on the natural conservativism of comedy
Watching an American coming of age movie, a ‘comedy-drama’ (you know the type, with a preachy thread holding it together), superior to the average in some ways but still riddled with clichés: the teenage girl complains to her mum about somehow getting an unwarranted reputation as a slut. The mother says to her daughter, ‘oh yeah, I used to get that all the time.’
‘Yeah but they didn’t call you a slut, did they?’
‘Well yes, they did actually. But that’s cause I was a slut. I slept around all the time. You know, I had a lot of self esteem issues back then…’
Hohoho, and so modern. Well not really. She might’ve said, ‘I slept around all the time. You know I was very self-confident and exploratory back then, and I was popular and curious about other people, and I really loved sex..’
Maybe not so funny but with a bit of tweaking… And to be fair, some of the more recent comedies are inching in this direction.
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