Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist: Just throw away the damn chewing gum.

This past weekend, after failing to get tickets to see W., I went to see Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. I mean who can say no to Michael Cera’s sarcastic, self-conscious, nerdiness, that makes feminists gush. Yes, I like quiet, shy, nerdy boys. So. What.

I love movies that try and capture youth culture. Maybe because I am obsessed with youth culture, or have participated in almost every sub-culture of my generation, but I am always fascinated with Hollywood depictions of spaces and places, most people don’t have access to or know about. I always relate to characters that are underdogs, that don’t fit in with the popular kids and choose to hang out with the punk/goth/skater/hip-hop kids. I especially like movies that depict one eventful night where they are spending the whole night chasing a party, band or DJ. Those movies make my heart smile because I spent so much of my youth chasing parties, DJs, bands, boys, or the next fun thing in the night. They allow you to see what I saw-nerdy kids go to parties, we have fun and adventures without the judgment and gaze of the mainstream normative non-queer world.

Nick and Norah promised to be all these things and in many ways delivered, but I left the movie with a bad taste in my mouth in its depiction of youth culture and I am not really sure why. (And surely the chewing gum that went from mouth to mouth to toilet back to mouth to mouth, left a very bad taste in my mouth.) I suppose I agree with what the NYTimes review to an extent.

The tunes that play alongside their nocturnal adventure express longing, sadness, anxiety and joy with more intensity than they can muster themselves. Nick, played by the wet-noodle heartthrob Michael Cera (“Juno,” “Superbad”) and Norah (Kat Dennings, who has a hint of Kate Winslet’s soft, smart loveliness in her face) are, like so many kids these days, most comfortable with diffidence, understatement and a deadpan style of address that collapses the distinction between irony and sincerity.

But are youth today more comfortable with diffidence and deadpan? Isn’t youth culture angrier than it has ever been? I suppose in the world of privileged late night city dwelling rich kids that go to private school, it is *all* about understatement. So what I felt more than anything was this attempted juxtaposition between the nightlife, dreams and desires of the alternative lifestyles of previous generations onto just plain normal, “Nick and Norah.” Yet, the story line of the nerdy boy prevails in that, a nerdy boy can gain social privilege, but all the girls have to be really hot, even if they are nerdy. I want my real nerdy alternative riot punk rock hip hop bitch girls back. That’s all I am saying.
There is also this running theme of heteronormativity (I mean it is a straight romantic comedy) but it is covered up by cute moments and interactions between Nick’s three gay band mates and the straight characters. It is clear that it is accepted, understood and even cool to be cool with gay in NYC nightlife for young hip youth. What is not clear is why our three gay “fairies,” if you will, are obsessed with making sure that Nick and Norah get together. And in order to do so put the life of Norah’s best friend, the very drunk Carolyn, potentially in danger. It was as though they had nothing better to do than support the story of heteronormativity, so despite an attempt at showing how gay inclusive the story is, at the end of the day, we still want a straight fairy tale romance. Perhaps this is intentional, but I am thinking no.
Finally, there are two moments in the movie that left me feeling the most uncomfortable and both of them include leaving young women that look like American Apparel ads in their child-porno-fetish-young-blond-girls-with-messy-eye-make-up way, alone and abandoned in dark and “dangerous places.” The NYTimes suggests this is a moment of post feminism.

Instead, there are a series of small crises and tiny epiphanies, all adding up to a story that courts triviality in its pursuit of charm.
The charm is there, not least in the film’s vision of New York as a happy playground for underage night owls. The city’s streets are so benign that Nick’s abandonment of a girl (not Norah) in a desolate spot on the West Side can seem like a forgivable failure of gallantry, rather than an act of passive-aggressive, potentially homicidal malice. Everyone has a cellphone, after all, and the criminals and crazies that used to haunt these neighborhoods are little more than flickering memories from older movies.

I have to say, I found these bits of the film to be confusing. Beyond the overly sexual depictions of young women (which I don’t necessarily think is inaccurate and wouldn’t think was bad if they weren’t strictly for the male gaze, not the “triviality” that NYT claims it is intended to be), but my initial reaction is to fear or be upset that my imagination is left to wonder what happens to a 17 year old girl blacked out drunk in a bus station or left by the water on the West side. Or better yet, what she is thinking when she wakes up in a van and doesn’t know how she got there. None of those story lines would seem ironic if they weren’t playing on the threat of sexual assault. So was he turning the story on its head and suggesting that rape is a myth in the ways the media understands it so it is a more then an apt side theme or does he just hate his female characters and making apologies for the threat of sexual violence? I must say that part of me felt relieved with the reckless abandon with which this piece of the plot went, that maybe it is all good, but then another part of me was wondering why were the women left in such disempowering ways letting the imagination run wild. I wasn’t really sure.
Finally, I thought it was interesting that the Barbie-looking popular girl that wants Nick the Nerd back, tells Norah she has heard that Norah has never had an orgasm. Do 17 year olds gossip about each other’s orgasms? Are we actually in a post-feminist state? Someone fill me in.
Overall, I liked the movie, it was cute, had a great soundtrack and it made me love NYC even more than I already do, but these subtle details certainly interrupted my viewing pleasure.