When you refuse to punch down for cheap laughs
Or, Lessons from a sex comedy
David Sedaris tells a story about signing up for an Adult-Ed writing class called How to Write Funny after he first moved to New York. The teacher was a crusty older-middle-aged woman who on the first day of class asked her students, “What’s the first rule of writing funny?”
Sedaris answers with the squnched-up expression of someone lacking confidence: “Don’t make fun of anyone who has less power than you?”
“Good heavens, no,” she replies. “Whoever gave you that idea?”
He mimes shock.
“The first rule of writing funny is to be as tasteless as absolutely possible.”
I thought about this story last week after my husband and I went to see the recent release No Hard Feelings, starring Jennifer Lawrence.
This isn’t the kind of movie I usually go for — my last three picks at the theater were The Whale, Women Talking, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. My husband teases me — not unwarranted — about my tendency toward good-for-you social justice movies or heavy dramas.
It’s not that I don’t like comedies, but sometimes it’s hard to find one that doesn’t leave me feeling icky. Especially one billed as a sex comedy.
As a young teen I remember paging through the newspaper for the comics and seeing lurid ads for Private Lessons, Porky’s, Hardbodies, and My Tutor. Long before I ever heard the phrase “male gaze,” or was exposed to feminism, I knew they were not made for me.
The synopsis of No Hard Feelings sounds awful: “On the brink of losing her home, Maddie finds an intriguing job listing: helicopter parents looking for someone to bring their introverted 19-year-old son out of his shell before college. She has one summer to make him a man or die trying.” Gag.
So why would I suggest we pony up good money to see it in the theater?
Two words: Good Boys.
We saw Good Boys when my husband and I spent a long weekend on Catalina Island in 2019. It was our only option, as they showed one new release each week at the island’s lone theater in the historic Avalon Casino. (Streaming killed this fun tradition not long after that.)
I had no idea what to expect. I was just grateful we’d missed some deep-sea horror flick that played the previous week. At least this was a comedy.
I am not usually a laugh-out-loud person; something has to be really funny for me to LOL in my seat. But OMG was this funny. And OMG was it tasteless.
A sixth-grade boy and his friends accidentally steal some Molly from their teenage neighbor, whom they are spying on with the boy’s father’s off-limits drone because they want to learn how to kiss before attending their first boy/girl party. Except the neighbor downs the drone in retaliation, and when they can’t get it back they steal her purse, not knowing there are drugs in it. It goes on from there.
Tastelessness abounds. Sex toys unwittingly used in ways they weren’t intended. A longneck beer smuggled in a boy’s pants. Slapstick pratfalls played for laughs that would send our tween heroes to the hospital if this weren’t Hollywood. The climactic moment is a game of Spin the Bottle, for Chrissakes!
But wait, what did I hear from protagonist Max when he gets an opportunity to kiss his crush Brixlee?
“Can I kiss you?”
I can’t believe my ears — a tasteless teen coming-of age movie whose protagonist thinks tampons are something girls shove up their butts to keep babies from coming out just showed a scene of him seeking consent before touching a girl?
It happened.
I realized on reflection (after we caught our breath from laughing) that the reason I didn’t feel icky after Good Boys was none of these characters were used for cheap laughs. Despite the flimsy plot and oh-so-tasteless gags, the director, Gene Stupnitsky, treated all the characters like real people that we could laugh with, not at. Even minor ones like Brixlee, who gets maybe one line in the movie. She is more than Max’s fantasy object — she’s a real girl who deserves the agency of saying yes or no to being kissed.
In other words, Stupnitsky never punches down.
When I learned No Hard Feelings was directed by the same guy, I had to go. Would it be tasteless and funny? Or tasteless and icky?
Reader, I was not disappointed.
It’s still tasteless. Lawrence takes on some of the funniest physical humor I’ve seen in a long time, particularly in one nighttime beach scene (I won’t spoil it for you). She invades a pre-Princeton party in a sequined prom dress and gets punched in the throat. She gets maced. Both Lawrence’s character Maddie, as well as Percy, played by Andrew Barth Feldman, end up on the hoods of moving cars for laughs. There are cringeworthy seduction scenes — in one of which a character breaks out in a rash.
But No Hard Feelings turns the overdone older woman/younger man trope on its head. For one thing, Percy is nineteen, not the fifteen-year-old statutory rape victim of Private Lessons (Tagline: “What happened to him should happen to you.” Ewwww!)
For another, the story is told from Maddie’s perspective. Maddie is nobody’s role model, but has her reasons for following up on the crazy Craigslist ad from Percy’s parents (played hilariously by Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) to “date” their son to bring him out of his shell before he starts at Princeton in the fall.
Maddie is flawed for sure, but she’s treated as a real person, not just some teenage boy’s fantasy. The movie even passes the Bechdel Test1! And sexual ethics and consent are modeled again!
In addition to another “Can I kiss you” moment, there’s a scene where a character backs off from sex with another character after realizing they are drunk. And it feels organic to the plot, not a wink and a nod to political correctness. Even Percy’s hovering parents are treated as well-meaning, if misguided.
As with Good Boys, the whole picture is infused with a kind of sweetness. Not syrupy-sweet confection, but the sweetness that comes from recognizing our collective humanity and realizing it can be something to laugh at with each other.
Does funny have to be tasteless? No. But these movies are proof you can be tasteless without being mean-spirited2.
To me punching down is making fun of someone who has less power, and that’s not always the obvious person. It could be someone who’s not in the room, or even a character you made up. It can take courage to say, “I’m not willing to do that.”
What I’m reading
I recently listened to the audiobook of Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful3. What a stunner.
I think I’m the only person on the planet that hadn’t read her poem Good Bones, so did not recognize the title as a line from the poem. But if you didn’t know Smith as a poet before, reading this memoir would show you how a poet writes prose.
“Life, like a poem, is a series of choices,” she writes, and the choices Smith makes in You Could Make This Place Beautiful are front and center. She frames the story of her marriage’s collapse and subsequent bitter divorce in a series of lyric segments that break the fourth wall of memoir, pointing out conventions of plot and form as she’s writing them. She refers overtly to the reader’s expectations, addressing several segments to an imaginary audience, beginning, “Some might say …”
I thought it was brilliant. This book is one of a growing number of fiercely honest interrogations of marriage and relationship that have come out in recent years, including Blow Your House Down, Foreverland, and American Honey. It’s incisive, bittersweet, and ultimately hopeful. I can’t recommend it enough.
For more Maggie Smith, check out the interview
recorded with her earlier this year on the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, Episode 365. They talk about roller skates, that 3 a.m. voice, and the writing of You Could Make This Place Beautiful.There you have it, my friends. Have you been pleasantly surprised by a raunchy comedy? I really liked Booksmart, and have my eye on the new road trip comedy Joy Ride. Have any recommendations for me?
Are you a Substack writer?✍️
Would Be Your Own Hero resonate with your readers? If so I’d love a recommendation. Substack doesn’t use algorithms, so your recommendation would go far in helping others find me here.
Go to your Writer Dashboard (mine is shown below), and under the Recommendations menu item click the Manage button, then Add Recommendation. Search for Be Your Own Hero, and please write a short blurb about why you are recommending me to your readers. A few words or one short sentence would mean a lot. Thank you! 🙏
To pass the Bechdel Test, a movie must have two named women-identifying characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. It’s a low bar, but you’d be amazed how many famous movies don’t pass. Here Maddie and Sara talk about Sara’s family having to move away from Montauk.
For an insightful and entertaining take on this movie, I recommend the YouTube video Jim and Rob Overanalyze No Hard Feelings. A little on the long side, but watch at 1.25 speed and you’ll be fine ;-) Definitely wait until you’ve seen the movie though, because there are spoilers.
Great review, Louise! And thank you so much for your kind words about our podcast on this flick *blushing*
Rob
P.S. We shouted your review out on our show the other night - here's a timecoded link to it :-)
https://www.youtube.com/live/CtFmT554rvY?feature=share&t=1042
The early 80s was so contradictory. You can be anything you want to be! Especially if you want to be a blond tutor!