For Once, The Girl Makes the Grand Gesture (Pitch Perfect)

On the advice of my sister, who is a very wise and lovely person (and who also doesn't read this blog, so technically I could say whatever I want, but she is actually wise and lovely), I'm going to tell you guys about my weekend: It sucked. Well, not exactly. The weekend itself was fine, but a fair number of sucky and/or stressful things happened. An amazing woman in my church passed away. Another person close to me went in for major surgery. A good friend of mine lost her baby. 

It's been a rough weekend. God is good, but it's been a tough couple of days.

And to top all of that off, the stuff I've been reading and watching has been pretty universally intense and depressing. I'm watching 24 so that I can write a really smart and cool academic paper on it. But the coolness and smartness of the paper don't negate the fact that 24 is a freaking intense show. I read a really good comic series about people dying. I read The Maze Runner. Not exactly full of warm fuzzies.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm feeling kind of down. Worn out. Run through the ringer. I know that God has good in all of these things, and I know that none of it is more than I can handle, not even my taxes (which I hate) and all the other stuff I have to do this month to be a responsible adult, but dang do I want to curl up in bed and Redwall books for the next couple years.

So I'm putting this out there: what do you watch and/or read when you feel like poop? I'm seriously asking. I'm even more seriously asking for recs that are up on Netflix instant or apt to be at my library. I want to engage with media that is fun. Positive. Hopeful, and life-affirming. And if you send me something new that we've never covered on here before, chances are good you'll get to see a review of it!

Just, please. Help. I'm sure in a few weeks I'll be back to wanting to talk about the deep darks of depressingness again, but for now it's all a little too raw, and I think I want some fluff to make me feel better.

With that in mind, let's talk about Pitch Perfect.

Look, I'm not exactly known to be a big proponent of romantic comedies. They're just not my thing, and a lot of the time I think that our cultural obsession with happily ever after and perfect romance (between two inordinately attractive, young, affluent, white people, especially happily ever afters that end just as the wedding starts) is total bunk. But that doesn't mean I have a stone where my heart should be, and every once in a while one of these rom-coms breaks through and makes me smile.

Not that I'm exactly saying that Pitch Perfect is a rom-com. It shares story elements, but overall it's a female-lead ensemble comedy. And that's okay. I love female-lead ensemble comedies. Like, a lot.

The point, which I seem to be losing rapidly, is this: I don't hate romantic comedies, but I do hate the way they try to propagate an incredibly narrow view of gender dynamics. You know the drill. Guy and girl meet and hate each other almost on sight. After a few slightly contrived coincidences, they realize that it's not hate, it's passion, and they fall madly in love. But then there's some kind of lie or misunderstanding, and they split apart, only to be brought back together at the end when the guy makes a grand romantic gesture that reminds the girl why she loves him, and tells the audience that he has matured enough as a person to be worthy of her love.

But here's the thing: it's always the guy making the big gesture. Even when it's the woman who screwed up the relationship. And even when the main character of the film is purportedly the woman, she's still the one waiting and hoping that he'll come to his senses and sweep her off her feet. Even when she's the one in the wrong.

The perfect example of this for me is Never Been Kissed. In that movie, Drew Barrymore plays an improbable reporter who goes undercover at a high school, macks on a teacher for a while, and then gets exposed as a reporter. Said teacher (who totally hit on a student thinking she was a student) is then kind of pissed (he should be relieved that she can't really press charges), and also a little bit reviled by the city. Because he hit on a student.

So Drew makes it up to him with a grand romantic gesture. She'll stand and wait on the pitcher's mound of the baseball diamond until the game starts, and if he loves her and forgives her, he'll come and give her a big old kiss in front of everyone.

Now this may sound like Drew is the one making the grand gesture. It may sound like it, but it's not. Remember, the guy is the one whose life was ruined. He's the one who could be up on charges. And he's the one who has to come racing across the city in order to kiss some girl by some arbitrary deadline or else...what? Or else what? But he does it, and it's cute, and everyone cheers, because that's what's supposed to happen. Our hero is supposed to in some way make a gesture, and usually humiliate himself, in order to get the girl.

Let's take another example. 10 Things I Hate About You. A seriously awesome movie, and one that hits almost all of my qualifications for things to be good. It's just such a fun flick. Wildly inappropriate for any actual teenagers, and I can't believe I saw it when I was twelve, oh my gosh, but really fun. Anyway, the end of the movie has Julia Stiles reading out her English assignment, which turns out to be an incredibly personal poem about Heath Ledger and how she hates that she doesn't hate him, not even after everything that's happened. And then she rushes out of the room crying.

Again, it seems like this is a case where the girl is the one making the grand romantic gesture, but, again, not really. You see, Heath Ledger chases after her. He runs down the halls and out into the parking lot where she's about to get into her car, and bam! We see that he's already used the money he was paid to date her to buy her a brand new electric guitar. And then they kiss.

I'm not sure entirely why it was so freaking time sensitive that she find the guitar that instant, or that he chase her down to her car, or why any of it was so urgent, but then, I never understand why the ends of romantic comedies are so weirdly rushed.

At any rate, it's just another case of reaffirming the gender paradigm. No matter who is at fault, it is the man's responsibility to humble himself and seek forgiveness from the woman in order for there to be a happily ever after and a kiss.

Only. That's not what happens in Pitch Perfect. Which is strange. And unusual. And awesome.

So, the main story in Pitch Perfect is about a bunch of girls who want to win a national a capella competition, blah blah blah, let's be real, you've probably already seen this movie. Let's cut to the chase: the romantic subplot between Beca (Anna Kendrick) and Jesse (Skylar Astin). Jesse and Beca have a pretty normal meet-cute (see each other on the quad during orientation, he makes a fool out of himself), and Jesse very doggedly spends most of the movie pursuing Beca. He likes her. He thinks she's pretty and awesome.

But Beca, being deeply emotionally constipated and not super into the idea of college in general, is a hard person to date, and after a while, and some misunderstandings and stuff, Jesse gives up. He is pretty (rightly) pissed at Beca, and so he puts his efforts into his friendships and doing well at a capella.

Beca finally realizes that she does actually like Jesse, and also that feelings are not just for the weak, but what can she do? Jesse won't talk to her. He's still very hurt, and even when she tries to tell him that she finally watched The Breakfast Club and now she understands it, he's not impressed. He's pretty sure she's just the same old Beca: snarky, kind of a bitch, and liable to eat his heart right out of her chest.

What to do? Grand romantic gesture of course!

Only this time, it's Beca making the gesture. Not even Beca going halfway and Jesse grabbing the other half. No, this is 100% Beca. She is the one who comes up with her team's a capella final performance, and she includes in it the song from the end of Breakfast Club, you know, "Don't You Forget About Me". And then she sings it, straight at Jesse, in the middle of their performance, and keeps going until he gets it. She watched the movie. She is putting effort in. She wants you bad, dude. 

Here's the part that really gets me here, though. It's partly that this is one of the only, if not the only, romantic gesture from the end of a movie like this that I can think of, that is 100% all the girl, but it's also partly something else. It's partly that this? Isn't humiliating. Beca is not acting like an idiot. She's not throwing away her team's chance of winning in order to get some guy to notice her. She's not making a scene. 

Instead, she's allowing Jesse to see that his love for her made her a better person. It made her a better human being, but it also made her a better singer, a better musician, a more well rounded member of her team. When Beca sings that song, yeah, she's saying that she wants Jesse back, but she's also saying that she needs him. That she needs him to show her movies and challenge her to engage emotionally, and that she wants all of that. That she's ready to try.

You see, in most romantic gestures, especially the grand ones, it's about the man showing that he's humble enough to really love the woman now. He's humiliating himself to prove that he is willing to risk it all for love. That this woman is enough for him. He doesn't need anything else. That's not what Beca is doing here.

Beca is saying that she appreciates Jesse because he makes the rest of her life, and her relationships, and her music, better. Not that he's the only thing that matters, but that he makes the other things matter more.

That's a hell of a lot healthier, and, really, a hell of a lot more romantic. Romance should be about that. Romance should be about two people making each other happier, yes, but also two people who make each other more. Challenge each other. Make each other more compassionate, intelligent, interesting people. The person you love should, by loving you, make you more yourself. They shouldn't insist that you debase yourself or give things up in order to love them better. They should encourage you. Add to you. Real love is about finding the person who will make you a better you.

I don't want someone who will chase me through an airport, or kiss me on a baseball diamond, or even sing and dance his way across a stadium then buy me an electric guitar. I want someone who will make me want to be a better human being. That's all. It's a lot.

Awwww, yeah. Kiss like you just smashed the patriarchy, girl.