F-ing Wishful Thinking

*post might have some rated R language

Seth: He is the sweetest guy. Have you ever looked into his eyes? It was like the first time I heard the Beatles.

Superbad (2007)
Dir: Greg Mottola
Written by: Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg
Starring: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse

Cursing, swearing, vulgarities, blue language, [pardon my] French, etc.

“…swearing has a number of distinct functions. In some of these, swearing is an utterance of it’s own, such as for examples exclamations of anger, surprise like Bloody Hell!, unfriendly suggestions like Go to Hell!, or curses like Damn you! In other functions the swearing expressions are part of an utterance for example bloody, like hell, and the devil as in It was bloody difficult, We ran like hell and What the Devil do you mean?” (Ljung xi)

Well--what is the function of swearing in Superbad? I wasn’t allowed to curse growing up, only in college these last couple of years have I learned to appreciate the cleansing quality of a high-quality expletive. Previously, I believed that swearing was the unimaginative persons tool. Superbad has the most inventive uses of taboo words that I have ever come across. And unlike other films where I thought that the swearing was superfluous it works in the film. I found a Wikipedia page that track the number of f-words in films and they said that it was said 176 times in the film—not surprising. In the last blog post about Superbad I track how many times they used some variation of the word vagina 23, I think, and later I tracked how many times they said penis or balls or variants of them around 65. But what does that mean? I don’t know I think I need to watch more Bromances in order to study language uses and gender as well as sexuality in these singular films. *an aside is the weird male fascination with vomiting—I just don’t get it –shuddering-.

Not surprisingly, not a lot of academic scholarship has been done on the film genre jokingly referred to as Bromance; actually there are none that I could find. It really has only been a few years that the term “bro” and “romance” merged. There is now a plethora of new terms and words that are use to describe the unlikely couples in these films.
➢ mandate (when two heterosexual males go on a date)
➢ bromantics (the particular branch of romance that is shown in a Bromance film)
➢ mangina (an insult)
…just to list a few, it’s pretty safe to say that if you add “bro” or “man” as prefix you can create a large and funny vocabulary.

How can I align Superbad or other Bromantic Comedies with other better, classic, iconic screwball films like His Girl Friday? Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a neo-screwball. The circumstances surrounding, the culture that created them no longer exists in the same form. I do believe that certain elements have integrated into pre-existing and new genres. That is why I can say with some certainty that I believe a close approximation of a classic screwball male/female couple exists within the Bromance with a male/male pairing.

Seth: I just wanna go to the rooftops and scream, "I love my best friend, Evan."
Evan: Let's... go on my roof.
Seth: [whispers] For sure
.
Many of these films have very strong homophobic elements that is maybe a case of the lady doth protest too much? Beneath the search for a female sex companion in most of these films is the true friendship between male characters. Seth(Hill) and Evan(Cera) are really perfect for each other. Instead of a traditional battle between different sexes it is a battle between the same sex.
These films have the narrative trajectory of a romantic comedy, just with two males as the actual “couple”, interspersed with gross-out comedy elements. Another reason that these “couples” resemble classic SC is that there will be no consummation of their “love,” similar to films produced during the enforcement of the production code. I’m not sure what kind of kind is being enforced by the men in these films?

INT. EVAN'S BASEMENT - NIGHT

Seth and Evan are lying in sleeping bags beside one another.

SETH
I can't believe she said that shit.

EVAN
Oh my lord. You have no idea!

They laugh harder.

EVAN (CONT'D)
And then you saved me, man! I fucking
love you!

SETH
I fucking love you, too, man! I'm not
embarrassed, I just love you!

EVAN
Why don't we say that more? It feels
good! I love you more than my brother,
man. Like, when you went away for Easter
last year, I, like, missed you. You know?

SETH
I missed you, too. Come here, man.

Seth grabs Evan and they hug.

SETH (CONT'D)
We'll always be friends. `Cause we love
each other.

The phrase that epitomizes these films is “I Love You, Man”. The verbal equivalent of those awkward one-armed hugs that men exchange. The right thought is behind them but they are tripped up by the fear of appearing to be punks or homosexuals. The portion of dialogue above is at the end of the movie; both Evan and Seth are drunk and that is the reason why they are professing their “love” in such a straight forward manner.

This blog is going to continue in some form far into the future as I have plans to write a book about Bromance films. So keep an eye out for that in the future.