The American Spectator : Young Adult

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Young Adult

By James Bowman on 2.13.12 @ 6:02AM

"The real me" isn't all he's cracked up to be.

Once when I remonstrated with a young man of my acquaintance about his laziness and want of industry, he replied: "But being lazy is who I am!" We live in the age of "who I am," sometimes varied as "the real me." The popularity of the conceit may owe something to the political awakening of homosexuals, who have been historically used to keeping quiet about their sexual orientation. As part of the process of nerving themselves to go public about it (or "come out of the closet"), the idea of "who I am" or "the real me" has been immensely useful to them. But the purpose of the conceit is in its essence no different than it was for my lazy young friend. That is, it is designed for self-justification. That by which one chooses to identify oneself cannot be, on this thinking, wrong or mistaken or something to be reformed or ameliorated. If it is essential to their very existence, to who they are, then that existential truth must be accepted by anyone not intending, like some tyrant or cruel oppressor, to deny or negate that existence.

Also influential in the propagation of the ideology of "the real me" was the children's album, book, and TV special titled "Free to be you and me," produced by Marlo Thomas and the Ms. Foundation for Women back in the seventies, which taught a whole generation of American children at the early identity-forming stages progressive ideas about what was -- and, crucially, what was not -- culturally approvable versions of who they were. Thus when football hero Roosevelt Grier sang of how "It's All Right to Cry," he was also subliminally teaching that it was not all right not to cry, or to suppress one's tears, as little boys had been taught to do for generations, in the interest of "being a man." The suppression of one "stereotype" involved the creation of another, politically correct one.

One of the songs from this album, "When We Grow Up," sung by Diana Ross, is played over the closing credits of Young Adult, and its refrain, "We don't have to change at all," is a neat summing up of the movie's message. I'm not too fond even of movie messages with which I agree, but I wouldn't have minded this one if I had thought that the film-makers -- screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman -- had been capable of appreciating the irony of "We don't have to change at all" and seen that this supposed freedom not to change means being imprisoned in the self. Not only do we not have to change at all, we have not to change at all. There are hints, here and there in the movie, of the self-awareness demonstrated by Ms. Cody and Mr. Reitman in their earlier collaboration, Juno of 2007, but the sinister ideology of "Free to be you and me" is too strong for them in the end. The selfish, nasty, unattractive qualities of their heroine, Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), are treated as her ready-made destiny, as impossible to be changed or tampered with as her much more pleasing appearance.

Indeed, much less so. Mavis, a thirty-something divorcée who ghostwrites romantic fiction intended for young adults, is very good at making herself look even more attractive than nature has already made her. Feeling vaguely dissatisfied with her life and hearing that her high-school boyfriend, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), has recently become a father, she decides to return to her home town of Mercury, Minnesota, to take him away from his wife and family. Her putting on her war-paint for this struggle with a less-attractive rival (Elizabeth Reaser) is a recurrent motif in the film and suggests just one of the ways in which outward beauty betokens an inward ugliness, part of which consists in the inability (or unwillingness) to change.

This self-imprisonment she shares, as we eventually discover, in crucial ways with Mercury and with her fellow Mercury Injuns, now re-named the Indians for reasons of political correctness. The first person she meets on her return is a pudgy, nerdy high-school classmate named Matt (Patton Oswalt) who used to have the locker next to hers but whom she only remembers as "the hate crime guy." Matt, it seems, had been badly beaten and, in fact, permanently crippled by some jocks from Mavis's more popular set who had thought, mistakenly, that he was gay. "When they found out I wasn't really gay, then it wasn't a hate crime anymore," he says ruefully. It's a clever line but one that smells a bit of the lamp, as they used to say. We can more easily imagine Ms. Cody writing it than we can some real-life version of Matt saying it.

At first, Young Adult seems to be a fresh and original take on a classic sort of American movie in which a big city sophisticate returns to her small town roots to discover a more authentic and fulfilling mode of life, as in Sweet Home Alabama. Matt plays the role of chorus and gives voice to the sense of decency and social responsibility that used to characterize small-town America in Hollywood's lens and that we still expect to act as at least something of a corrective to Mavis's cynicism and predatory wickedness. But gradually we realize that Matt is as much a prisoner of his self and his past and of the bitterness both have created in him as she is, if not more so. His is a stunted growth that ends up only reinforcing the movie's basic idea that people don't really change very much and probably shouldn't even try to change.

Since character development is thus taken off the table, the movie turns instead to a satire on the absurdities of young adult fiction and the romantic fantasy world that it encourages young people to live in. Romance itself is seen as little more than a discreditable dodge, a cover for naked self-interest, to which even this otherwise cynical purveyor of the stuff may be susceptible. Thus Mavis says to Matt, who naturally looks askance at her determination to win Buddy away from his wife and child, "Don't you get it? Love conquers all. Haven't you seen The Graduate?" We're in a different Hollywood tradition than we expected, it seems. And, throughout, we hear voiceover of Mavis composing her latest (and, it seems, last) romance in the series and are invited to draw the obvious parallel between her story and that of her glamorous but, alas, fictional alter ego, Kendall Strickland.

Kendall is a girl whom Mavis describes as having "a gracious, effortless beauty that glowed from within." Glowing from within is of course the opposite of what Mavis's beauty does -- a point underlined for us by juxtaposing the voiceover description of Kendall with Mavis's dolling herself up for her date with the long lost Buddy -- a rather hapless stand-in for Ryan, the boy from Waverley Prep that Kendall Strickland is in love with. But the final turn to "Free to Be You and Me" can only suggest that the filmmakers are unable to think of anything else to say about this desperately sad woman whose beauty, instead of glowing, pales and sickens from within other than a Stuart Smalley-like, "That's OK." I would like to see in this and the concluding song an ironic critique of the "who I am" culture, but I just don't think that, with all her talents, Ms. Cody was up to that. She, herself, I fear, inhabits the same dark prison of self that her heroine does.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (31) | Leave a comment

Timothy L. Pennell| 2.13.12 @ 6:14AM

I think they call this: "Phoning it in".

Publius| 2.14.12 @ 6:08AM

One of your more readable columns...
Ms.Theron is a nasty piece of work if you know her biography...

Appleby| 2.13.12 @ 7:42AM

One of the more interesting things I have learned from a lifetime of reading is that one can pretty well tell what an author looks like by the type of character s/he writes about. Thus Gordon Dickson, who wrote the fabulous "Dorsai" stories about tall, muscular, perpetually young, perfectly proportioned and fit twin warrior brothers proved to be a short, rotund, middle-aged, bald and amiable man. People write about what they find missing in their lives; a lonely woman writes romance novels -- a hungry girl (Laura Ingalls Wilder) writes books that revel in descriptions of tables filled with massive amounts of food ("Farmer Boy", her book about her husband Almonzo's childhood, always makies my mouth water.)

In one of the Anne of Green Gables series of books, an elderly man who lives next door to her who is extremely plain-spoken (rude) says amiably when called on it by Anne, "It's just the way I am, you mustn't take it personally." Anne says that if he went around poking people with a hatpin and said, "You mustn't take it personally, it's just the way I am," how would people look at that?

For those of us who were brought up to believe adults are different from children and that adulthood is something to aspire to, the massive pool of large babies coming up behind us makes us wonder why babyhood is "who I am" for them. Who's going to burp them and change their diapers after Mom and Dad are dead?

All American American| 2.13.12 @ 8:41AM

Why, the Nanny State of course, which without a legion of adult babies could not exist. It will change feed them, change them, burp them, entertain them, and give them allowance.

Tina B| 2.13.12 @ 10:18AM

Waaaaaaaaaaaah............Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Feed me, I'm hungry.

Volunteer| 2.13.12 @ 8:40AM

I believe you're missed the point entirely. It isn't that Mavis couldn't or shouldn't change -- it's that people as awful as she is rarely do. She isn't going back to the Mini-Apple at the end with her miserable life affirmed: she just thinks she is. Her character is revealed to the audience, not to her.

The movie turns the usual movie formula on its head. In an ordinary movie, the scene at the end between Mavis and Matt's sister would have led to an epiphany for Mavis, or at least a moment of self-awareness. Here, she goes to the brink, and then rejects it with a cruel put-down of the rather pathetic sister, offended by the suggestion that Matt's sister is anything like her. She goes away at the end with the truth of her life exposed (her ex-boyfriend and his wife feel sorry for her), but refusing to see it.

I suspect, sadly, that much of the audience missed the point as you did. The self-centered, immature young adults in the typical movie audience were probably on Mavis' side all the way through, and saw the end as an affirmation of the good things in her life (which the movie clearly showed were -- nothing). And like Mavis (and like millions of self-absorbed young people), they probably thought "The Graduate" had a romantic ending, ignoring the final shot of Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross sitting on the bus, triumphantly together -- and having no clue why. Their "romance" is just a rejection of everything else, not an affirmation of love. "Now what?" their blank faces seem to say, as we hear the same music that played over Hoffman's arrival in L.A.: "Hello, darkness, my old friend..." (For the perfect take on "The Graduate," I suggest Whit Stillman's "Barcelona," which also includes the clearest explanation ever of "subtext.")

In short, "Young Adult" is a more intelligent, adult movie than "Juno," because it exposes Mavis' character without and false hope or compromise. It's as if Cody and Reitman had made a movie about the Jason Bateman character from "Juno."

PolishKnight| 2.13.12 @ 9:26AM

I liked the ending of the film for that reason too. Many films insist upon having a message, a happy ending, or closing up plot lines. In real life, that doesn't happen much of the time. Heck, that may be why people love going to the movies: They get to feel a sense of closure and clarity that's lacking in their own lives. There is rarely a happily ever after in real life. There are new problems and challenges to replace old ones.

Seek| 2.13.12 @ 11:10AM

Having seen the movie about two months ago when first released, I concur here. The point was that "young adults" very often are more young than adult. It properly depicts Charlize Theron's character, though rooted in understandable motive -- we all want the one we can't have -- as reprehensible. The film was a witty black comedy, ultimately more satisfying than the previous Reitman & Cody collaboration, "Juno."
If only Bowman were more interested in reviewing movies than (presumed) motives, he would have raised his thumb as well.

andrewtex| 2.13.12 @ 9:45AM

I must concur with Volunteer that the reviewer has missed the point entirely. The film is about a delusional character who lives in the past and ignores the present and is unable to change. It also completely reverses the common (movie)notion that life is universally more exciting and more meaningful at the center of the action. The folks of Mercury are quite fulfilled and enjoy their lives, as opposed to Mavis, who lives in a purportedly wonderful place and whose life is a wreck of her own making. The delusions of the sister who wants to come to the big city at the end reinforce this point: happiness is what you make of your circumstances. A change of setting is not a guaranteed fix.

Skippy| 2.13.12 @ 4:01PM

"A change of setting is not a guaranteed fix."
In addiction recovery we call that "doing a geographic".
We leave everything that was causing us difficulty behind...except the true problem.
Ourselves.

Say Baptist| 2.13.12 @ 10:20AM

Circa 1906 Henri Bergson coined the phrases "Elan Vitale" and "Amoure Propre." wWho knew that sixty years later we'd be bitten by "Self Esteem." In the 60's people were forever sticking their fingers in your eye and saying "see I'm not a hypocrite" "OK now get your finger out of my eye>" Aside from reviving "Code Duello,"I can't forsee a remedy.

cicero| 2.13.12 @ 11:39AM

Across the hall from my law office are two offices populated by teams of psychiatrists. All day long there is a steady stream of (mostly) women, mostly young and middle aged, who find life too confusing and undecipherable to cope with. On occasion, they will be dragging toddlers and children of various ages with them. Is life in these United States really that hard? Maybe we should tell our young that the contemplation of one's navel is not a worthwhile pasttime, and engaging oneself with the real world has its merits. In other words, it's not all about you.

michigander_sandusky| 2.13.12 @ 2:46PM

Amen cicero! I think it should be standard operating procedure for every American to go to India or the Philippines and spend a few weeks in the urban slums and/or rural areas. It is an eye-opening experience that helps one appreciate the blessings of the USA. I thought I knew what thankfulness was until I went to those places. I didn't!

Ron| 2.13.12 @ 1:07PM

Paraphrasing from "Wyatt Earp":

"Life is about loss...But we don't use it as an excuse to destroy ourselves...Even you, Wyatt."

Merry Crystal| 2.13.12 @ 1:16PM

Ah, the fixed self story---this is all silly, of course, because we all die. That’s some fixation!

“Man’s identification with his idea of himself gives him a specious and precarious sense of permanence. For this idea is relatively fixed, being based upon carefully selected memories of his past, memories which have a preserved and fixed character. Social convention encourages the fixity of the idea because the very usefulness of symbols depends upon their stability. Convention therefore encourages him to associate his idea of himself with equally abstract and symbolic roles and stereotypes, since these will help him to form an idea of himself, which will be definite and intelligible. But to the degree that he identifies himself with the fixed idea, he becomes aware of ‘life; as something which flows past him---faster and faster as he grows older, as his idea becomes more rigid, more bolstered with memories. The more he attempts to clutch the world, the more he feels it as a process in motion.

On one occasion Ma-tsu and Po-chang were out for a walk, when they saw some wild geese flying past.

‘What are they?’, asked Ma-tsu.

‘They’re wild geese.’ Said Po-chang.

‘Where are they going?’ demanded Ma-tsu.

Po-chang replied, ‘They’ve already flow away.’

Suddenly Ma-tsu grabbed Po-chang by the nose and twisted it so that he cried out in pain.

‘How’, shouted Ma-tsu, ‘could they ever have flown away?’

This was the moment of Po-chang’s awakening.”

Alan Watts, from “The Way of Zen”, page 122, 1957

Bill| 2.13.12 @ 2:46PM

I suppose if Po-Chang had just said "I don't know," there would have been no story. But maybe I just don't get it.

Bill| 2.13.12 @ 2:47PM

Po-Chang probably should have twisted Ma-tsu's nose when he looked at flying geese and asked "What are they?"

Merry Crystal| 2.13.12 @ 6:33PM

Context---Po-chang was a disciple of the spiritual master, Ma-tsu. He was with the latter to reach the same state of Enlightenment Ma-tsu enjoyed, so he was BLESSED with the personal painful attention.

I'll "explain" the lesson---by tying intense pain with the edifying question, "How could they ever fly away?", Ma-tsu was able to cut through Po-chang's everyday reality, and realize Enlightenment.

Just as the geese could never "fly away", in that even though they were "out of sight", because wherever they went, that's where they were, that's the Enlightening Truth for all, even Ma-tsu.

Enlightenment can't be ATTAINED---it is always and already the case. He "got" the paradox, bodily!

Paul McGrath| 2.13.12 @ 6:50PM

Although it is really not possible to express in letters and words the "bodily" sound of a 230 pound middle-aged American man passing gas four hours after consuming several pounds of food consisting of cheeseburgers, french-fries, and beer, I will try to do so anyway:

"PHHBBBBBBBBYCCCCCCHCSSSTCHKCKTAKCTAKCTA. "

I also managed to end my statement with the quotation mark with which it began.

Bill| 2.14.12 @ 8:50AM

Wow, the message of the story was hardly worth the telling of it, much less the explaining.

But thanks anyway.

CrackerHound| 2.13.12 @ 1:33PM

I am now thorougly depressed.

William Wallace| 2.13.12 @ 2:13PM

This is the worst chick flick I can remember seeing in some time. Of 2 dozen people in the theater, I was the only man (my wife prevailed upon me to go)
What a boring, useless movie. If I had only had a Swiss Army knife so I could open a vein or nick an artery...

Michael| 2.13.12 @ 2:59PM

"We all dream of being a child again..event the worse of us....perhaps the worse most of all." The Village Elder, "The Wild Bunch", 1969.

DC| 2.13.12 @ 3:02PM

The 5 minutes I spend per month reading movie reviews like this is I think more than enough time/resources to devote to any movie made by the Hollywood totalitarian minstrels--Leni Riefenstahl's worthy successors in the glorification of the tyranny of Il Duce Nero. Every penny spent at the movieplex is more money in the pockets of these vile jackasses, who produce predictable garbage year in, year out, and somehow sucker normal folk into paying $10 per ticket to sit there and be indoctrinated, so that their money can then be recycled into the campaign coffers of Waxman, Pelosi, Reid, and Il Duce himself.
Just a reminder: the country is in $15T of debt and growing; Iran and the Norks are busy making plans to nuke Israel; Hilary Effing Clinton is Sec'y of State, promoting U.S. interests abroad (meaning, slavishly fomenting the active surrender of the U.S. to whatever dictator chooses to mock us); we'll soon be not only paying for indigents' and illegals' health care, but their abortions as well, whether we like it or not (because Commisara Sebelius decrees that it be so), and we're worried about what some Hollywood slut does and in how many ways she publicly debases herself (and be honest, how much skin she shows) to (maybe) deliver some clever directors' "message" to us about empty, Godless young adult sluts' lives?
Folks, buy guns, land, and freeze dried food. People like these directors are going to be willingly propagandizing you onto cattle cars soon. Best not to add to their war chests.

Seek| 2.13.12 @ 3:18PM

In other words, you didn't see the movie. News flash: There was nothing "totalitarian" about it. Punishing imagined "sluts" -- yeah, you'd fit in well with the Taliban, come to think of it.

Reek| 2.13.12 @ 5:40PM

Punishing imagined "Taliban" -- yeah, you'd fit in well with the sluts, come to think of it.

James Solbakken| 2.13.12 @ 7:16PM

Just because the Taliban murders sluts for religious reasons doesn't mean being a slut is good, dummy. Women who act slutty suffer for it no matter what the Taliban does about it. Why are you so stupid that you didn't know that?

Seek| 2.14.12 @ 6:57PM

You miss the point, dum-dum. Making reckless accusations of women being loose "sluts" is the stock and trade of religious extremists everywhere. It's despicable that so many females in free societies have to bear the undeserved stigma. I'll grant that the Jewish and Christian version of this accusation represents an improvement over the Islamic version. So what? Mussolini and Franco represented an improvment over Hitler. Taliban or no Taliban, the comments of "DC" were genuinely hateful.

albert constantine jr| 2.13.12 @ 9:59PM

If the Taliban came out in favor of raising taxes on those who make more than $250,000 per year and a 30% capital gains tax on everyone making over $1,000,000 per annum, would Obama negotiate peace in Afghanistan with them? Wait, I don’t think we have to wait for the poll on that one.

The Bruce| 2.14.12 @ 2:01AM

Not only would he "negotiate" peace in Afghanistan, I'd bet that Afghanistan would be fast-tracked as a U. S. Territory with a swift-vote towards state-hood.

And I'm sure he'd even keep in place the Sharia and occasional stoning, to boot. Now just imagine his internal rapture over "Honor" killings...

There certainly can't be too many stones propping up the Presidential Mound, can there?