Misogyny in “The Other Guys”

I went to see “The Other Guys” thinking it would be a bunch of slapstick humor that probably wouldn’t interest me, but since I was going with a group I figured the company should be more important than the movie choice. Well, the group didn’t show up, so it ended up being my boyfriend and I, and one of our friends. Let me tell you, I’m so glad my boyfriend paid for my ticket this time because I would demand my money back if I had paid myself.

I was correct in assuming it was a bunch of stupid humor (I laughed once the entire movie; I’m not even underestimating), but what I wasn’t prepared for was the misogyny and homophobia. The latter was practically the basis for Will Ferrell’s character: his partner hates him because he acts feminine, his Prius is feminine (something about sitting inside a vagina and “did you get a dental dam with that?”), etc. His boss talks twice about the fact that his son is bisexual, something he is clearly not comfortable with but tells everyone anyway (obviously a poorly constructed joke by the writers). Two police officers, when telling someone they are being arrested, say, “I hope you like jail… and penis.” Also, Ferrell’s partner learned to dance ballet and to play the harp to make fun of the “sissies.” The list goes on. Now, I’m straight, but I still find that humor insulting and bewildering. I simply don’t understand how people can find that funny.

Now, to tackle the misogyny… I had to keep a list going in my head throughout the movie, so let’s see if I can get it all in here from memory. At first, I thought maybe I was being touchy: even if you haven’t seen the movie, in the trailer a character says something like, “it’s all due to you guys…all the car chases, all the sex with women we don’t want to have but have to…” That is a little humorous, I’ll admit, and if it had stayed like that I wouldn’t have minded. Simply poking fun isn’t a bad thing. However, it took a nose dive from there. Only one female character throughout the entire movie was shown to be a career woman in control of her life and not in any way objectified. There are maybe 2 female cops shown, and they are in the office with no names. Watching Ferrell and his wife Sheila interact is like taking a time machine back to 1950. She is all dolled up and submissive, while he tells her that she looks horrible, her cooking is horrible, she isn’t acting correctly, etc. Her breasts are practically popping out of her dress (which Ferrell’s partner can’t stop staring at) and she makes references to them and touches them. Sheila tells Terry, Will’s partner, that she has a degree in medicine, and yet her character is made out to be a housewife who has no brain in her head.

Similarly, Ferrell’s ex-girlfriend is also a replica of a Stepford wife, although obviously dramatic and possibly bi-polar. Ferrell refers negatively to both women before they are even shown on screen, calling his wife a bitch and his ex “difficult to handle.” When Ferrell’s partner Terry arrives at a ballet studio to try to win back his girlfriend, he finds her dancing with a man in a room full of people and asks why she would be selling her body like that. Essentially, the message given by these writers is that women are not only subhuman and sexual objects, but they have no place in the real world. I am completely disgusted by this movie and can’t believe that it was even written in the first place. Guess that’s the last Will Ferrell movie for a while….