This week I had an interview and completed guitar hero world tour on bass (on expert). Other highlights included me watching “Pineapple Express” and “I Love You, Man”. I think its safe to assume my life has hit a rut.
Anyway, these films are both swathed in a healthy amount of ‘bromance’, and much like the piece I did a few weeks ago about romantic comedies, I think there are lessons to be learned from these films about the nature of true male friendship. Because this post would be very short if I didn’t.
1: The Lesson: Wives and girlfriends don’t matter.
Learned from: Scrubs, Flight of the Conchords
As Confucius once wisely articulated “Bro’s before Hoes”. Ok, perhaps not Confucius and perhaps not even one of the lesser philosophers, such as Jagger or Lennon.
Nonetheless, the saying seems to have been around for an eternity, uttered from friend to friend in bars, usually close to closing time. The essence of this phrase is that a bro will always place the needs of his fellow bro above the needs of his hoe (or is that perhaps ho?). This means opting for a night out with your bros rather than spending the night in playing Monopoly or whatever people in a committed relationship do.
It almost feels like cheating to include Scrubs in this list; the bromance between Turk and JD is one of the most enduring and well-known bromances in the world of tv and film. Its duration and the ups and downs experienced within it allows it to fit into almost all of the points on this list. Still, despite Turk and Carla being engaged and later married, and later still, with kids (Scrubs went on a long time), Turk and JD nearly always made time for each other.
Some films don’t even bother with girlfriends- Pineapple Express removed the girlfriend from the picture fairly quickly to enable the remainder of the film to be a celebration of the burgeoning bromance between a man and his dealer.
2: The Lesson: Wives and girlfriends do matter.
Learned from: I Love You, Man (spoiler alert!), You, Me and Dupree (or many other films featuring Owen
Wilson), Scrubs.
Watching I Love You, Man, the other night, I noticed some striking resemblances between the general arc of the plot and plots from romantic comedies. Only with 2 blokes. And less kissing. Slightly.
Obviously this was the intention of the writers, and it was well executed. I laughed a lot when they even incorporated the stereotypical ‘dating’ phase of a rom-com. The only noticeable difference in the catalyst which resulted in the reuniting of the happy couple (of bros) was the girlfriend.
Typically in romantic comedies it is an epiphany triggered by seeing a falling blossom land on a perfectly still lake whilst walking a dog through a park, or some previously unmentioned daddy issues (thank you very much Made of Honour), which causes the couple (actual couple this time) to get back together.
In brom-coms (yeah I’m coining it), if they fall out- and the typical trajectory of the plot suggests that this is likely to happen, it’s typically the girlfriend or wife who sees how sad her spouse is without his brethren, and gets them to start talking again (usually to ask him to be the best man at their wedding or something).
3: The Lesson: Three-ways (or more) are ok.
Learned from: How I Met Your Mother, The Hangover
Another notable difference between Bromance and regular Romance is the fact that with the former, it’s perfectly legitimate to have more than two bro’s. Whereas a archetypal love triangle in a film or tv series is always going to leave someone crying at the end (be it one of the actors, or, if a Hollywood producer allows them to indulge in polygamy, a large part of middle America), its not the same with bromances.
I would like to use friends as an example, but Ross (the one I probably associate with the most due to knowing the difference between a Therapod and a Sauropod without checking wikipedia) always seemed on the outside of the bromance between Joey and Chandler.
However, the (in my opinion far superior) sit-com How I Met Your Mother, the three central male characters are all really close, and regularly go off on adventures as a group or even just two of them. There are debates regarding who is who’s best friend, but these are often short lived. Go and watch it if you don’t understand what I mean.
4: The Lesson: Bromances always have a sweet indie rock soundtrack.
Learned from: Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother, I Love You, Man, House
A smaller point here, traditional romantic comedies often seem to have a specific kind of soundtrack. This usually contains a mixture of upbeat contemporary pop music (Cliché ridden Bridget Jone’s Diary features Gabrielle’s “Out Of Reach”), and a lot of soul music (Aretha’s “Respect”) and a few 80s standards (The Weather Girl’s “It’s Raining Men”- although in Bridget Jone’s Diary it is the Geri Halliwell version, satisfying both the first category and this one).
Bromances on the other hand typically have a far cooler soundtrack, consisting mostly of indie music. I Love You, Man features Vampire Weekend amongst others. Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother have a whole host of various indie bands throughout their 12 collective seasons, and The Hangover features a load of indie guitar bands I haven’t heard of. And also Phil Collins.
Music in bromances isn’t simply limited to the soundtrack though…
5: The Lesson: Bromance automatically leads to prolific bands, or at least an abundance of impromptu songs.
Learned from: Flight of the Conchords, The Mighty Boosh, I Love You, Man, Scrubs
This is one which I think has certainly applied to me in the real world, I play guitar, and have gigged with all of my best male friends. We have even formed bands that have lasted three or four years (a very long time as far as secondary school is concerned). Whilst in my first year at uni there was even one dynamic pairing that wrote an entire album (still unreleased) based around a housemate’s voracious sexual appetite. Towards rabbits.
I guess it’s quite an obvious outcome for men who are into music to the degree where they play instruments to be friends with other men who play instruments, so the next progression is likely to be jams, and perhaps even bands.
And it seems a staple part of the bromance diet to portray struggling musicians, Flight of the Conchords and The Mighty Boosh both show the ups and downs of being in an unsuccessful band (only watched by millions of people on television). The Mighty Boosh’s ‘crimping’ and a lot of the songs performed by Flight of the Conchords are good examples of impromptu songsmithery (only, you know, pre-written).
Possibly the greatest number of impromptu songs comes from Scrubs, despite the fact that neither Turk or JD play instruments with any regularity (not onscreen at any rate- there is a guitar in their apartment), there are still plenty of songs which they perform together, including the seminal song about guy love entitled, erm, “Guy Love”.
Clearly guy love can even overcome a lack of instrumentation and any semblance of writer’s block during spontaneous songs. But not Yoko Ono.
However…
6: The Lesson: Guy love conquers all. Including bullets, explosions, smoke inhalation, zombification, blood loss and much, much more bullets.
Learned from: Pineapple Express (watch for spoilers again), Shaun of the Dead (and more spoilers)
Shaun of the Dead has everything that anyone could ever want from a bromance film. It has suspicions of more than just bromance- “He’s not my boyfriend”- it has the protagonist having problems splitting his time between girlfriend and not-boyfriend. It even has the eventual zombification of one of the bros.
However, despite this, Shaun still keeps the zombified Ed in his shed and by the end of the film they were still playing Timesplitters 2 (and yes I did recognise it from the brief glimpses onscreen).
So what about the far more realistic plot of Pineapple Express, where a couple of stoners survive frequent attempts made by drug-ring bosses to kill them, and manage to escape with their lives. Ok, marginally more realistic.
Anyway, in the action packed ending of the film, in which a new bro joins the pre-existing bros, he is riddled with bullets (around 7 according to the film), whilst another had his ear shot off. Despite these impediments, they shared a meal before going to the hospital.
Perhaps this is why they don’t want to legalise pot. It turns you into a bullet absorbing superhuman.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment