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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
I laughed, I cried -- then I wondered: Why won't the "Wedding Crashers" crash any sister's wedding?
Jul 30, 2005 | I was first in line for "Wedding Crashers" on opening night, hoping it would be as funny and sexy as it looked. It was. I laughed out loud and had enough naughty thoughts about surfer-dude Owen Wilson to make me squirm a tad in my seat. I'm dying to know what the deal is with that adorable crook-nose and, furthermore, hereby volunteer to faithfully brush those shaggy strands out of his eyes. When Vince Vaughn vulgarly announced himself a "cocksman" and bragged that he was 6-foot-5 -- I'd had no idea! -- there may even have been a slight arching of the back. The closest I've ever come to an interest in math is the few minutes I spent trying to triangulate how tall Owen must be when the two stood side by side. In particular, the highlight of the movie was the early and prolonged scenes of them partying down at a Benneton ad's confection of weddings set to "Shout" -- Hindu, Chinese, Jewish, Irish -- that will be wearing out the replay button on America's remotes when the DVD comes out.
But it was the montage of naked women cascading jubilantly into the rogues' beds, poufy bridesmaid dresses crumpled somewhere out of frame, that did the most for me. The sight of them -- alone, unarmed and unafraid, as one military motto goes -- was as deliciously sexy and just as much fun as the shenanigans at the weddings where Wilson and Vaughn wooed their willing prey. It was fitting, not to mention gutsy in these WWJD days, that this part continued to be set unapologetically to "Shout" and not some gauzy, romantic cop-out guck so we could forgive these sluts for schtupping a man they'd just met. "Crashers," at least in the beginning, wasn't about love. It was about making multi-orgasmic lemonade on love's fringes until it was your turn to star in a wedding.
That montage was a celebration of sex, carnality and the feminine ideal. It was a testament to the lion-tamer aspect of being a straight chick, that heady "bring a strong man to his knees" adrenaline rush that is one of the keys to understanding your power as a woman. At the same time it's a testament to the pleasures of surrender, that sweet, sweet payoff that can only come after a free-fall shuddering toward a landing site that has been promised but not verified, you tramp. That happy Vesuvius of perky breasts, firm thighs and concave tummies was a tribute to youth, to the search for adventure and to our enduring belief in romantic serendipity. It was a bungee jump with an elastic cord you're pretty sure is functional, but hey, if it's not, your wounds will heal. It was about optimism and thrill-seeking and I was proud of those sluts. They leapt before they looked and I don't want to know anyone who never has.
But, somehow, by the end of the parade of weddings crashed and women laid, I realized I was sad. It took me an entire martini to figure out why: The crashers seduced their way through every culture and every ethnicity but mine. Why don't Owen and Vince want to seduce me, too? Why don't they want to dance with my nana at a wedding?
It's confusing to me that in a nation, a world, where black culture so permeates, if not dominates, the entertainment industry that a major Hollywood release would throw up its hands and declare Negro culture impenetrable. There isn't a white boy in America who doesn't do a jerky cabbage patch when he's happy and pronounce himself "dissed" when angry, yet Hollywood can't break the code on LaQuisha and Raheem jumping the broom? Odd that "Shout," performed by black musicians, was chosen as the raucous anthem for an ode to collapsing racial and ethnic borders but excludes blacks, the lubricant by which this celebration of humanity, this transcendence of race, proceeds. More troubling, could it be that achieving racial harmony results from non-blacks banding together to exclude blacks? (If this seems extreme, check out David Roediger's excellent new work, "Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White." He discusses the extent to which joining in pogroms against blacks helped the despised Southern and Eastern European immigrants "prove" their whiteness and become Americanized.) We can provide the soundtrack, we can entertain, but we cannot participate; where have we heard that before? Whites can dance the hora, they can play mah-jongg with Chinese grannies, they can go Bollywood with the Hindus, but they can't figure out the electric slide? (That's our wedding staple, by the way. I have yet to hear "Shout" at a black wedding.) I reject most conspiracy theories, really I do, but I suspect that black culture was, however subconsciously, deemed unworthy.
