Movie Review Monday #46: Community

First of all, I came up with a play premise similar to this show's about six months before this show came out. I had been attending Orange Coast College, taking Intro to Novel Writing, and found the characters in the class to be exponentially more interesting than the course material. I am still pursuing writing a play about my favorite character in that class, but I was pretty annoyed when my community college idea came to fruition so quickly on prime time television.


Then I watched one or two episodes, and I was further annoyed because I didn't think they did the subject justice.


Then we had watched everything that was interesting on hulu+, and all that remained was Community. So I gave it a second chance, and man I'm glad I did. Observations:


1. Joel McHale has been on my celebrity list for quite some time because of The Soup, but he's always been in the vague, ever changing #4 or #5 slot. I am pleased to announce that he is solidly #3 now. Congratulations, Joel McHale. You may come and claim your kiss at any time.

Gawww.

2. The dysfunctional family that the study group forms on this show is lovely. I really love it when characters that are unlikely friends become super close and show that community (whoaaa, multi-faceted title) can be found anywhere. This group bickers more than it has fun, but they are always there for each other. Just like a family, they always love each other, but don't always like each other.
3. Danny Pudi is brilliant. He plays Abed Nadir, who seems to have Asperger's, based off his inability to pick up on social or emotional cues. He's never been diagnosed though. Anyway, he is obsessed with TV and movies, and he is good at everything. He's basically a super hero.
4. Speaking of Abed, I love his friendship with Troy. They are both slightly off, and they feed off of each other's weirdness. They put their friendship before anything else. They have a fake talk show with a catchy theme. They reserve a room in their apartment as a "dreamatorium" where they can imagine things. They make a mean blanket fort, awesome Halloween costumes, and have a simple yet effective not-so-secret handshake. They're the coolest while also the nerdiest. While I enjoy all the characters (except Chevy Chase's character, Pierce - I still don't like him), I would watch this show even if it was only Troy and Abed.

Why, yes. I'd love to sit there!

5. Here's the biggest point about Community: They do the most amazing homages to film ever. I can't say much about this - it's a "you had to be there" kind of thing, which is so annoying. Just watch the Paintball episode from Season One and, if you've ever seen any action flicks, you'll understand. I watched that episode twice in one day, I was that blown away.


In conclusion, two claws up for Community. If you've only given it a little bit of a chance in the past, try it again. I promise it's worth it.

All the Single Ladies (and Gentlemen)

A while back, Emily responded to a reader request and wrote this fun, funny post about her thoughts on why guys today don't commit. Her light hearted post seemed to generate some really intriguing thoughts and dialogue, and it's kept me mulling over some of the propositions and problems posed. More recently, I've read some other articles about marriage and the current state of men's and women's attitudes around marital commitment. One was posted on a friends Facebook page, asking if any women had any thoughts on it. I just had too many thoughts for a Facebook comment, so I'm writing a post about it. I am hoping to prod him into writing a parallel post, so you can get two sides of a response to this single woman - a married woman, and a single man's thoughts on what she has to say.


Here is the article from The Atlantic he was asking about: All The Single Ladies by Kate Bolick. It is rather long, but provides some fascinating history and psychology and personal anecdotes around trends in fidelity and thoughts on the supply and demand of marriageable men or women. And here are a few of my reactions to it:


1) The One. I think one nugget of truth she puts out there is that the idea: "one human being can fulfill all your emotional/social/physical/financial desires/hopes/dreams" is false and also dangerous. But while she uses this as support for a choice to remain single, I think it is also something that married people would do well to come to grips with in order to enhance the health of their marriages. I can be a better wife to Manny when I stay connected to my other family members [and his too - I love his family!], and I work on my friendships [even when they're long distance, hence this blog]. When I isolate myself (and I do do that sometimes), our marriage suffers from bearing too much weight of my breadth of needs. 


2) Where have all the Husbands gone? Kate Bolick illustrates how the imbalance of successful women compared to the number of marriageable male prospects leads men and women to be more promiscuous, because the men have plenty of good options and little need to commit to one if the next best thing might be just around the corner. [as an aside, I also recently watched a documentary about how China is having an inverse problem of too many men. Check out "China's Lost Girls," to see the negative unintended consequences they are struggling with] Maybe this is the key answer to the reader's original question that Emily was addressing. But having attended a college where the ratio of women to men was 3 to 1, I got to see a microcosm of this imbalance at work, and I think there is a segment of the male population getting overlooked in this observation. At Westmont, each guy had, in theory, three women to himself. Some of the guys used this as an opportunity to date around, like Bolick observes. But other guys had higher esteem for women or commitment to a fidelity ethic. These other guys might be a significant minority of the population, but I believe they are out there. I saw these guys suffer from intense pressure of three women lining outside their door demanding they pick one of them and put them out of their single-misery (somewhat metaphorically, only on occasion did this literally happen ;)  ). I think a lot of these guys didn't like being pushed into rejecting two girls in order to assuage one, and so they just didn't ask anyone out. It was also a small Christian community, so when the guy picked that one out of three, there was tons of pressure for him to make it work out well. Lots of eyes evaluating whether he made the right choice, if he was honorable in their relationship, when was he going to give her a ring?? It is no wonder there were tons of articles in the campus newspaper addressing the question of why no one dated outside of the dorm initiated "NCTO's" [Non-committal take outs, where a whole dorm floor of men or women set each other up on dates and went out as a big group under the strict understanding that it was non-committal, no one was allowed to expect exclusive relationships after that night, or you know, diamond rings or anything]. This pressure concept really is just a theory in my own head. I'd be very interested to hear from guys whether there is any truth to it. 


3) Redefine worth. Bolick wants us to open our minds to a broader concept of acceptable life styles. For example, she speaks against "Singlism" (marginalizing people in our society who are single as if they are lesser or nothing but crazy-cat-ladies), and broadening our ideas of acceptability in mates. Part of the problem she is pointing out is that our population is still fairly balanced in quantity of men to women, but the quality of women is up (higher rates of bachelors/graduate degrees, increasing salaries, less job loss during the Great Recession, ability to successfully manage single-parenting, etc.) and out pacing men. It seems as though there was a period of time (shorter than we might think, apparently) where men told women we could not earn money outside the home for whatever reasons. And women rose up and responded, "anything you can do, I can do better." Now we are proving our point, but often looking down on men who can't seem to keep up with us anymore. This has long been a sore point for me. I think it may be a minority of women who hold this superiority and scorn, but for those that do, how are we doing anything better than the men who oppressed us with sexism and patriarchy? Healthy feminism does something more to "lift as we rise" as many minority groups advocate. Yes. We can do well in school, yes we can be amazing CEO's, yes we can juggle seemingly insurmountable tasks. There are a lot of superwomen out there! But how can we use that new found power and voice to establish a new measuring stick of success? A new rubric for respect? Instead of climbing to the top and looking around to find no acceptable mates, could we instead re-determine the top as a list of valuable character traits other than net worth, degree attainment, social status. Every woman in my maternal line for about five generations back has married a man that was the first in his family to graduate from college. We committed to character and potential rather than attainment. And it is surprising how well that keeps working out for us. With great power comes great responsibility.


4) No Woman is an Island. Bolick seems to conclude with a proposition that single women start living in closer proximity - almost dorm-like - so that they can maintain their single independence, but have that extra human being(s) around to care for you when independence doesn't cover all of the bases. Interesting idea, and perhaps our society is arriving at a point where this is really possible. But from my personal observations, we're not quite there yet. Too many of my single female friends enjoy this perpetual girls-night-out life style only until the other girls find husbands, gradually leaving the group to dwindle. Is there something about that formal marriage commitment that ensures that other person will be around to support you? In theory - plenty of spouses don't quite live up to this expectation and obviously there is the possibility of divorce. So I guess married or not, we can't totally count on others to be there for us no matter what. Humans flake. 


I have a crazy proposition in response. What if we abolished this unspoken law that married and single people can not be friends?!? I guess this is a bit duplicatory of point one - but in a more tangible form. I have yet to make and single female friends since moving to Maine, and I'm realizing there is a whole in my social world. I miss my single friends from previous chapters of my life. They keep my world view in a more balanced perspective, they can be available to me in ways that my other married/mom friends can not. Just the other night, I was thinking longingly of the days when we regularly enjoyed game nights with friends, because now all our friends are similarly strapped to their homes after bed time and can not come over and play. If I had more unencumbered friends, this part of my life I used to enjoy wouldn't have to die for this season of Sofia's baby-hood. That's a very small and selfish piece. More importantly, this could mean that is my single friend needs a ride to and from the hospital, I could give it to her. Or when my husband is out of town, maybe she could come over and help me out with my baby. I truly believe we can be more well rounded when we diversify the life stages our friends are in, so that we don't get so lost in the tunnel vision of what matters in our own day to day. So let's call an end to this arbitrary divide and make the effort to overcome life style barriers to stay friends with people in different seasons of life. 


5) Marriage is hard. I have been realizing that the sort of discontent I perceive women of the previous generations suffering from having no other option than staying home seems to be present with plenty of women stuck in careers they are discontent with. Stuck is stuck. Women who are frustrated in being single are often experiencing some of the very same core emotions as women who are married (happily or otherwise). Lonely is lonely. Life is hard. Relationships are hard. Commitment is hard. Etc. But we can't let hard keep us from good. Becoming a parent is the hardest, most painful thing I've ever done, but I would never trade Sofia in for anything. This is the beauty of pain. So for those of you avoiding marriage because it's hard, it might fail, the sacrifice for something better that might be waiting in the future (key word = might) doesn't seem worth it, please consider that the hardest things are also often the sweetest things. Marriage really is not something you should choose just for social conformity, it really has to be something you are willing to devote a lot of personal sacrifice to without expecting a perfect, blissful, fairy-tale ending. I love marriage immensely, but my position is to avoid it unless you find someone you are really willing to lay down your life for, and vice versa, in more ways than you can anticipate. But I also propose that we get less stingy with our own lives, giving them up is the best way to live. I think Laura A. Munson's article in the New York Times captures this beautifully (and is much shorter than the first article, so you should totally check it out): 

Those Aren't Fighting Words, Dear by Laura A. Munson 


I think the core opportunity illuminated here is for us to identify the barriers that are keeping us from loving each other more fully and figure out how to get over them. But I would really love to hear your thoughts and reactions. I am looking at this from one specific angle and would appreciate others who could help round out my perspective. 

Quantity Matters

Hey Lobsters, did you by any chance also have a mom who told you it was the quality of your friends that mattered, not the quantity? Well I’m here to tell you, quantity does indeed matter.

Once upon a time I studied abroad in Sri Lanka for about six weeks. Among plenty of the other cultural contrasts I stumbled upon was their view of romance. It highlighted for me that we Americans believe that One person will fulfill all of our wildest dreams and meet all of our plethora of needs. After six years of marriage to the man I believe to be the universe’s greatest husband, I’m here to tell you, that’s a load of malarkey.

As human beings, we have a wide range of needs. My husband loves and provides for me in an incredible number of ways, and I also have needs that I need my mother to meet, and my sister, and my pastor, my teachers, my daughter, my friends, my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my community group members, my neighbors, my car insurance guy . . . you get the point. All these other people meet needs in my life and in my heart that aren’t holes Manny is designed to fill – either because of who he is or because of the role he plays in my life. So I am the kind of girl who needed a husband [plenty of you may not even have that particular need], but I also need a whole community of support.

This is true with friends too. When Emily and I first became roommates, she really was my one and only friend. It did not take long at all for me to see that there was no way that could make for a sustainable friendship. She had a job, a boyfriend, other friends, and I couldn’t just tag along like a sick puppy everywhere she went (don’t think I didn’t try). So there’s point one, no single friend deserves the burden of supplying all your friendship needs and wants.   

Fortunately, Emily had several friends. She introduced me to her best friend, Nate (now one of my best friends), who provided me with lots of opportunities to hang out with his other friends (this is how I met my husband by the way!) and so on until I had a nice slew of friends. And it seems that anywhere I go with Emily, I’m meeting new people that I instantly love and admire. Her sister Jenna, her husband Jeff, all her bridesmaids, her former roommate Mikkelle, her videographer friend Tabitha, . . . you get the point. I was always taught that in order to have friends, you had to be a good friend, but apparently, having friends in and of itself helps too! [point two]

Point the last: no one friend CAN meet all your needs for friendship. I need Emily to make me laugh, inspire me to write, give it to me straight, and entertain me with her fantastic voice and ukulele skills. But I need other friends with whom I can cry in movies [Emily has maybe done this – what – twice in her life? I do it in nearly every movie], enjoy a good cup of tea [Emily’s caffeine intake comes exclusively from Diet Pepsi], talk on the phone [Emily will do this out of love – but I know she doesn’t enjoy it]. And I need my friends that I can see in person on a regular basis. To say that Emily’s inability to meet any of these needs is any sort of failure on her part as a friend is entirely erroneous. I need her to be who she is, and I need others to be who they are.

As I piece together and appropriate quantity of quality friendships, I find I am surrounded by a beautiful community – comforting and challenging me in all sorts of ways. It really feeds my ego to be needed in a big way by someone. But I really believe we are designed for community – not just pairing off. When I love this way, I’m more likely to get more of my needs met – and when others love me this way, I’m less likely to feel the pressure to deliver what I can not authentically and sustainably offer.

Are you expecting too much from one friend? What friendships could you forge or strengthen to get more of your own needs met and start putting into practice some of your own untapped gifts and talents to meet needs in others?