Social Conservatism for the Real World

From the Times' Judd Apatow profile:

Both of the films Apatow has directed offer up the kind of conservative morals the Family Research Council might embrace — if the humor weren’t so filthy. In “Virgin,” the title character is saving himself for true love. “Knocked Up,” which opens on June 1, revolves around a good-hearted doofus who copes with an unplanned pregnancy by getting a job and eliminating the bong hits. In each of the films, the hero is nearly led astray by buddies who tempt with things like boxes of porn, transvestite hookers and an ideology about the ladies possibly learned from scanning Maxim while scarfing down Pop-Tarts. By the end, Apatow exposes the friends as well meaning but comically pathetic and steers his men toward doing the right thing.

I'm in the midst of writing my Knocked Up review for the next NR, so I want to keep most of my powder dry on this topic, but suffice it to say that any social conservative who wants to know how to connect with "the kids" in an era when TNR staffers volunteer as extras in "erotic films" and evangelical teens are losing their virginity earlier than mainline Protestants and Catholics ought to be locked in a room and forced to watch Apatow's movies for an afternoon. (And I'd be happy to be locked in there with him.)

Comments

I've been tempted to rent the 40-Year-Old-Virgin because I've heard that, as you and the Times say, the film is in reality subversively pro-virginity, but I've also heard that the humor is REALLY filthy, involving, for example, graphic jokes about bestiality, so I have refrained. It's one thing for a film to have mildly risque jokes about forms of sex that are normal in form even if immoral in context, but I don't want to fill my head with distubring images of things that never would have occurred to me otherwise.

Posted by James Kabala | May 30, 2007 9:14 PM

Also, I don't get the joke (which I've seen in ads) where Carell shouts "Kelly Clarkson!" when he is in pain due to having his body hair ripped off.

Posted by James Kabala | May 30, 2007 9:22 PM

Also, I don't get the joke (which I've seen in ads) where Carell shouts "Kelly Clarkson!" when he is in pain due to having his body hair ripped off.

Andy (Steve Carell) is yelling profanities, as one might do if they were having their hair pulled out with hot wax, and "Kelly Clarkson!" is one of the profanities he yells. Juxtaposition.

Posted by Steven | May 30, 2007 10:18 PM

I knew all that, but why is that funny? Is it supposed to show Andy has a sexual attraction to Clarkson, or is it mocking Clarkson's music abilities by showing that Andy associates her music with excruciating pain, or am I reading too much into it and it is just a dumb non sequitur? If the last, I think it is an example of failed American silliness as falsely ascribed to The Simpsons by my self-appointed archenemy Lucretius.

Posted by James Kabala | May 30, 2007 10:25 PM

I saw The 40 Year-Old Virgin in Germany, where the movie was dubbed and I was therefore able to get most, though not all of the jokes. (Alas, my German is too rusty now for me to be able to say the same thing if I were to re-watch it in German.) So I can't recall any bestiality jokes.

No offense to James, but when he writes, "It's one thing for a film to have mildly risque jokes about forms of sex that are normal in form even if immoral in context, but I don't want to fill my head with distubring images of things that never would have occurred to me otherwise", I think it hits on one of the reasons conservatives have trouble connecting to young people. Young people, or at least the young people Ross presumably wants to appeal to to save from serious life mistakes, are not mildly risque. They are R-rated people in an R-rated world. As much as conservatives may want to make that world PG, it ain't going to happen; if you want to be realistic about the way young people behave, you need to be a little less Jon Heder and a little more Paul Rudd.

Posted by Ashish George | May 30, 2007 11:48 PM

RE: Slate Piece on Sex and Religion
Steve Sailer and I were discussing the Slate article and he pointed out to me that crime actually correlates with religiosity in the U.S., because blacks are both more religious and more likely to commit a crime. However, when you look at just young black males, not surprisingly the more religious were less likely to be involved in crime. So too with sex, you need to compare by race. Blacks tend to be more sexually active than whites and I would guess they are also more likely to be evangelical Christians. This may skew the results and it isn't clear from the Slate piece whether Mark Regnerus' work has taken this into account.

Posted by Thursday | May 31, 2007 10:06 AM

"No offense to James, but when he writes, 'It's one thing for a film to have mildly risque jokes about forms of sex that are normal in form even if immoral in context, but I don't want to fill my head with distubring images of things that never would have occurred to me otherwise', I think it hits on one of the reasons conservatives have trouble connecting to young people.

I guess this is where I should out myself as being twenty-six, although maybe by "young people" you mean high school and college age.

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Update: I finally saw it yesterday (at least in truncated USA Network version), and yes, there is a brief discussion involving a horse near the beginning, so I was right.

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