Dude, I even cleaned my bathtub this morning!

[judecorp]

Yesterday I had the pleasure of hanging out with the Simmonses! After the odious task of underwear shopping (btw, if you wear women's shoes between the sizes of 8 and 9 and you want some roller skates - not blades, but four on the floor skates! - you can get Skechers skates at Marshall's on Bethel for $22!), Jen and I decided to indulge in some Asian Star chinese buffet since we were in the area. We called pattisimmons and scottsimmons and they met us there. Yay!

After that, Jen, Patti and I went to Carriage Place to see Sweet Home Alabama for $1.50. The theatre was /packed/. Oy. And the movie was worth $1.50... it was cute, and Reese Witherspoon /was/ my fantasy girlfriend until Clea Duvall blipped on my radar. Parts of the movie didn't sit well with me, though.

I was telling Jen on the way home that since it's no longer PC to poke fun at particular ethnicities, we're now "acceptably" poking fun at lower classes within Caucasians. For example, blonde jokes are still acceptable, as is redneck humor. So the movie was pretty damned classist in that there was a lot of "make fun of the lower class Southerners" but at the same time it painted a pretty ugly picture of the wealthy Northerners, too. So maybe that wasn't so bad.

There were two gay characters in the film - one of them being a fashion designer, but the other was one of the boys from back home in Alabama. I liked that there was casual inclusivity in a very mainstream movie geared to a heterosexual audience (I mean, it's a girl-meets-boy flik), but I didn't like the number of jokes kind of tossed in at his expense. For example, a bunch of the old gang is sitting around deciding what to do that night. Someone says something like, "We could go play pool," and someone says, "We could go arrest some people," and then the gay guy says, "I know a good place..." and all the guys yell, "NO!" I think that was the part my audience laughed at the hardest.

I don't think it was particularly harsh or anything, but I wonder why the funniest things in a heterosexual romance movie are the parts that surround the gay characters. And why did those two guys have to, of course, start to get together in the end? Bleh.

But all in all, it was a pretty cute movie, and I didn't pay much, /and/ I got to see Patti. So I would call it a success. :)

Comments

[pjgrrl.livejournal.com]

i really wanna go see that movie :) carriage place is great.. i think on tuesdays .. its 50cents for a movie if i am not mistaken?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think you're right. And every day before 5pm, too, I think.

I think there's one night that is 2-for-1 with Buck-ID, but I'm not sure.

[thatpatti.livejournal.com]

yay!

actually, i think that movie slammed way harder on the snotty new-yorkers than the southerners. i mean, she ended up there, right?

i had fun, too. :)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, the point of the movie was definitely to root for the Southerners, because they were nicer people.

But there was still a lot of trashy stereotyping going on. BUT, at the same time, I think that one of the points of the movie was to try to show that people who hold those stereotypes (like the Reese W. character) are wrong.

It's hard, though, to get a serious moral message from a fluffy romance movie. :)

Lucky!

[donewithyou.livejournal.com]

Dammit, I didn't even think about going to Carriage Place. My lil sister wanted to rent that movie last night, but there were none available anywhere. We settled for Royal Tenenbaums (sp) and were very disappointed.

Re: Lucky!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I didn't like The Royal Tenenbaums very much, either. I was really expecting to, but I just didn't. I was disappointed in it, too. Bleh.

We're never up in that part of town, so when we ended up at Marshall's and K-Mart, I was like, "Let's do a Carriage Place drive-by," and there it was. Most of the other movies there weren't so appealing. (Spy Kids 2, Treasure Planet, Santa Clause 2)

[geniusorafool.livejournal.com]

Jude, did *you* get the skates????

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't. I tried them on, though, and skated around the store! I think maybe if I'm still thinking about them later this week, I will see if they're still there. I got the giggles thinking about wearing them around the shelter.

I'm a big rollerblader. I've had blades for years and years and when I tried on the skates, my body was all confused!

white classism

[vorpalbla.livejournal.com]

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<<I was telling Jen on the way home that since it's no longer PC to poke fun at particular ethnicities, we're now "acceptably" poking fun at lower classes within Caucasians. For example, blonde jokes are still acceptable, as is redneck humor.>>

Interesting you mention this.

2 years ago (holy shit, it's actually more than 2 years now) I wrote, and presented, a paper for a social work class on the subject. Hell, you might have even been in the class, I'm not sure.

It was inspired by my experience having a tire blow out in the middle of the night in eastern Ohio. Several of the white rural working-class people who are so often made fun of were sympathetic and helpful toward me. So I wrote a paper about the experience and the enduring, accepted prejudice against "rednecks."

An excerpt:

"It is especially interesting how casually people who would never use a slur for women, gays, or minorities use the word “redneck” to refer to the stereotype of a working-class, rural white person who is assumed to be uneducated, ignorant, armed, homophobic, and violently racist. While it may not fit academic definitions of institutional racism (class lecture, S. Cooper, October 3, 2000), placing members of this group in the “redneck” stereotype is no less a form of prejudice than classifying young, black, urban men as “gangstas” who are sexually promiscuous, violent, and involved in drugs and street gangs. In an ironic parallel, members of both groups have published books poking fun at these generalizations. Comedian Jeff Foxworthy started this trend by writing You Might Be a Redneck If..., and Shawn Wayans penned 150 Ways to Know If You're Ghetto. In both cases, a member of the oppressed group is using humor to dismantle prejudice. One can only hope that readers do not take these works literally, as reinforcement of their stereotypes."

oops

[vorpalbla.livejournal.com]

I forget that you can't use those sideways triangle things to indicate quotes, because of the HTML interpretation. The quote was your comment about white classism.

Re: white classism

[lemur68.livejournal.com]

As someone who spent the first 18 years of my life in the eastern part of the state near the West Virginia border, I can tell you that the stereotypes do apply more often than not.

Re: white classism

[vorpalbla.livejournal.com]

So, would you like people to call you a redneck and discriminate against you on these grounds?

Re: white classism

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Stereotypes exist for a reason - namely, because a bunch of people /did/ show that behavior at one point.

But it's still wrong to poke fun, I think. Whether someone fits the "redneck" stererotype or not does not make a person less worthy of respect.

Re: white classism

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I wasn't in that class. I took Race and Ethnicity in the Summer of 2001, and I had Eldridge. I know some people who were in your class, though. (I took Women's Issues that quarter.)

I know that when I sit down and make a mental inventory of my prejudices and biases, I feel really good that I've managed to work through any racist tendencies I was brought up with. But I still, probably as a snooty New Englander, harbor instant thoughts against poor, rural White people that I try very very hard to get rid of. I think the last 2.5 years I've spent in Ohio have helped to a good degree, but I still have a long way to go.

Last year, when "An Open Book" (a store in the Short North) re-opened, there was a big controversy because one of the items being sold was something akin to a "White Trash Barbie." I was appalled, because this was being sold in a store that is meant to benefit a marginalized group in society. I was doubly appalled because lesbian couples tend to be more financially disadvantaged than heterosexual couples and gay male couples, because they consist of two women. And then I was appalled with myself for not being appalled before.

The worst thing EVER right now are those "hillbilly teeth" that you can buy for 50 cents in the gumball machines these days. :(

[rizzo41.livejournal.com]

If we can't poke a little fun at each other where would comedy go? Would we have to go back to slipping on banana peels and rubber canes? If we didn't poke a little fun at others here and there where would we go? There's a difference between poking fun to get a joke, and being mean about it. But it is a fine line. "The mutants at table nine" perpetuates the stereotype that ugly people will always be weird and alone. "The fat guy is going to have a heart attack if we don't eat again soon" perpetuates that fat people do nothing but eat. Elle Woods and her friends in Legally Blonde perpetuate the stereotype that people from California are shallow and frivolous. Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels proved that white girls can't dance. Zoolander and Head Over Heels perpetuate that models are stupid and shallow. "Iowa Stubborn"? Midwesterners are cold. "Marian the Librarian"? Librarians are stern and humorless. Were these things not funny? I laughed at them all. Am I bad or wrong because of it? Should Margaret Cho stop making jokes about her mother? Should we make the Simpsons PC? There are some that cross the line from innocent fun-poking into offensiveness. Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's crossed the line. Shallow Hal crossed the line. But I suppose it's a matter of perception. Maybe I shouldn't be laughing at these things. But, god, how boring would that be?

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I didn't say if I thought it was funny or not funny. You're right, some things cross the line and some things don't. And the line is different for everyone. And it also seems to depend on who is doing the fun-poking... (like, when Margaret Cho makes fun of Asians, it somehow is seen as more acceptable, you know?).

You are absolutely right when you say that comedy is always poking fun of someone. Even people who slip on banana peels are poking fun at someone - themselves. I don't even know where I was going with the comment, except to say that there is a lot more comedy based on different classes/types of White people because nothing else is acceptable.