Admittedly, it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen this film but I have to ask you whether your feeling about it are only based on what the characters say or is there a clear indication that the film itself is calling these actions inhuman?
What I mean is, just because a character states a point of view doesn’t mean that the view is endorsed by the film. Also, don’t the two examples you give somewhat, together, cancel out the idea that a worldview is being endorsed?
Do people really want to see honest portrayals of men and women?
As for The Apartment: Haven’t seen it so I’ll have to get back to you on that one…
Jirin
“I’m going to be a mensch. A human being!”
In this film, two activities are referred to as inhuman, and thus equated.
1) Baxter’s Jewish neighbor calls him inhuman because he’s under the impression he has a lot of different women over.
2) Baxter calls Sheldrake inhuman because he cheats on the women he’s with, and strings his mistresses along by telling he’s thinking of leaving his wife.
Are these two really the same thing? Or to pop culture, is all behavior outside the classical family unit considered equally deviant?
Lots of people would call this conservatism, but I think especially toward the 90’s and 00’s it’s a turned into broader trend of anti-masculinism. If you look at the movies and especially TV dramas and sitcoms, classically masculine behavior is treated as malicious, and in most cases, false. For example I will refer to the 90’s sitcom Home Improvement:
Tim Taylor is a man who takes pride in being able to use tools, but he is incompetent with them. He grunts and acts typically masculine, but he’s often revealed to be doing it for appearances. His masculinism manifests as negligence and insensitivity which constantly offends his wife Jill, and it’s up to Tim to improve himself and earn her forgiveness.
The message of these kinds of sitcoms and movies is: Men who are competitive are bullies, men who are ambitious or prideful are insecure, any man with a desire to disperse his seed is a philanderer, and all of the above are ‘Inhuman’.
This was a common plot device as early as the 60s, but it took a different face in the 90’s with the rise of political correctness. Society endeavored to fix the unfairness of the system, but with that positive goal came an ultimatum: You either reject all previous conceptions of gender, or you are a sexist. Whereas movies like The Apartment defined women as pure and helpless, movies in the 90’s replaced the helplessness with moral superiority, reducing men to overgrown teenagers. A male character with any classically masculine traits is instantly, like CC Baxter, lumped in with Sheldrake: A bully and a malicious philanderer.
The result of this is yet another cultural overcompensation. The newer generation is rejecting all traces of sentiment as ‘Emo’ and pretending to be more insensitive and philandering than they actually are. Young people are seeing this extreme portrayal of gender on television, noticing it’s incongruity with their observations, and moving to the opposite extreme.
Why can’t we get movies with honest portrayals of men and women, instead of movies that politically conform by dehumanizing behavior not consistent with our collective fantasies?