I know more than one dude who loves telling people that he has never heard anything by Beyoncé, or seen any Richard Curtis movies. I’m not a snob, says the dude, I just have taste, why would I expose myself to that capitalist bilge, bla bla bla says the dude, I’m a jerk and I only like Shostakovich and lengthly folk ballads about wayward women. These dudes probably see it as pure coincidence that they mostly just like art by men. If art by women was better, they’d like that too!
I know why jerks want you to know that they don’t care about Beyoncé. Beyoncé must be one of the most influential women in the world, but her power comes from her dominion over popular culture, and as such it’s easy for culturally elitist dudes to dismiss her and everything she does. As if popular culture doesn’t matter! Beyoncé is a hitherto unheard of level of famous- if she wanted to, I bet she could be President. But her music, and her movies, are mostly enjoyed by women, so jerks don’t take her seriously.
There are legitimate reasons to be circumspect about culture aimed at women. It shapes us in ways that are often seriously negative. Women’s magazines are a perfect example- because they are written and read almost exclusively by women, they have potential to be really subversive and unifying and great for women, but they are not, they just make you ashamed that you are not thinner, wealthier, less hairy, more famous and in possession of more beautiful things. The same goes, kind of, for romantic comedies, which are made for women but often written and directed by men, and put fulfilment through hetero romance on a pedestal. A woman may have a job, friends, family and interests, but the narrative is structured around her meeting and ensnaring a good man, and once that has happened she is complete and the film is over. But the problem is, as a woman, you spend the early years of your life being told that you have to watch these things and read these things, because they are for you; and then at some point you are informed that these things are crap and you have been misled and you have no taste. What are we supposed to do?
I suggest…watch The Mindy Project! The Mindy Project, written by and starring Mindy Kaling, is a kind of wonky take on the romantic comedy – it’s not a jerk, but it doesn’t just uncritically replicate the conventions of the genre. The pilot aired in America last week, and I recommend it enthusiastically, it’s super funny and very endearing. Kaling plays Mindy, a doctor in her early 30s looking for love and trying to get her life on track. She knows what it looks like when you find love and your life is on track because she has seen it in romantic comedies- the episode’s first scenes are of Mindy as a child, teenager and adult staring at a TV, chanting long-memorised movie lines along with Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts. The child-Mindy gets the best line, gleefully chiming, “I’ll have what she’s having!”
The whole situation borrows a little from Bridget Jones’s Diary- a woman in her early 30s resolves to change her life before it’s too late and she dies alone and is discovered weeks later half-eaten by alsatians. But on The Mindy Project this generic narrative of personal transformation is done with great wit and self-awareness, and is mediated through elements of popular culture. Kaling writes her character’s desire for transformation as very earnest but also pretty delusional- she cycles drunk through suburban streets shouting to herself, “I’m Sandra Bullock!”. She tells two potential patients, a non-English speaking woman with no health insurance and her nephew, that she can’t take them on as patients because she’s at a time in her life when she can only do things that represent progress and development, like spinning. She has casual sex with a handsome British doctor- but is he Hugh Grant in About a Boy, or Hugh Grant in real life?
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I think it’s great that Kaling didn’t write her heroine as someone who is slightly flawed but under her glasses, unfashionable clothes or prickly demeanour the picture of ideal womanhood, like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. Mindy is accomplished and successful, but she’s also a mess, excruciatingly self-absorbed and honestly kind of annoying. She does good things, like leaving a date and running to the hospital to deliver a baby to an uninsured migrant, and she does less good things, like giving a nasty speech at her ex-boyfriend’s wedding and then cycling drunkenly into a swimming pool. That is what puts the romantic comedy vibe all askew- Mindy is very, very far from being Sandra Bullock.
I really liked the pilot of The Mindy Project because it valorises culture that is often denigrated because it is for women (or maybe sometimes because it is bad…), but irreverently and with a slightly critical eye. Mindy loves romance and wants her life to be a romantic comedy, and much of the comedy stems from the vast gulf between the world of the Richard Curtis movie and the world that we actually have to live in. Kaling writes great jokes, and the show has a lot of promising minor characters. It’s not revolutionary, and has some slightly uncomfortable bits, but it is breezy and enjoyable, and quite flashy and well put together, especially for a pilot. This must have something to do with an extremely conspicuous product placement deal with Apple- Mindy spends the whole episode with an iPhone in her hand, but it’s used to quite good effect.
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Mindy’s date no-nos
So…don’t be a jerk! Check it out.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
