps--perhaps even more so. He gives license to teen girls and frat boys to use faggot as a pejorative expressing impotence and cowardice, and no matter what blather comes out of Adam Sandler's mouth, the message he champions --intentionally or just out of stupidity--is clear: queers are impotent and cowardly, and fair game for adolescent-brand humor.
One might argue that Sandler is just reflecting authenticity in his portrayal of certain characters in certain situations; but that is just plain crap. There is nothing authentic about a Sandler movie or character and his story lines are a heap of contrivance. Reign Over Me is no exception and a serious issue is quickly turned into an after-school special crushed by Sandler's special brand of adolescent pop psychology and treacly morality.
Sandler, who clearly sees himself as some kind of one man morality play, likely thought Reign Over Me would show his serious dramatic side and his Oscar-worthy acting skills. In fact, his character is the usual Adam Sandler emotionally-retarded perennial adolescent--but just much less funny (and that's funny by frat boy kegger standards).
Sandler's reckless use of the silver screen perpetuates homophobia and the appalling notion that while bigotry is wrong, making fun of queers is cool. The worst part of it is that Sandler packs his flic with all kinds of heavy-handed moral messages and clearly good--albeit contrived--characters--so at the end of the day, it legitimizes use of the fag word. And that is a very bad thing.
THE WORST WORD IN AMERICA?
To research her fascinating sociological doctoral dissertation turned book, Dude You're A Fag, Dr. C.J. Pascoe spent a year and a half hanging out in a high-school weight room, auto shop, and drama class. She learned what frightens adolescent males most. “Being called a fag is the specter that constantly lurks” in the minds of high-school boys, explains Pascoe, a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Social Change.
As a Ph.D. student in sociology at Berkeley, Pascoe wrote her doctoral dissertation on what she saw and heard at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta suburban school she called River High. In June 2007, University of California Press published Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, a book based on her dissertation. I highly recommend it. It provides an extraordinary set of insights into the continuing failure of our society to effectively address homophobia, racism and sexism.
During her investigation into how boys define masculinity, Pascoe found what she calls “fag discourse” and a corresponding value placed on sexuality, power, control, and domination. Pascoe formally interviewed 50 students, observed countless others, and spoke with teachers, counselors, and administrators. She heard male students imitate homosexuality humorously and use the “fag” epithet constantly as a way to shore up their own masculinity.
A boy could get called a “fag” for any sort of behavior deemed not quite masculine (though not necessarily feminine), including “being stupid or incompetent, dancing, caring too much about clothing, being too emotional, or expressing interest (sexual or platonic) in other guys,” writes Pascoe in her book. s a kind of corollary, boys asserted their masculinity — and repudiated the threat of the “fag” identity— by talking about girls’ bodies in heterosexist terms and bragging about their sexual experiences.
Sound familiar? What Pascoe describes is the heart and soul of almost every Adam Sandler movie.
While Pascoe points out that such teasing may be a part of a normal American adolescent masculinity, homophobic taunting and homophobia have fed into recent tragedies, including the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 and the murder in Fremont of Gwen Araujo in 2002. Pascoe acknowledges that those two incidents are unusual, even as she notes that “parents have started to hold schools accountable for allowing this sort of harassment to go unchecked.”
Masculinity and its underpinnings have been Pascoe’s area of interest since her undergraduate days, when she wrote her senior thesis on pledging and other rituals at a fraternity. “They turned everything into a competition,” recalls Pascoe. For her master’s thesis in sociology (which she obtained at Berkeley), Pascoe interviewed boys about their definitions of masculinity, then delved deeper into the topic for her doctoral studies.
For her fieldwork, beginning in 2002, she sought out a high school with demographics that roughly reflected California’s and was not too close to the Bay Area, where tolerance for alternative sexual lifestyles runs famously high. The student body of River High approximated the racial diversity Pascoe was seeking: approximately 50 percent white, 30 percent Latino, and the remainder divided among Asian, African American, and other ethnicities. Most of River High’s approximately 2,000 students came from working-class families, though some came from middle-class or poor backgrounds. With its emphases on tradition, sports, and community, it’s an archetypical high school, says Pascoe.
Three days a week, Pascoe sat in on various classes to observe students in both gender-specific settings (weight room, auto shop, drama class) and gender-neutral ones (senior government class). She also attended meetings of the school’s Gay/Straight Alliance as well as football games, school assemblies, and proms.
The River High boys she interviewed equated masculinity with “being powerful and having the ability to assert your will and control on the world around you,” explains Pascoe. On the other hand, “a fag was a person who had no power and no control and no ability to assert his will, and that was the worst thing you could be.”
A young, gay student called Ricky was permanently stuck with the “fag” label. A talented dancer, Ricky’s mere presence could inspire violent comments from other boys.
“Not only could he not ‘throw a football,’ he actively flaunted his non-masculine gender identification by dancing provocatively at school events and wearing cross-gendered clothing,” Pascoe wrote. “Through his gender practices, Ricky embodied the threatening specter of the ‘fag.’ He bore the weight of the fears and anxieties of the boys in the school who frantically lobbed the ‘fag’ epithet at one another.”
When Ricky requested help from the school’s authorities, he was ignored, in spite of the fact that there is a law in California protecting students from discrimination based on sexual identity.
Our society has worked hard over many decades to minimize sexism and racism in schools and in society at large--homophobia not so much.
Adam Sandler is not just a maker of frivolous and sporadically funny movies, he is an enabler of homophobia, teen suicide, teen substance abuse and teen depression.
And if you still can't see the seriousness of Sandler's cavalier use of the "F" word, consider the impact and reaction of Adam Sandler turning to Don Cheadle in Reign Over Me and shouting, "You are such a nigger" to describe the character's irresponsible behavior.
Sandler is one of the chief enablers of homophobia in popular culture that drives much harm and damage; and until we stop accepting the American macho use of the "F" word as something "cool" and socially acceptable, life for queer kids will never improve.
Recent Comments