When the trailer for "Superbad" was first shown in theaters, the same sleeper-hype that buzzed around "The Forty Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" immediately began to surround it. Judd Apatow, the producer of all three movies, has become notorious for his honest, unselfconscious comedies that capture the complexities of human sexual interactions. Sex is awkward and stilted and often funny, and though this is hardly a new idea, Apatow and his troupe of bumblers (see Seth Rogan, who co-wrote this film and starred as the affable, sloppy stoner Ben Stone in "Knocked Up") have brought the genre from its heyday in the '70s into the new millennium.
Needless to say, I had high expectations for "Superbad." Though fore-warned by the booty-shaking high school girls in the trailer that the film may end up being what a friend of mine coined a "man flick," I felt I was prepared. There were certainly large swaths of testosterone running through Apatow's previous two movies, but I was still able to enjoy and relate to the humor. After all, I loved "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," and that movie was totally raunchy.
"Superbad," however, was way more Porky's than "Fast Times." Suddenly I found myself trapped in a movie that encompassed some of my worst conceptions of the male species - slovenly schemes to score and some of the most foul language I've ever heard outside of late night cable television. Some of Seth's questionable linguistic choices detracted from what, for me, were the funnier parts. In fact, I think the only scene in the movie at which more girls than guys were laughing was the bit when Seth, the potty-mouthed (and I hate to say, dominant) protagonist is dancing with a relatively attractive and apparently very drunk female. After a few minutes of awkward grinding and flailing, the girl departs, and a few seconds later Seth realizes he has menstrual blood on his pants. While I was laughing uproariously at the terrible irony of it all, my male companions were cringing and averting their eyes.
It's easy to see the theme of the humor in this movie. Whereas "Knocked Up" and "The Forty Year Old Virgin" were explorations of how adult men and women try and compensate for their inherent differences (often unsuccessfully), Superbad was, to use the words of one reviewer, "a loving ode to the penis." Now, don't get me wrong - I understand that this movie was not in the least meant to attract or cater to a female audience. That much is clear in the baffled and sometimes belligerent reactions the movie gets from women. Unfortunately, even the raunchy trailers didn't convince us that the sweetness in Apatow's last two comedy blockbusters would be overshadowed by the staunch male reality in "Superbad."
Thinking about it a little more deeply, however, I realize that perhaps a female audience was sort of hoodwinked into enjoying Apatow's other films. The idea that any human being can live for 40 years with as limited a sexual objective as Andy in "FYOV" is, though perhaps sweetly appealing to some women, pretty much universally unrealistic. And as for Ben Stone in "Knocked Up," he represents the ever-elusive ideal of a guy that "fixes himself," morphing from irresponsible if good-natured recreational drug user to willing father. While neither of these situations are so outrageous that it's impossible that they could even happen, they're certainly not the norm, which is what makes them funny. But both these adult male characters are endearing because they are not just vehicles for their genitalia, and this, of course, is appealing to a female audience. The high school boys of "Superbad" (particularly Seth), however, are just that - a little less fleshed out, a little more na've, and in this film, definitively vehicular in nature.
Oddly, until very recently, I thought for sure that Superbad really was a caricature of adolescent male behavior, and there was no way that my male friends in high school talked like this when I wasn't around. But, after spending a good many hours as the only girl among a group of five guys, I find that I am a little deluded in this fact. Watching a friend of mine, who I know to be a sweet, funny, genuinely good person, lean out a car window and scream "I wanna see some boobies!" made me realize that sexual compulsions don't necessarily make the man. I'm sure the guy I'm talking about will one day be a well-balanced human being, but for the time being, I'm resigned to laughing awkwardly at endless jokes revolving around the human anatomy and completely ludicrous stories of sexual malfeasance. I can appreciate their humor when I'm around to witness it, so maybe if I go back and watch "Superbad" and superimpose the faces of my friends, who I know outside of the context of one night of drunken chaos, it will offend my feminine sensibilities less, and remind me more of how difficult and bittersweet growing up and into yourself can be.
Katy Bruck is a Collegian Columnist. She can be reached at kbruck@student.umass.edu.
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