genre collisions
16 Dec 2018 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneI've been watching various things on YouTube while I knit, and one of those things was an analysis of The Big Lebowski - a classic Coen Brothers movie that I really love, and one I've been trying unsuccessfully to get my parents to watch - which referenced this idea that it is a "slacker noir" or "stoner noir" movie, a term coined in this 2015 video from Slate, The Rise of Slacker Noir.
It's a well-thought-out video essay, and under 5 minutes, if you're interested.
This video essay proposes the existence of a specific subgenre of slacker/stoner comedy characterized by a fusion with elements of the noir genre to great comedic effect, with The Big Lebowski an archetypal example. The video essay asserts that:
This rings true to me, although I haven't seen any of the other movies named in the video essay as examples of the genre: After Hours (1985), Pineapple Express, Go (1999), Super Troopers (2001), The Hangover, Friday (1995), Repo Man, Smiley Face, Half-Baked (?). (I probably will try to see a couple of them now out of curiosity... .) It also made me pretty excited because it did an excellent job of highlighting the thematic core of The Big Lebowski, what makes me like it so much and what I find funniest about it.
Oddly, the next movie to come to mind was recent Scarlett Johansson & Kate McKinnon comedy Rough Night (2017), which I watched on a plane. Rough Night doesn't feature slackers, just a bachelorette party of young women (the above plus Zoe Kravitz, Ilana Glazer & Jillian Bell) who end up with the accidental death of a male stripper on their hands while stoned and stumble into some Weekend-at-Bernie's-esque situations with the corpse in their attempts to get rid of the body.
While the characters are under the influence throughout the farcical plot, they're not stoners. Because they're not counter culture in any sense, it isn't really a stoner comedy; and the action-adventure portion isn't really noir (they're not in a threatening, dark seedy underbelly of violence and organized crime or anything). It was funny and it got bonus points for the female ensemble, but I didn't love it. What it had in common with the slacker noir genre was a farcical action thriller plot driven by comedy protagonists attempting to escape their circumstances.
It's not a proper match, but it made me wistful. None of the abovementioned list of genre members appear to be analogous to Rough Night. You couldn't call any of them female ensembles. I love The Big Lebowski, and it's not the only Coen Bros classic that I love, but the Coen Bros aren't so great with representation. Gender does better than race in their ouvre - they don't avoid women, or not know how to write them at all - but the idea of a female ensemble cast? Hah. There are a couple of female-protagonist movies in the list - Go! and Smiley Face (where it's Anna Faris) - but they're backed up in both cases by an ensemble of men.
Of course, the noir genre is heavily gendered, but the proposed slacker noir subgenre is entirely contemporary, so that's no excuse. It's more a subgenre of stoner comedy, perhaps, than of noir... and the slacker comedy is also a heavily gendered genre. More than average, I mean, and more than accounted for by the gender distribution of stoners.
So I probably won't find a female ensemble film that hits the comedy and philosophical beats of The Big Lebowski, which is really too bad.
It's a well-thought-out video essay, and under 5 minutes, if you're interested.
This video essay proposes the existence of a specific subgenre of slacker/stoner comedy characterized by a fusion with elements of the noir genre to great comedic effect, with The Big Lebowski an archetypal example. The video essay asserts that:
- The slacker or stoner comedy's hero and the noir hero have central characteristics in common, i.e. a cynical attitude to a society that they hold themselves, or view themselves as, separate from
- The noir hero pursues the solution to the mystery actively, whereas the slacker hero, when accidentally drawn into the noir plot, spends the entire movie trying to run in the opposite direction
- The slacker hero's attempts to extricate themselves from the noir mystery drive the developments that draw them deeper into the plot against their will to comedic effect
This rings true to me, although I haven't seen any of the other movies named in the video essay as examples of the genre: After Hours (1985), Pineapple Express, Go (1999), Super Troopers (2001), The Hangover, Friday (1995), Repo Man, Smiley Face, Half-Baked (?). (I probably will try to see a couple of them now out of curiosity... .) It also made me pretty excited because it did an excellent job of highlighting the thematic core of The Big Lebowski, what makes me like it so much and what I find funniest about it.
Oddly, the next movie to come to mind was recent Scarlett Johansson & Kate McKinnon comedy Rough Night (2017), which I watched on a plane. Rough Night doesn't feature slackers, just a bachelorette party of young women (the above plus Zoe Kravitz, Ilana Glazer & Jillian Bell) who end up with the accidental death of a male stripper on their hands while stoned and stumble into some Weekend-at-Bernie's-esque situations with the corpse in their attempts to get rid of the body.
While the characters are under the influence throughout the farcical plot, they're not stoners. Because they're not counter culture in any sense, it isn't really a stoner comedy; and the action-adventure portion isn't really noir (they're not in a threatening, dark seedy underbelly of violence and organized crime or anything). It was funny and it got bonus points for the female ensemble, but I didn't love it. What it had in common with the slacker noir genre was a farcical action thriller plot driven by comedy protagonists attempting to escape their circumstances.
It's not a proper match, but it made me wistful. None of the abovementioned list of genre members appear to be analogous to Rough Night. You couldn't call any of them female ensembles. I love The Big Lebowski, and it's not the only Coen Bros classic that I love, but the Coen Bros aren't so great with representation. Gender does better than race in their ouvre - they don't avoid women, or not know how to write them at all - but the idea of a female ensemble cast? Hah. There are a couple of female-protagonist movies in the list - Go! and Smiley Face (where it's Anna Faris) - but they're backed up in both cases by an ensemble of men.
Of course, the noir genre is heavily gendered, but the proposed slacker noir subgenre is entirely contemporary, so that's no excuse. It's more a subgenre of stoner comedy, perhaps, than of noir... and the slacker comedy is also a heavily gendered genre. More than average, I mean, and more than accounted for by the gender distribution of stoners.
So I probably won't find a female ensemble film that hits the comedy and philosophical beats of The Big Lebowski, which is really too bad.
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Date: 17 Dec 2018 07:21 pm (UTC)