The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, September 18, 2018 — 5

I always assumed that I 

would get married someday. 
Until 
recently, 
I 
never 

questioned 
my 
reasons 
for 

assuming it; marriage seemed 
like an inevitable stepping stone 
between birth and death, like 
something that happens to a 
person rather than something a 
person does. It wasn’t until my 
brother’s wedding that I realized 
the terrifying enormity of this 
thing that, up until that point, I 
thought everyone stumbled into 
one way or another. Watching 
someone I loved, someone who 
in my mind was still only about 
17 years old, commit the rest 
of his life to another person, I 
was forced to reckon with how 
poorly the love stories of my 
childhood prepared me for the 
realities of marriage. Beyond the 
fairy tale, beyond the wedding, 
my media education had left me 
pathetically in the dark.

It’s 
no 
surprise 
when 

you realize how heavily the 
“marriage plot” figures into 
our 
pop 
culture 
narratives, 

especially 
those 
targeted 

towards young women. The 
marriage plot is at the core of 
virtually any romantic comedy: 
boy meets girl, boy and girl 
circle around each other for 
the better part of the story, boy 
and girl overcome all obstacles 
and realize they’re meant to be 
together forever. The defining 
feature of the genre is that the 
story ends in a wedding (more 
traditionally) or some other 
kind of presumably permanent 
coupling for the protagonists. 

Once you become aware of the 
marriage plot, it’s difficult to 
unsee it. Think of every Disney 
movie you watched as a kid, 
every rom-com and sit-com 
you’ve seen in the past year and 
virtually anything starring Meg 
Ryan. The marriage plot is one 
of the few basic formulas by 
which we know how to consume 
and 
understand 
narratives 

about women. And, like any 
formula that distills a wide 
range of human experiences 
into a narrow set of possibilities, 
it fails to tell the whole story.

One reason the marriage plot 

fails to accurately or insightfully 
represent real relationships is 
that it is, quite literally, archaic. 
The genre was encoded in 
Shakespeare’s comedies, which 
were defined less by humor 
than by their wedding finales, 
and then popularized in the 
19th century novels of Jane 
Austen. But there’s a significant 
disconnect 
between 
what 

marriage meant for women in 
a pre-feminist age and what it 
means now. For Shakespeare, 
Austen and their respective 
contemporaries, 
marriage 

was essentially an economic 
contract between the groom and 
the bride’s father. The bride’s 
consent was largely irrelevant 
and, whether or not there was 
any real love involved in the 
match, her position relative to 
her new husband was servile at 
best. I was always struck by how 
much less interesting I found the 
heroines of these stories after 
their weddings; take Beatrice, 
the heroine of Shakespeare’s 
“Much Ado About Nothing,” 
who, despite being one of the 
more opinionated and spunky 

women of English literature, 
ceases to have any lines at all 
after her wedding. She is literally 
silenced 
by 
marriage, 
her 

identity completely obfuscated 
by that of her husband.

What’s more, the marriage 

plot 
and 
its 
prevalence 
in 

female-centric 
narratives 

suggests that marriage — or 
more accurately, a wedding — is 
the most significant event of a 
woman’s life. In Shakespeare’s 
or Austen’s time, this might have 
been true; women were denied 
entry into most professions, 
couldn’t own or inherit property, 
and had virtually no economic 
or reproductive rights, making 
marriage the climax of their 
lives even though they had very 
little say in the matter. These 
stories end in weddings because, 
beyond that point, the woman 
more or less ceases to exist with 
any degree of independence. 
So why is it that the marriage 
plot is still the most popular 
template for romance today, 
when by all accounts we should 
know better?

I’ll 
admit 
that 
I’m 
as 

susceptible to a good romantic 
comedy as the next person — 
so susceptible, in fact, that 
I’ve been under the spell of the 
marriage plot for a long time 
without even knowing it. The 
media available to me as a child 
and teenager taught me that 
romantic love was the most 
important pursuit of my life. But 
the key word here is “pursuit.” I 
was supposed to pursue love, or 
more accurately to be pursued 
as a passive object of someone 
else’s love, and then the most 
interesting part of my life would 
be over, the rest of my story left 

to vague conjectures of “happily 
ever after.” On the screen, or in 
the pages of the book, that kind of 
narrative offers a rush, but when 
I stopped to imagine it applying 
to my own life, it became deeply 
unsatisfying. I doubt that the 
media directed at young men 
contains the same message. 
Their narratives have problems 
of their own — the glorification 
of mindless violence, enforced 
heterosexuality and emotional 
constipation to name a few — but 
they also tend to be stories about 
taking action and fighting in the 
pursuit of an ideal rather than 
passively waiting to be chosen. 
Romance, if it shows up at all, is 
secondary to or conflated with 
sex.

This isn’t a hopeless case. 

As much as the marriage plot 
continues 
to 
dominate 
the 

popular 
imagination 
around 

romance, we’ve already begun 
to see a shift in the focus of 
women’s 
narratives 
in 
the 

media; “Lady Bird,” “Big Little 
Lies,” “Moana” and “Hidden 
Figures” are only a few recent 
examples of stories that are 
more interested in the ambitions 
and 
platonic 
relationships 

of their protagonists than in 
their marriage prospects. The 
marriage plot also faces an 
interesting challenge from the 
increasing 
representation 
of 

non-heterosexual 
romances. 

While some gay love stories 
have 
erred 
towards 
the 

ostentatiously 
tragic 
(see 

“Brokeback 
Mountain”) 
and 

others conform to marriage-
plot conventions in an effort 
to normalize non-heterosexual 
experiences 
(see 
“Love, 

Simon”), these narratives are 
inherently less tied down by 
the limitations and ingrained 
inequalities 
of 
heterosexual 

marriage, and therefore open 
up a third possibility for the 
portrayal of romantic love: as 
one event in the complex web 
of factors that make a person 
who they are, rather than the 
sole defining aspect of their 
life. I hope that the generation 
after mine takes their cues from 
these stories, and doesn’t make 
the mistake of sitting around 
waiting 
to 
be 
chosen 
just 

because John Hughes and Walt 
Disney told them to.

Women’s stories and foiling the tired marriage plot

JULIA MOSS
Daily Arts Writer

COLUMBIA PICTURES

BOOKS NOTEBOOK

After eight months of release 

push-backs and a screening 
at the Toronto International 
Film Festival last week, Yann 
Demage’s “White Boy Rick” 
has arrived, only to, sadly, not 
live up to the expectations set 
by 
its 
(pretty 
outstanding) 

trailer. I couldn’t help but put 

“Rick” beside “Boyhood” in my 
mind, as both features are led 
by young, inexperienced actors 
who struggle to carry the weight 
of the film on their shoulders. In 
the case of the latter, directed 
by Richard Linklater, the father 
figure is given enough room 
in the script to pull the film 
back and bring it into an even-
better-than-just-redeeming 
place. Matthew McConaughey, 
the father figure in “Rick,” isn’t 
able to fill those same shoes, his 
relatively minor role in the film 
not giving him nearly enough 
time to rise it out of the ashes. 
Now, of course the two roles are 

different, but there is something 
to be said about hiding your 
headliner too much behind the 
rook.

“Rick” doesn’t try to do 

enough for the audience. It’s not 
heartwarming, it’s not especially 
active, it doesn’t provide for 
many gut-busting lines — the 
film just sort of plays, sitting on 
your palette but lacking flavor. 
Some of this can be attributed 
to the strange, push-and-pull 
relationship 
the 
protagonist 

Richard Wershe Jr. (Ritchie 
Merritt, newcomer) has with 
his father, Richard Sr. (Matthew 
McConaughey, 
“Interstellar”). 

McConaughey’s character is a 
deadbeat from the drop-of-the-
puck, his “lion’s pride” attitude 
not materializing into anything 
that might stave off poverty and 
self-destruction for his family. 
By the end, after young Rick has 
gone through multiple fazes of 
FBI informant, to gun trafficker, 
to drug trafficker, back to FBI 
informant, we are supposed to 
see the Junior’s misguided ways 
as some glaring fault of the father 
— even though McConaughey 
had been trying to hold his son 
back from getting in too deep 
the entire time. The film makes 
it hard to get into young Rick’s 
head, 
making 
his 
eventual 

life-sentence outcome hard to 
attribute to anyone but him. 

Sure, his dad could have moved 
out of Detroit instead of trying 
to stay and turn things around 
— but no one forced young Rick 
to get in too deep, eventually 
so deep that he can’t get out. 

There’s not enough consistency 

in 
theme 
surrounding 
the 

prodigious crack dealer. Had 
the film taken a firm stance on 
the morality of Rick Junior’s 
actions — possibly portrayed 
him as more of an anti-hero 
than a lamb to the slaughter — it 
would have been easier to access 
the emotions of the character for 
both the audience and for the 
actor himself.

“White Boy Rick” lacks a 

defining 
texture 
throughout. 

The sound design and score 
never hit quite right. There 
are lapses in the story where, 
from 
one 
moment 
to 
the 

next, it doesn’t feel like the 
narrative is approaching any 
final destination. Many have 
already touted McConaughey’s 
performance, 
which 
was 

standout amongst the rest of the 
unaffecting acting suite, but it 
even feels that he at times isn’t 
sure what type of movie he’s 
in. For how fun and interesting 
the 
preview 
material 
made 

“White Boy Rick” look, it doesn’t 
manifest in the final product. 
Score one, LBI Productions 
marketing team, I guess.

‘White Boy Rick’ doesn’t 
live up to expectations

STEPHEN SATARINO

Daily Arts Writer

FILM REVIEW

Fred Armisen (“Big Mouth”) 

and Maya Rudolph (“Big Mouth”) 
are probably the single most 
prolific duo one could dream 
up in the world of TV comedy. 
Along with Alan Yang of “Parks 
and Recreation” and “Master 
of None” fame, they team up 
wonderfully in “Forever,” a short, 

easy Amazon series that tackles 
some familiar themes with a 
surreal touch.

The 
show 
launches 
into 

the 
exposition 
of 
Oscar 

(Armisen) and June’s (Rudolph) 
relationship immediately, telling 
the story of their entire lives 
together in the space of a short 
montage 
minimally 
backed 

by Miles Davis’s “It Never 
Entered My Mind.” Rudolph 
and Armisen’s vast experience 
in stage and sketch comedy is in 
full display, with their expressive 
facial and bodily expressions 
(as well as Armisen’s trademark 
awkwardness) replacing the need 

for any other forms of dialogue. 
Their 
story 
is 
a 
well-worn 

one (albeit told in the space of 
roughly five minutes). After years 
of marriage, the pair finds their 
relationship stale and detached, 
without the spark of young love.

Despite 
the 
façade 
of 

contentedness with the state of 
their lives, their relationship has 
deeper problems, which June 
takes an admirable first step 
in repairing by suggesting the 
couple refrain from their annual 
fishing trip to go skiing instead. 
And then Oscar dies. Thankfully, 
the show takes only an episode 
to show how June grieves before 
she, too, kicks the bucket and 
joins her husband in the afterlife.

From this point, the show 

seems 
to 
take 
a 
familiar 

direction, focusing once again on 
the relationship between Oscar 
and June, except now in the 
afterlife. The afterlife depicted 
here is slightly less whimsical 
than “The Good Place” (in which 
Rudolph stars as well), but still 
provides a cast of memorable 
and hilarious side characters, 
including a young man who died 
in the 1970s and still uses terms 
like “orientals.”

Unfortunately, it is difficult to 

fully understand why the story is 
set in this world in the first place. 
The same issues that seem to be 
explored could just have easily 

been examined in the real world, 
and the situation makes the 
first two episodes — especially 
the second — feel superfluous. 
For the most part, the afterlife 
is exactly the same as the real 
world, despite a few quirks. It 
feels more like the backdrop of 
a surreal “Portlandia” sketch 
rather than a fully thought out 
one fit for a longer, multi-episode 
series.

Nonetheless, “Forever” makes 

for short, yet still worthwhile, 
viewing due to the overabundant 
comedic 
talent 
of 
Armisen 

and 
Rudolph. 
Somehow, 

anything these two actors do 
can somehow turn out funny. 
While Armisen’s character is 
much of what we expect from 
him, he and Rudolph maintain 
incredible chemistry, and their 
witty dialogue and interactions 
are constantly entertaining. The 
pair also exhibit moments of 
skillful dramatic acting as well, 
making the explorations of the 
progression of romantic love 
more effective.

“Forever” 
does 
not 
do 

anything groundbreaking and is 
certainly not the strongest work 
of its stars. However, at eight 
short episodes in length, it is a 
bingeable, entertaining watch for 
fans of the style of comedy that 
Rudolph and Armisen execute so 
effortlessly.

‘Forever’ is only worth 
watching for the talent

SAYAN GHOSH
Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

“White Boy 

Rick”

Sony Pictures

Michigan Theater

“Forever”

Amazon Video

Season 1, Episodes 

1-4

AMAZON VIDEO
SONY PICTURES

