CinÉireann Issue 8 | Page 33

The teenage comedy has a history of gender-related issues that extend beyond overt objectifiation of the female characters. An entire generation of young people grew up on the comedies of John Hughes, to the point that even the blockbuster Spider-Man: Homecoming might be seen as an extended homage to his work. However, Hughes' films also cemented certain uncomfortable archetypes and clichés; the emasculated Ducky from Sixteen Candles is the patron saint of what a modern strand of angry and entitled young men describe as "the friend zone", while Bender spends most of The Breakfast Club sexually harassing Claire. It is no surprise that Molly Ringwald wrote an extended article in The New Yorker this April, exploring Hughes' complicated legacy in the era of #MeToo.

These attitudes towards sex and gender are not mere a product of the eighties. They carried over to the resurrection of the teenage sex comedy during the late nineties, where female characters were rarely better defined than they were during the genre's heyday in the late seventies and into the eighties. Alyson Hannigan's character of Michelle Flaherty in American Pie lacks the pop cultural recognition of Eugene Levy's awkward father or Seann William Scott's messed-up Stifler, reduced to a single punchline, to say nothing of the use of Shannon Elizabeth as a sexy foreign exchange student. Movies like Sex Drive and Eurotrip treated their female characters as literal targets for the male leads to reach, the end points on journeys filled with crass jokes and humiliating punchlines. These women had little agency in their narratives, existing like Princess Peach waiting patiently for Mario to arrive at her castle.

However, recent years have seen an interesting shift within these sorts of crass juvenile comedies, and in particular how they approach gender.

It should be noted that it exists in a broader cultural context of comedy's embrace of funny women. The past few years have seen an embrace of diversity within the broad grossout comedy subgenre. Bridesmaids proved that it was possible to produce a female-led comedy that could devote an entire sequence to an extended gag about diarrhea, that women could deliver on broad bodily function humour just as skillfully as their male counterparts. Bridesmaids served as a launching pad for actors like Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, who would go on to anchor other female-led comedies like The Heat, Spy, Ghostbusters, The Boss, The Happytime Murders. More recently, Girl's Trip demonstrated that this sort of comedy could easily be carried by four black women.

Of course, the studio comedy still has issues with how it approaches female characters, even if its charactersiation of female leads is getting slightly better. Actors like Rose Byrne and Rachel McAdams do sterling work in supporting roles in films like Bad Neighbours or Game Night, adding a bit of flavour to their characters. However, even allowing for the increased nuance afforded to their characters, both actors are playing women who fill the archetypal role of "slightly more grounded wife" to the zany comedic lead. Modern studio comedies are more willing than their antecedents to allow their female lead as an enthusiastic partner in crime rather than a stern killjoy, but there is clearly a lot more to be done. Byrne and McAdams are in the unfortunate position of often being much better than the roles that they are awarded.

However, within this broader transition in how studio comedies are approaching female characters and performers, there is an intriguing shift in how juvenile sex comedies are handling the issue of sex. There is something surprisingly nuanced and progressive in how grossout comedies like Bad Neightbours 2 and Blockers handle the issues of teenage sexuality, and specifically the long-standing double-standards applied to female characters in contrast to their male counterparts.

Popular culture has long been afraid of female sexual agency. It would require more space than is currently available to explain the history and the mechanics of that anxiety, but it seems through pop culture in a number of telling and revealing ways. Writers and directors frequently temper the sexuality of their female leads, particularly in contrast to their male leads. Kathryn Janeway was the first female lead

CinÉireann / June 2018 33