Does “The Hangover” portend patriarchy?
The Washington Post’s review of “The Hangover” caught my attention. My 20th high school reunion is this summer, and I am planning a weekend with my buddies. So a critically acclaimed comedy about four men going to Vegas for a bachelor party has a – well, not a resonance, but an appeal to me:
Our stars are four dumpy, dull or deeply flawed men, whose idea of mischief is banal and sleazy. They possess not a scintilla of moral backbone or romantic heroism. There’s Doug (Justin Bartha), the handsome but dull groom to be, who agrees to enjoy one last hurrah in Vegas with his friends before tying the knot. After all, whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That fine city, you see, is the external symbol for male moral compartmentalization. If it happened over there, it didn’t “really happen.”
The Post’s reviewer, Desson Thomson, continues:
As they investigate what happened, their excesses of the night before portend a darker scenario than even they thought possible. There seems to have been a dalliance — even a quickie marriage — with a pole dancer (Heather Graham). Police officers are on the scene. Lots of money seems to be owed to the wrong people. And part of their evening may have been spent partying in Mike Tyson’s home. They have only another 24 hours to put the pieces together, locate Doug and get back to the wedding alive.
At the end of the review, Thomson reflects on the film’s larger theme:
What makes this “Dude, Where’s My Car?” variation so disturbingly compelling is its extreme proximity to the horrible and the tragic. As these hapless fools try to piece together a lost night, forensic clue by clue, the list of crimes and imbroglios they’ve committed — without a trace of memory — gets steadily worse. And we fear a brutal Scorsese movie is about to tear through the walls of this comic plot at any minute. We’re waiting for a wiseguy with an acetylene torch and a twisted smile. And we find ourselves choking — and laughing — amid the consequences of a guy-centric world gone horribly wrong.
It’s a parallel universe in which there are, essentially, two kinds of women: the humorless partners to whom the men are betrothed, and strippers with hearts of gold. And their only way out of this nightmare is return from the proverbial fire back to the frying pan — back to the noble institution of marriage. Back to civilization and ceremony.
Oh, so the movie pays a back-handed compliment to traditional values, eh? You know, the type of film that glories in sin but deals with its consequences and concludes with a call to repentance? That’s good to hear. Well, “The Hangover” may, intentionally or not, deal in a larger theme than that of embracing traditional marriage. Reading this 2006 essay by liberal demographer Philip Longman, I was struck by the parallels between the movie and Longman’s thesis:
Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.
Patriarchy does not simply mean that men rule. Indeed, it is a particular value system that not only requires men to marry but to marry a woman of proper station. It competes with many other male visions of the good life, and for that reason alone is prone to come in cycles. Yet before it degenerates, it is a cultural regime that serves to keep birthrates high among the affluent, while also maximizing parents’ investments in their children. No advanced civilization has yet learned how to endure without it.
Through a process of cultural evolution, societies that adopted this particular social system — which involves far more than simple male domination — maximized their population and therefore their power, whereas those that didn’t were either overrun or absorbed. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened, but it is set to make a comeback.
Longman’s thesis might sound so 2005 or early 2006, the era when some progressives worried the country’s fertility rates were not breaking their way. But in all likelihood, it continues to be relevant. As Daniel Larison notes, the new version of Battlestar Gallactica traffics in similar fears. Judd Apatow’s films are all about dudes embracing personal responsibility and becoming men. And now there’s “The Hangover,” a movie in which the men find a baby in the bathroom, care for the child, and return to their womenfolk. Natch.
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You know Mark sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a movie is just a movie. Doesn’t it get tedious after awhile viewing everything through your cultural warrior tinted glasses?
There are a couple holes in Longman’s thesis that I can spot even from a casual reading.
First, there’s his assumption that children monolithically adopt the values of their parents, or conservative religious parents always give birth to conservative religious kids and vice-versa. If fertility rates equaled religious growth rates, Amish, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others would dominate the American landscape. But the defection rates are very high, and just because patriarchal parents have more kids, it doesn’t follow that they’re popping out more lovers of patriarchy.
Second, he flatly states that population equals power (even in the modern world) more than other factors. Well, obviously since countries like Rwanda, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Rwanda with the highest birth rates are clearly poised to rule the world and conquer slack breeders like Japan, the US, and the UK, he’s right on the money there. Not to mention the inevitably of Utah and Alaska overtaking New York, etc.
Also, his thesis relies on a time when patriarchy was violently secured as the ruling value, an advantage it had over more egalitarian states. You can’t force patriarchy anymore, except in the Middle East, and aside from security issues, I don’t think we have to fear fundamentalists overtaking us. They’d have to get out of the stone age first.
I have more to say about your grafting all of these assumptions onto a lighthearted comedy, but right now, dinner’s on.
You know, I was right there with you. I was agreeing with everything you said. Then you went crazy.
Why did you feel the need to pull the Middle East into a completely unrelated subject? You went from a very accurate and intelligent critique of the point raised to completely discrediting yourself by spouting off some ignorant BS. I mean, if you don’t like the Middle East I am totally cool with that. Don’t get me wrong. But come on…really?
In response to another comment. See in context »You’re right. I definitely should’ve qualified that statement more. I was talking about specific regimes that are hostile to women’s rights, and I shouldn’t have painted the entire region with that brush.
In response to another comment. See in context »Joseph,
Longman anticipated your first point. In the third to last paragraph of the article, he wrote
“To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject their parents’ values, as always happens. But when they look around for fellow secularists and counterculturalists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their would-be fellow travelers were quite literally never born.”
To be sure, the young voted overwhelmingly for Obama last fall, so that fact weakens Longman’s thesis. But their support for a culturally liberal candidate may well be the exception not the rule. After all, until 2008 the youth vote never really delivered for Democrats, as its original supporters acknowledged later.
In response to another comment. See in context »That’s a good point – as far as it goes. However, I did come across a person who seem to poke a couple dozen holes in his argument from a statistical angle:
http://stevereuland.blogspot.com/2006/03/one-baby-two-baby-red-baby-blue-baby.html
As much as it seems fishy to me, though, I can’t pretend to have the background to really examine it…
In response to another comment. See in context »I’m not defending this movie’s morals in any way, but seriously? It’s a R-rated film about a bunch of guys going on a romp about Vegas that would make Hunter Thompson cringe. It’s fucking hilarious.
But as Mark didn’t even seem to bother viewing the film and seemingly only read a review in the Wash Post… I’m not sure what the point of this article is. Did you even watch the trailer Mark?
I’m terrified what your book on “the breakdown of the American Family” is going to be like. But I’m sure you’ll somehow blame it on the cinema and probably ‘the gays.’
Go back to the Wash Times and leave teh interwebs to people who actually read and watch what they review.
As a gay man I marvel at the power assigned to me by the far right!
In response to another comment. See in context »This post said nothing about homosexuality. At all.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mark I was responding to zd comment, not to your post.
In response to another comment. See in context »Oh, OK. Fair enough. Sorry.
In response to another comment. See in context »