Male friendship and the 
‘Neighbors’ conundrum

There’s a scene at the end of 

“Neighbors” that’s always bugged 
me. Zac Efron (“Baywatch”) and 
Dave Franco (“The Little Hours”) 
are best friends who have been 
fighting and growing apart over 
the course of the movie, but 
now Efron’s character is about 
to turn himself into the police 
to save his friends and they’re 
forced to make up. It starts out 
sweet, touching even. They tell 
each other they love each other 
(“I fucking love you man,” “I love 
YOU dawg”) and their eyes are 
welling over with tears. “I love 
you!” Efron says again. “That’s 
why I gotta go out there!” Franco 
starts bouncing up and down and 
screams “BE in this moment! 
Live in this shit with me!” They 
scream “I LOVE YOU!” and “I 
FUCKING LOVE YOU MAN” 
over and over again, both crying 
and hugging each other, to the 
point that Efron puts a stop to it. 
“Look, man, I love you and all,” 
he says, “but like, I’ve gotta go...
so....”

It’s a funny scene — Franco 

and 
Efron 
are 
both 
really 

good at embodying their frat 
bro personas while seeing the 
inherent humor in their macho 
posturing, and they’re talented 
comic actors. The music swells 
dramatically while the editing is 
lots of quick cuts between their 
two faces as they trade shouts of 
love at each other. Just bros being 
dudes, you know? It’s supposed 
to be funny, and it is. But my 
question is, why does this have to 
be funny at all?

Make no mistake: The butt of 

the joke is the fact that these are 

two big, handsome frat guys who 
are having a moment of genuine 
love, friendship and emotion. But I 
don’t know. I don’t know if there’s 
anything particularly hilarious 
about honest connection and 
friendship between two people 
who really care about each other. 
The only way to make that kind of 
thing funny at all is through the 
ironic, winking way the writers 
frame the scene. As if there’s 
something inherently unmanly, 
overemotional and embarrassing 
about the way they’re acting.

I can’t help but wonder how 

much more powerful that scene 
could have been if instead of 
shouting their declarations of 
love in an increasingly ridiculous 
affectation, the characters had 
looked each other in the eyes and 
said, “I love you. You’re my best 
friend.” And that would be that. 
No need to cover the feelings 
in layers of disingenuous irony 
and this inflated, self-conscious 
posturing.

I’ve seen this scene play out in 

so many movies and TV shows. 
There’s a whole episode in “New 
Girl” dedicated to Nick’s inability 
to accept Schmidt’s friendship 
and love, and it culminates in 
three men crying all over each 
other and confessing how much 
they care about each other. Only 
instead of playing the moment 
straight, the editing and framing 
(they all awkwardly walk away, 
clearly embarrassed) are telling 
us to laugh. Same thing in 
“Superbad,” and so many other 
contemporary comedies.

It’s a little heartbreaking. 

The message being delivered 
to young male audiences here 
is 
undeniable: 
Your 
feelings 

are 
funny. 
Your 
friendships 

are laughable. Your moments 
of honest connection are not 

masculine 
and 
need 
to 
be 

displaced and distanced from 
you with a good dose of self-
awareness and quippiness. Of 
course, it’s not like these movies 
exist in a vacuum — they’re 
reflecting the way we as a 
culture see masculinity and male 
friendships in the real world. But 
can’t our media be more than 
a mirror? Can’t we be a little 
aspirational? Why not hope for 
a kinder, more gentle world, one 
in which men can just tell their 
friends they love each other 
without being seen as effeminate 
or overemotional?

This isn’t a small thing, 

limited to a few late 2010s 
comedies. There are real and 
awful 
consequences 
to 
the 

reinforcement of this worldview. 
The undercurrent to all this 
is a belief that actions coded 
feminine (you know, little things 
like expressions of love, emotion 
and tenderness) are inherently 
embarrassing. It’s the belief 
that women are fundamentally 
inferior, and being seen as 
womanly is the very worst thing 
a man can be. Thinking this, 
holding it as true, growing up 
with it embedded deep in the core 
of who you are, it hurts people. 
It causes men to be angry and 
violent, and deeply, deeply sad.

I think we can do better. I 

think we can use our media to 
create better models of behavior, 
ones that are a little less incisive 
and clever, and a little more 
human. I think modern comedies 
can be hilarious and sharp and 
full of heart. I think men can find 
ways to be a little more gentle 
with each other. I really believe 
that — no irony, no distance, no 
posturing. We can all be a little 
more gentle with each other. This 
is a place to start. 

ASIF BECHER
Daily Arts Writer

Crocs and their unlikely 
comback in luxury retail

Distaste 
for 
Crocs 
once 

seemed 
like 
the 
absolute 

bottom threshold for sartorial 
taste. Now, the iconic mid-
aughts children’s shoe has been 
adopted by the elitist world of 
high fashion. British designer 
Christopher Kane prominently 
featured his take on the rubber 
shoe in his SS18 collection, 
a decision that was met by 
general praise by critics, and 
absolute horror by me.

If I could squelch one trend 

it would be high fashion Crocs. 
On the list of things the world 
needs, 
crystal 
encrusted 

Crocs round out the bottom. I 
would prefer to live in a world 
where the term “luxurious 
Crocs” 
remains 
exclusively 

oxymoronic. Prior to today, I 
thought just about everyone 
would want to stay in that 
relative-utopia, 
except 
for, 

maybe, Mario Batali.

Kane’s Crocs are neither 

innovative, nor clever, and 
frankly extremely ugly. Being 
fashionable does not necessitate 
looking good (nor should it), 
but this is ridiculous and also 
slightly bothersome. I find it 
generally distasteful when the 
fashion 
world 
appropriates, 

and marks-up, working-class 
items. Like the Moschino SS16 
collection, which was inspired 
by “tradesmen” and featured 
this take on high-vis workwear 
as well as the use of a traffic 
cone as a purse, which was sold 
for $1,195.

It’s 
unclear 
how 
much 

Kane will sell his new Croc 
designs for. But if they’re 
priced similarly to previous 
Croc collaborations (yes, that’s 
right, this collection is not the 
designer’s first dalliance with 
the the Croc brand), they’re 
likely to be quite expensive. 
Currently there is a pair of 
“slip-on Crocs clogs” being 
sold on the Christopher Kane 

website for $545.

For that price, you could buy 

20 actual Crocs, 180 jibbitz, or 
something that isn’t trash.

While Kane may have been 

the first major designer to 
collaborate with Crocs, he was 
not the last. Only two weeks 
after Kane sent his latest Croc-
collab down the runway, Demna 
Gvasalia of Balenciaga unveiled 
a pair of his own. It’s honestly 
hard to say which collaboration 
is worse, but I would give it to 
Balenciaga. The iconic French 
fashion house barely adapted 
the classic design at all, simply 
slapped on a platform.

It’s pretty shocking that 

two different designers would 
collaborate 
with 
the 
same 

third-party brand for a given 
season, but the fact that this 
brand is Crocs is absolutely 
insane. It’s too early to tell if 
the other major designers will 
hop on the Croc bandwagon, 
or if the trend will fizzle and 
die once more. I, for one, am 
rooting for the latter.

TESS TOBIN
Daily Arts Writer

COURTEST OF BALENCIAGA

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6A — Monday, October 9, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

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