Tucker Max: (Un)feminist Guilty Pleasure?

Today I watched a trailer for Tucker Max‘s movie “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.” Instead of just focusing on the content, I want to tie the film to the larger topic of (Un)feminist guilty pleasures*. First, I’ll describe how while I mostly like feminist-friendly media now, my guilty pleasures tend to be things from my youth, and then I’ll go into how this trailer complicated that dichotomy. 

I tend to be fairly critical of the media I consume today, and if something strikes me as misogynistic, racist, homophobic, etc, it usually makes my skin crawl. However, it hasn’t always been this way. As an illustration, I’ll share a recent example. A few days ago I walked into the living room, and asked my roommate what he was watching. He responded by saying “Enchanted. I think you’d really like it.” This prediction was 100% understandable, given the fact that I have a Twilight poster in my room and several disney princess movie soundtracks on my iPod. (I know Twilight isn’t that old…but I did read the first book ~2 years ago, and I’m only 21…so it seems like a long time ago :P). However, while I still enjoy those movies/books from my past, it’s not that I actually appreciate or like their themes, but rather that my nostalgia usually wins over my feminism. With “Enchanted”, there was no nostalgia, only nausea. 

Now, about Tucker Max. Although he might seem pretty far removed from Disney princesses, he too was someone I liked when I was younger: I started reading his website when I was 15. For those of you not familiar with his work, he wrote online stories and later books about his various drunken adventures, usually involving lots of sexism, fatphobia, ableism, etc. I loved them. There were numerous occasions where strangers would look at me funny after I burst out laughing while reading his stories in public. So, I did just about the same thing as my roommate: when I found out Max was making a movie based on one of his stories, I thought, “A Tucker Max movie. I think I’ll really like it.” 

Not so much. The first scene in the trailer depicts Tucker Max trying to pick up a girl by joking about how a fat girl across the room needs to die, since “Everyone knows fat girls aren’t real people.” It was difficult to watch. It was a weird moment where I felt a familiar comfort in his brand of humor, however I could still discern how horrible it was. I think I felt both reactions at the same time because although the trailer content was strikingly similar to that of his stories, the switch from writing to film made it seem new enough that my vision wasn’t clouded by memories. 

“I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” comes out in September, and I’m excited to read more articles/posts about the movie as the date draws nearer. I’m also interested to see if any other feminists have read (maybe even enjoyed) his work. 

*Thanks to Miriam to introducing me to this term.