Vagina: An essay on Romance

Time magazine had an article on the decline of Romance films, the crux was that Romance films don't make money fast sighting Titanic as not really making its presence felt until 15 days after opening.
The authors woe'd the advent of this years most successful romance 'Knocked Up' saying that most of it was adolescent, the most meanignful courtship to witness was that between the main character and his prospective brother in law, and that all that was required was fifteen minutes of maturity from the protagonist to imply he was the deserving male ideal.
Historically adjusting for inflation Gone with the Wind is still the highest grossing film of all time. And other romantic films such as Ghost, Pretty Woman, Titanic were all too rare to filmgoers.
Furthermore and I agree, the follow up to Knocked up, Superbad, a film I did find funny did serious damage in its celebration of male adolescent bonding. The whole pretext of the film is really just a celebration of the life of a white adolescent male. I thought it was infact as far as the dialogue goes, pretty true to life. My friends in highschool whilst not getting into the same crazy calamaties and joyriding with irresponsible police officers, did speak with a complete lack of respect for one another or anyone else more or less all the time. And women were a very alien species rather than people we'd necessarily choose to hang out with en masse if we didn't find them so damn attractive.
And there were exceptions of course, infact the exceptional improvement in the quality of courting and intergender social interaction I think is one of the payloads of the women's movement. That I can actually relate to girls having ambition, allows me to relate so much better, so I don't think the status quo is as chauvanistic as the author's of the article make it out to be.

To have a brief interlude though, if you have a long commute, and enjoy wordplay, I strongly recommmend chucking a Bloodhound Gang CD in the player for lyrical wizadry, I think more than any other band perhaps, the Bloodhound Gang have captured the dilemma of being bored, middle class, educated and white. Here's some of their lyrics to a song that made me laugh recently walking the streets of Nagoya:

Three Point One Four lyrics

My last girlfriend didn't like me thought she might be,
Most likely a dyke she just didn't excite me,
Lefty? Yeah but that was alright,
She was hotter than the sun but she just wasn't that bright,
My mistake she was more flaky than a leper colony,
I think a wooden clothespin would have been much better company,
Ass like a donkey acting funky gave her "L" now she's a flunky,
So my love for her died quicker than a batch of Sea Monkeys,
Early bird gets the worm spread your legs or spread the word,
So what if I'm not the smartest peanut in the turd,
I'm white which goes with everything but I can come in any color,
And I'm looking for the kind of girl that reminds me of my mother,
But it's hard to find a girl with a viper tattooed on her tushy,
And how many girls do you know that can play the harmonica with their pussies?
Like em' easy and hot and sweet like a Rice Krispie Treat, gee,
You know what I really want in a girl? Me,

I need to find a new vagina,
Any kind of new vagina,
It's hard to rhyme a word like vagina,
Calvin Klein? Kind of North Carolina,

Women are like dog, doo, hear me through don't interrupt,
It's just the older that they are the easier they get to pick-up,
I'd fill the generation gap clean the cobwebs from her rafters,
Old hens would rather put out than be put out to the pasture,
No age just ain't a gauge I like my girls like my cheese,
Preferably for me fat-free American singles only,
I want my next chick anorexic, the winner is the thinner,
Won't have to take her skinny ass out to a fancy dinner,
Like Sizzler she got a beef we'll chew the fat,
If I forget to put the seat up I can put up with her crap,
Let her lash out and crack the whip but not in bed I don't play rough,
No I can't be tied down with a girl that wants me tied up,
Just independent like NOFX ,smart like Janeane Garafolo,
She'd use big words to make fun of me so that I would never know,
Bestow upon me all her wisdom of the Dewey Decimal System, gee,
You know what I really want in a girl? Me,

I need to find a new vagina,
Any kind of new vagina,
It's hard to rhyme a word like vagina,
Kevin Klein? Kind of South Carolina,
Vagina vagina vagina vagina,
Vagina vagina vagina vagina.

I imagine a lot of people on hearing this song feel distinctly uncomfortable, amused, horrified, indignant, bored or a mixture of all of these.
For me I think it is the magic of comedian advocacy, Jimmy Pop the lead singer might be advocating thinking of women in terms of pure sex objects, finding obscure faults and generally plowing through with wanton abandon. But I doubt it, simply because it just doesn't sell that well, these are the sorts of thoughts I may think but would never admit to, by bringing them to the fore, makes me acknowledge in a disarming way that element of myself.
Others may interpret it as cool and adopt a player lifestyle.
I think though that this is one of those inner fraternity things, that is cool so long as you are accepted by the group and rejected by everyone on the exterior. But who's in the right?
I value diversity, I don't want a perfect respectful world, I love to swear, I love lines like 'so what if I'm not the smartest peanut in the turd' I would certainly choose a world with Superbad and Bloodhound Gang over a world without them.
I hate uptight situations, I find nobody's company more tiring or stressful than someone up tight.
I love adolescent conversations by comparison, like when I was an adolescent and Rowan and I in economics tried to come up with as many psuedonyms for vagina as possible. I got about 4 he got about 26, and I stopped largely because I was laughing.
Confronting? maybe. But let's remember that I found Sex in the City confronting, through my frame of reference that show glorified women incapable of forming meaningful relationships, eventually it ended with all 4 protagonists settling down with the man of their dreams.
But essentially Carrey was no different to the character Jerry from Seinfeild, except he was comically ridiculous, superficially shallow. Carry was dramatic, emotionally unbalanced (as far as I can tell) and a hero.
What does all this have to do with romance? Nothing, and that's the point.
I think labelling Superbad as about romance is a mistake, it wasn't about that at all, it was cut from the exact same cloth as other right of passage films like American Pie. Knocked Up in my opinion was just a comedy, no more a romance than the topsy turvy remake of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (Which I'd hardly call a romance anyway, as Sidney Portier is already engaged from the beginning and very little changes through the course of the film which was largely about race issues) Guess Who? Even compared to Wedding Crashers or Meet the Parents which are described as Romantic Comedies, I probably wouldn't call Knocked Up a romantic comedy. The relationship is too back stage. Its all about the guy really.
Romance is something else, its that chase, the courtship, it is the pursuit of trying to delight someone you like, love, lust after.
I have no problem with leading a dualistic life of adolescence, proffessionalism and romance. In a single day this year, I woke up and cooked Misaki breakfast, then rode her to the train station sitting on the crossbar of my bike, then spent eight hours handling phonecalls then came home and went to dinner with bryce where we dropped the F word, the C word, and conjugated more of them.
I have no problem being all three, my only real problem is that its hard to mix them up even more, not suggesting I cook breakfast for my customers, spend 8 hours briefing misaki on sales statistics then go home and have sex with Bryce.
What I mean is the personal idiocyncracities being able to really talk to a partner like they were my best friend, to feel loved at work, to strategise work with my best friend. I try hard to do just this, Misaki to this day has one of the foulest mouths amongst even sailors despite having the cutest little face you ever saw.* Bryce and I do talk about work and strategise a lot, and when I left Honda I certainly felt loved by my colleagues. All in all sharing and disclosing the various modes we adopt made everything easier. I was less of a persona and more of me.
I hope for the record romance does evolve, I already alluded to the fact that now I can sit down on a date with a woman and talk about career paths, ambitions and interests that are actually interesting. In Japan the bamboo roof hasn't been broken down yet, a girl I was having dinner with the other day told me she plans to work for 2 more years then get married. This was a definitive turn off. When she asked me whether I would marry a Japanese girl and my response was 'If we lived in Australia it would be okay, but otherwise I'd probably kill myself' the feeling probably became mutual. But the other part is getting less uptight, relaxing on dates, in romance and in life together. Miki told me off for picking up my bread roll with my hands, when I picked it up with chopsticks she really got mad. We can however talk about stuff in more or less the same manner as I do with my other friends, the only constraint now being that she is one of my friends and not my romantic interest.
And I think that's a topic for another day.