mook comedies

today husband and i got into a fight debate about whether or not it makes sense to call a guy a 'bitch'. i definitively say yes, and he definitively says no. which got me thinking about pretty much the entire reason for my answer: the mook, which i have been obsessed with ever since i heard about it as a teenager.

in 2001, frontline published a documentary called "the merchants of cool". in it, they coined the term "mook", which refers to the persona mtv created as the cool yet still typical teenage guy. (its counterpart, the "midriff", which is an oversexualized but somehow still innocent and sweet girl--hello mila kunis?--is always lurking nearby.) what defines a mook is "infantile, boorish behavior."

since 2001, mooks have only become more and more prevalent, even having their own special kind of mini genre of movie. “crude and sexual content” pretty much perfectly defines all of these movies. when i think about mooks, here are some actors that come to mind, and a list of the mook movies they have been in (to be fair, i only included movies i have seen):

jonah hill

The Wolf of Wall Street
21 Jump Street
Get Him to the Greek
Funny People
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Superbad
Knocked Up
The 40-Year-Old Virgin 

seth rogen (one description of him onenline was, “Seth Rogen has built a career playing overgrown adolescents.” yep. this is dying to be redemptive, but it's really just not):

22 Jump Street
Neighbors
Funny People
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
50/50
Pineapple Express
Step Brothers
Superbad
Knocked Up
You, Me and Dupree
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Anchorman

paul rudd (who i loathe almost as much as i loathe adam sandler)

This Is 40
Wanderlust
I Love You, Man
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Knocked Up
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Anchorman

adam sandler

there are no movies listed here because adam sandler is the father of what i will call the mook comedy, and there are too many to name. i’ll go ahead and let you google “adam sandler misogynist” so you can just see what you find, but i will take time to disagree with one writer who says that as stupid as sandler is, his “brand of comedy involves no crimes against humanity.” i feel like there's only one reason the author gets to say that, and i'll let you guess what it is. (man. the author is a man.) 

you see, there is a crime against humanity happening in these mook comedies and that's misogyny.

i'm not saying i 100% hate all of these movies, but these guys have almost single-handedly created this generation's lasting, unique contribution to humor: mook comedy. and everyone wonders why there is a huge debate over women being funny or not: the big, blockbusting, mook comedies, which the industry easily favors, are inherently misogynistic and leave no plausibility for female comedians. women are only supposed to be comedic props and foils. (also please note that "bridesmaids", which is usually brought up in that conversation, with its nearly all female cast, uses many of the same tactics that mook comedies do: projectile vomiting, crudeness, general ridiculousness.) (don't get me wrong, i love "bridesmaids".) this is why when my husband tells me leslie knope is literally not funny at all but andy is hilarious, i am not just punching but obliterating so many baby dolphins in my head.

it may not seem super fair to pin it just on these guys, but they are the only persistent enforcers that haven't, in my opinion, shown other/actual artistic merit. jason schwartzman gets a pass because he is tied to the fabulous wes anderson. jason segel gets a pass, maybe almost just because of "the 5 year engagement" (biased). will ferrel is also in many of these movies, but he is too old to really be a mook, and he isn't quite in the club. steve carrell also has one foot in the club (hello michael scott?), but he is also somehow not completely all in.  michael cera should also be on this list, but for some reason he just hasn't been as successful, and not quite sexist enough.

these guys are always acting like teenagers, and it’s in their teens that guys are going through puberty and trying to claim their awesome, heteronormative, male privileged place in M A N H O O D. an obvious part of proving you are a man is proving you are not a woman, which makes logical sense but unfortunately is one of this generation of americans' worse offenses in misogyny.

the entire reason i even started thinking about mook comedies was because i think the mook comedians are actually the first ones who started making it okay to call guys 'bitches'. i went on imdb to find out how many times 'bitch' is said in each of these movies, but what i found was shocking. ”bitch” is usually not listed on the content advisory for these movies because there are so many other, better, more colorful words to count in these movies, and bitch is considered a “minor” and pervasive swear word. (most notably listed is usually the word c---, as in “Get Him to the Greek” when russell brand says to his dad, 'you old c---!') we should probably add "pussy" to this list, because that has become the other favorite way of putting your guy friend down when he's being anything culturally feminine: weak, emotional, timid, or any other emotion or action that fails to prove his manhood in these hilarious, vital, turbulent (sarcasm) times of adolescence.

the mook comedies keep intensifying. take for instance "the wolf of wall street". there’s a reason leo didn’t win an oscar for this movie and that’s because, hm, it’s a glorified mook comedy, even if it is trying to satirize the mook comedy and white male privilege in general. and unfortunately, the oscar voters are 76% men and, on average, over the age of 63. so they’re not as into adolescent mook comedy OR getting called out on male privilege as they are eminent people and history or legend (of the right, conservative, traditional, american, male variety).

unfortunately (or fortunately), this not-so-new but constant use of the word "bitch" by the mooks is coinciding with a move in feminism to take back the word "bitch" and in general to reject misogyny in the media, which is resulting in a convoluted, modern, pretty much non-gendered but still inherently sexist use of the word "bitch".

not all mook movies have an overwhelming, constant background and story arc of misogyny. take for instance the "jackass" movies. but mook comedy is responsible for telling guys of this generation that it's ok--actually, it's hilarious and cool!!--to be a mook and, frankly, a bitch. interesting that women can only call men bitches once men have started calling men bitches.

thanks, mook comedy, for the new use of the already poor word "pussy", for the invention of the friend zone ("if jonah hill and other fat comedians can get with smoking hot women, why can't i??"), and for, really, absolutely nothing but chaos and pain.