[PLEASUREMAN]

I recently saw the movie It's Complicated--what can I say, I'm married, and it was my bad judgement that caused us to sit through a showing of The Ghost Writer, so I had no right to complain.

It's Complicated isn't just another crass Nancy Meyers comedy about being a divorced middle aged woman over whom highly successful and wealthy men have cockfights, although it does have possibly the most flagrant Mary Sue scene in modern cinema, in which Alec Baldwin passionately praises Meryl Streep's animal sexuality and lovemaking prowess while cheating on his hot thirtysomething wife.

It's also a complete catalogue of everything vital to the SWPL set, including but not limited to: a cheerful yet infantilized brood of attractive young adult children, professional people who run their own businesses, gourmet bakeries with sets borrowed from the Food Network, casual attitudes toward marijuana, characters who actually say things like "I'm sorry for betraying your trust"--to their kids, people who live on atomized neighborless spreads, aimless home remodeling projects, Apple laptops (now so commonplace that the sight of a glaring Apple logo somewhere onscreen may be a technique taught to all cinematographers), middle-aged people behaving without a shred of dignity, and stories about family and relationships so that none of the characters ever has a reason to leave his narcissistic cocoon.

As such I found the movie fascinating, for here Nancy Meyers leaves nothing to chance. If you see this movie you may walk out of it with an irresistable urge to chain a liberal arts major to the back of a pickup and re-enact James Byrd, Jr.'s tour of scenic East Texas. Such savagery is not encouraged here, and there are a few insights to be gained from a closer look at this wildly masturbatory film representation of the SWPL lifestyle.

What directors like Nancy Meyers give SWPLs are their ideal lifestyles and ideal self image. Money and status are never concerns, nor for that matter is success in business. Such benefits are simply what SWPLs have coming to them by virtue of their intelligence, open-mindedness, and love of novelty. It is simply a given that a SWPL will be able to expertly manage a construction company, a niche bakery (as if another one could possibly be crammed into a SWPL habitat), or a law firm without ever seeming to do more than delegate responsibilities and assign vague tasks to conscientious-looking employees. (The SWPL fantasy job is actually that of generic manager.)

Likewise, one's children behave like expertly tooled Japanese androids, their chief purpose to lend smiling (or every now and then dew-eyed) support and friendship. In some respects a SWPL's children are his true peers, perhaps even his superiors in a role-reversed arrangement (part of the fantasy of this role reversal involves never having the responsibility of a parent).

As far as personal growth, the SWPL professional is deeply committed to the therapeutic process, but like his pleas for forgiveness which do not come from penitence or remorse but from unhappiness with pleasure denied, his therapist is more like a paid companion. Paid, that is, to listen to his one-sided complaints and agonies and offer judgement-free suggestions for future onanistic introspection.

Religion? Disagreement? Those opinionated bourgeoisie? They hardly exist at all. The ideal SWPL environment is sheltered from any such mixing. Nothing but SWPLs exist in the foreground, as it should be.

It may seem a bit much to pile all this atop a singularly unambitious movie that has more in common with 30 minute pizza than with art or even just thoughtful filmmaking. One does not expect this sort of movie to shift its focus to the malaise of the bourgeoisie, or ponder a philisophical question. It's Complicated is only the exponent of the sickened culture it amuses. This is the mirrored gaze, forever turning into itself.

[Probably Not]

Nancy Meyers films seem like the Sailer rule writ large (i.e., that come the revolution she imagines society as ordered in such a way that women like herself will seem hotter). The guy gushing over Meryl Streep's lovemaking sounds like a case in point. Middle aged women love to have this fantasy about themselves - that their sexual expertise trumps youth and beauty.

[PLEASUREMAN]

Probably Not, 14 March 2010 - 12:55 PM:

Nancy Meyers films seem like the Sailer rule writ large (i.e., that come the revolution she imagines society as ordered in such a way that women like herself will seem hotter). The guy gushing over Meryl Streep's lovemaking sounds like a case in point. Middle aged women love to have this fantasy about themselves - that their sexual expertise trumps youth and beauty.

At least this time we were spared full frontal nudity of Meyers' harridanish stand-in.

[BushrodButtram]

I'm not quite sure where this "older women are great lovers" meme comes from. It sounds implausible. If nothing else, sex is much more likely to be painful after menopause.

[PLEASUREMAN]

BushrodButtram, 14 March 2010 - 06:35 PM:

I'm not quite sure where this "older women are great lovers" meme comes from. It sounds implausible. If nothing else, sex is much more likely to be painful after menopause.

I guess that is related to the "cougar" meme which hardly makes any sense until you realize there are probably a number of half-gay metrosexual males who can't make New York/San Fran rents without a little help from a well-off divorcee. And of course they already bring their own lube for most sexual encounters.

[miles]

If we have a real -deep- recession or even a small depression, I imagine swpl-esque businesses will get hit particularily hard. Government borrowing that ends up supporting so many non-profits (look up "The Carbon War Room" sometime---for a laugh), psuedo-charities and quasi-governmental agencies provide employment for hordes of swpls. Swpl women in particular garner much employment due to gender quotas at various corporations that basically pay them professional money for being executive assistants whose main function is to show up at various PR-events wearing company logos like: check-signings at schools, libraries, habitat-for-humanity house-sites, humane associations, domestic violence shelters, and showing up and picking up trash in photo-ops at local public parks. Our company has a little horde of exec assistants and other seemingly unproductive creatures who go out and do this. They are awfully well-paid to be doing pretty much nothing of value, but we have to have them (quotas). So many people attending colleges also employ a large number of swpls as professors, assistants, and "administrators". I wonder if our treasury-buyers appreciate us using their money in this way, and does it ever make them despair of getting it back? I mean, America is heading to a place where later this century whites might be equalled in number by blacks and hispanics. If I held a great deal of U.S. debt, I might be worried about the specter of not being paid back.


Those little bakeries and toy-ice-cream/candy parlors in our mini-bohemian villages located in the burb's in particular are pretty comic to witness. Paying $5 for a cup of coffee when you have a home-equity loan and a second mortgage is historically sensationally cavalier, yet we have bazillions of people doing just that.


TV/Movie entertainment media really do inspire a lot of "monkey-see, monkey-do" in young people though. Cynical older people like myself see through it, but I remember a time when I eagerly read movie-reviews of "important" new movies during my senior year in high school and first few years of attending college. One can see, how wrapped in that cocoon, how so many kids can wind up buying into that lifestyle and attendant set of cultural-attitudes. Its practically marketed to them by the entertainment media and also parroted to them by their verbally persuasive, seemingly successful professors. If the bubble really burst many of these people would be hard-pressed to find any employment. As long as we can borrow, it will go on, after that taxes can be raised only so much before really hurting the economy. Something will have to give, military spending or entitlements at some point unless we figure out a way to create a lot more wealth to tax (bring back the industrial-base, cheap nuclear energy).

[oni]

miles, 17 March 2010 - 01:22 PM:

Those little bakeries and toy-ice-cream/candy parlors in our mini-bohemian villages located in the burb's in particular are pretty comic to witness. Paying $5 for a cup of coffee when you have a home-equity loan and a second mortgage is historically sensationally cavalier, yet we have bazillions of people doing just that.

You have to applaud those places, even the ones that sell dog treats or cupcakes. It may be an education for many SWPLs that real businesses don't just involve standing around being 'creative', making occasional irrelevant decisions, and pursuing your social life -- but at least it involves doing something that isn't staring at a computer screen or sucking the government tit.

[PLEASUREMAN]

The question is, where will their customer base come from when the population is mostly nogs and Mexicans, and the SWPL managerial class has finished raping the rest of the dwindling white collar workforce (they play that game very seriously--outsourcing, labor dilution, permatemps, H1Bs, etc).

My impression from knowing a few of these types is that they run their businesses with that very managerial attitude, i.e. hoarding as much for themselves and paying their workforce as little as possible, which is contrary I believe to the bourgeois entrepreneurial ethic of the recent past (or at least contrary to its sustainable practice). The survival rate is not great because who needs another indifferent fantasy bakery? So I am not convinced that many of the people who run these short-lived enterprises learn anything beyond "life's not fair!"

Miles is right, the profit-taking that SWPLs do in their various useless executive positions is obscene. The executive staff of a charity (almost always people who are well-off) should take no salary, but wouldn't you know it, the opposite is true. (And if you've ever taken a contract with a volunteer org, you'll know that except for their own salaries they are as tight as any Jew.) Obama's wife held this kind of bogus job (likely for funneling kickbacks) and was paid a very nice six figure salary for doing basically nothing but attending meetings and running her poorly educated mouth.

It is in the DNA of the managerial class to turn everything they touch into a winner-take-all scenario. Could a real bakery owner paying her staff a living wage afford to live in Meryl Streep's pastoral spread (with a massive expansion of an already large home being planned at great evident expense)? That's the attitude we're up against: I've got mine, fuck you, prole.

Edit: Why, one might add, is she even expanding her basically unoccupied home? This is being planned after the last of her fake children has moved out. But this act of building on to an empty home is symbolic of the swollen gluttony that plagues this sort of person.