How to Be a Man: the Totally Slammin' Gender Politics of 'The Apartment' and 'Say Anything'

First up, if you haven't seen the two films this blog is discussing, why are you even reading this? Go re-evaluate your life choices, watch those films, and then come back here. If you have seen them, congratulations on having reached the minimum requirements for being an intelligent human being.

There's a lot of excellent discussion these days about how the media constructs femininity in various bad ways. We still live in a world where female characters make up only 15-20% of major characters in films, so it's no wonder our perception of womankind is somewhat skewed. As well as the obvious things like the very narrow standards of attractiveness that women are held to, women are also portrayed largely as being capable only of taking on auxiliary supporting roles: wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, secretaries, etc etc etc. There's a great thing called the Bechdel Test, wherein a work of media has to feature a) at least two named female characters, b) who talk to each other about c) something other than men, in order to pass. It's not an exact science because there are many great, positive works of art that portray women in a well rounded way that don't pass the Bechdel Test (a lot of Jane Austen, for example) and there are equally works that do pass the test but suck in misogynist ass-sucky ways. But all this has been documented elsewhere by people much smarter than me and who devote much more of their time to tracking gender politics in pop culture (yes, there are people who spend more time doing that than me). For further reading, I'd particularly recommend this article on the different between Strong Female Characters and Strong Characters who happen to be Female.

But I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about Strong Male Characters. Or at least, films that portray what it means to be a man in a way that isn't demeaning or patronising. It's kind of sad that the two films I want to talk about came out in 1960 (The Apartment) and 1989 (Say Anything) but whatareyougonnado?* Let's start with The Apartment, one of my favourite films of all time. It's a romantic comedy that deals with the subject of suicide, obviously. It follows the story of CC “Buddy Boy” Baxter (the always effervescently wonderful Jack Lemmon) who works out that the way to get ahead in the monolith insurance firm he works for is to rent out his apartment, one night at a time, to his superiors so that they can have their extramarital affairs there. While it gets him a promotion at work, it comes at the expense of being shunted out of his own apartment at a moment's notice, an undeserved reputation with the neighbours as an indefatigable Casanova, and one vicious head cold. It also (of course) gets in the way of him pursuing his affections for fabulous and vulnerable elevator girl, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine).

The film's central message is delivered by one of the aforementioned neighbours, Doctor Dreyfuss, in the aftermath of Ms Kubelik's narrowly non-fatal suicide attempt, which appears to be Jack Lemmon's fault (it's not, but he has to pretend it is, and this is why you should just go and watch the film): “Why don't you grow up, Baxter? Be a mensch! You know what that means?...A mensch - a human being!” Even though the criticism is wide of the mark in this specific instance (he's actually protecting Shirley MacLaine), it's still an apt summary of the circumstances. Baxter lives a comfortable lie, using what he has to acquire the lifestyle that he thinks he wants. He confesses later in the film to Ms Kubelik, “You know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were.” This admittance of loneliness, though apparent to the viewer from the start (the first major sequence of the film depicts him sitting alone in Central Park at night), can only come after trying and failing to be a man in a myriad of other ways.

By renting out his apartment to his adulterous bosses, he implicitly condones their behaviour and, while he doesn't quite join in with the what would today be termed 'banter', he also tolerates it. It is only after his promotion that he starts trying to woo Fran Kubelik with theatre tickets; in success, he grows more self-absorbed and goes from the man who could count how many colds she'd had to holding an entire conversation with her about his new hat, failing to pick up on her distress at something else. He even starts affecting the speech patterns of his superiors and is given the key to the executive washroom: all in all, he gains entrance to an exclusively male club, one full of wealth, power and, of course, abuse of those first two things. His lowest point comes when he tries to pick up a girl and bring her back to his apartment himself for once which, predictably, ends badly – it is at this point that Dr Dreyfuss has to step in with advice about being a mensch (my latent Jewishness might well account for my affection for this film). The film's climax – its real climax – is fairly unique amongst romantic comedies in that the two romantic leads don't 'fix' each other: quite separately, Ms Kubelik ends her affair with the married head of the company, played by Fred MacMurray (“When you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara.”), and Baxter quits his job and thus the whole apartment-renting scheme, relinquishing his executive washroom key along with his high-stakes male persona. “I've decided to become a mensch,” he tells aforementioned married boss. “You know what that means? A human being.” Being a man sometimes means poverty and loneliness, but when the credits roll, C.C. Baxter is the only real man left in New York.

What is particularly wonderful is that a film that nominally looks like it's about saving the damaged, fragile woman from the bad, bad man turns out to actually be about saving the male protagonist from his slide into cynicism. Let's not forget, it's Shirley MacLaine that runs to catch him at the end, it's the woman who gets to ride in on the white horse and save the man from his solitary, poor existence. It's implied, as well, that part of her haste isn't just her sudden crushing self-realisation that Fred MacMurray is, as I said, a bad bad man, it's because she thinks Buddy might be about to hop on the suicide wagon himself. (Interesting how in life, male suicide rates are much higher than female ones, but in film it is always a form of tragic, poetic violence that we see visited on female forms.) It is of utmost importance that she rescues herself: while Jack Lemmon certainly plays his role in nursing her back to health and convincing her of the existence of men that aren't complete scumbags (through being utterly and completely non-pushy, I feel like this film should be shown in sex ed classes), it is her who gets up and leaves Fred MacMurray on New Year's Eve, in their favourite restaurant, while playing 'their' song. That's just as brave as Buddy walking into the office to give back his bathroom key, if not moreso.  Plus it's also just so damn cool.  Sorry, Some Like It Hot, in my book the Best Last Line Award goes to “Shut up and deal.”

Say Anything deals with maturity and manhood a little differently. Now, Lloyd Dobler might actually be my personal hero. He's kind of unique amongst film protagonists in that he doesn't grow as a person or have a character arc – rather, his lack of a character arc is his character arc. He begins the film by saying he wants to be with Diane Court and he ends the film by damn well being with Diane Court. He says it himself to Diane's dad: “What I really want to do with my life – what I want to do for a living – is I want to be with your daughter. I'm good at it.” He lets others perceive him as a slacker because he doesn't pretend to have interests outside of what he genuinely likes, chiefly kickboxing and the aforementioned Diane Court. Every word out of his mouth is genuinely, brilliantly honest: when he says at a dinner table of wealthy professionals that he doesn't want to sell, buy or process anything to earn a living, what could come across as adolescent naivety is simply a statement of fact. Lloyd knows himself. In this respect, he is the opposite of Buddy, who spends most of the film convincing himself that he could be happy living as something he's not (a cynical bachelor). Lloyd spends most of the film grimly clinging to being himself, when the whole world is telling him it would be easier if he were someone else – or, at the very least, his girlfriend's dad, who comes to represent the adult world and its deceptions. Lloyd makes a better adult than most of the adults in the film because of this honesty.

But what I want to talk about is the moment when this honesty wavers. After Diane breaks up with him (that goddamn pen, I'm in tears just thinking about it) because she thinks it's the right thing to do, Lloyd goes through his dark night of the soul. He refuses to talk about it, he refuses to open up to his trio of female friends, claiming “I'm a guy, I have pride”. It is the only moment where he gives in to self-indulgence or tries to put up a barrier between himself and his girl-space-friends and, rightly, he is called on his bullshit. “The world is full of guys!” snorts Corey, played by the wonderful Lili Taylor, “Be a man! Don't be a guy!” It's one of the most wonderful lines I've ever heard in a film and encapsulates something that every present day comedy in which a schlubby dudebro likes getting stoned with other dudebros until some nice women convinces him to be maybe a little less stoned sometimes, but in a way that doesn't threaten his male friendships that still somehow end up central to the film, misses: guys are homogenous. To be a guy is to make a safe choice. To assume that being a guy in a group of other identical guys who are exclusively (male) guys somehow qualifies as maturity is erroneous and does a disservice to men. Say Anything says that being a man means knowing yourself and being around people who know you and like you because of it, even if it's difficult and sometimes lonely and it means standing outside someone's window with a boombox playing Peter Gabriel.

Lloyd experiments with being a guy when he tries hanging out with the film's collection of erstwhile guys outside the Gas 'n' Sip. The guys (who include, by the way, Jeremy Piven, whom I kind of love solely on the basis of his association with John Cusack) offer Lloyd various pieces of post-break-up romantic advice of the 'nail someone else', 'bitches, man' variety. Lloyd considers the specimens before him, asking, “If you guys know so much about women, how come you're here at, like, the Gas 'n' Sip on a Saturday night completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere?” Thus proving Corey's other great line true: “I'm a good person, Lloyd, but you're a great person.” Wait, maybe Corey is my personal hero for being so brilliantly perceptive and also brilliantly flawed (“I wrote 63 songs about Joe this year and I'm going to play them all tonight.”) As he walks away from the Gas 'n' Sip, Lloyd says, “Well, that was a mistake.” Being a man is not only about being truthful to and about yourself, but acknowledging bullshit in others, even when not doing so is the easy option.

What I find most interesting about the cases of both Buddy and Lloyd is how, in one light, stereotypically female their situations are. Buddy is a character who watches his ideal romantic partner waste their time on someone else while pretending to be a collected, well put together grown up and, just at the moment when he appears to be losing it, his love interest rides in to save him. Gender flip it and I'm pretty sure Sandra Bullock already made that one. Lloyd falls in love at first sight (kind of, even if it is before the film starts) and spends his time hopelessly devoted to that one person, 'just knowing' they're meant to be together. In the scene where Diane and Lloyd lose their virginities in the car, it is Lloyd who trembles and cries and Diane who holds him. Flip it and you get an unimaginative but much more typical Twilight-esque teen love story.

Boys are not raised in our culture to be 'men', they are raised to be 'not women': they are taught not to pine, not to mope, not to be a 'pussy' or a 'little girl' because the worst possible thing a man can be is a woman. This is the kind of binary that films thrive off, and one that society is increasingly entrenched in (think 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus'), because it's an easy shorthand.  Lazy films rely on cliches and stereotypes as shorthand in order to tell a story in 90 minutes and gender cliches are amongst the most common offenders. These two films portray great and truthful male protagonists because they don't subscribe to gender cliches at all – instead, they take the radical view that women might just be people too, messy and flawed, and in doing so, create male characters who – gasp – sometimes act like women. And, indeed, vice versa.  Everything I described about being a man in The Apartment and Say Anything could just as equally be applied to becoming a mature adult woman. This is no coincidence. I picked these films to talk about because they both understand that when we say “Be a man”, you could interpret it as “Be a neanderthal” or “Be a cliche” or “Don't be a woman” or indeed anything else that patronises men just as much as women, or you could interpret it in a way that actually makes sense. Be sensitive to yourself. Be truthful to yourself. Be a human being. Don't be a guy. Be a mensch.

*On the topic of watching films made several decades ago, I went back to the original Star Wars trilogy after my Pegg/Wright post. Do you know what's awesome about Han and Leia? Apart from everything obvious, like them both being blindingly hot and having sexy belligerent tension? He actually asks her opinion. Repeatedly. And he defers to her when the situation is clearly more in her remit than his. It's a mark of how horribly rare that is in action films today that it stood out to me. And this is from a character that's supposed to be full of deliberately retrogressive macho bullshit. You guys, we are doing so badly.

(NB to a footnote: Uh, Star Wars is obviously not perfect in its depiction of women, mostly because there are none and most of them seem to be strippers of some variety. Leia, however, is badass in a way that doesn't consist of her simply amalgamating 'masculine' traits, and therefore is awesome. Remember what I was saying about films that fail the Bechdel Test and yet are great?)

[P.S. to an NB to a footnote: I don't think the scene in Return of the Jedi where Mon Mothma is briefing them on attacking the second Death Star counts because she's not really talking to Leia specifically.]