I Love You, Man: A Singletude Review

It's official! I have a crush! Since it arrived from Netflix, I've been in deep like with I Love You, Man. The bromance of the century is as spit-out-your-Sprite funny as the likes of Wedding Crashers and Knocked Up, but the themes it addresses through dialogue so achingly real it feels like a hammer to the funny bone elevate this flick several cuts above. So why am I still withholding affection? Because while the movie skewers matrimania, it still demonizes singles.

Meet Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd), a straight-laced, dependable, ambitious yet sensitive real estate agent in touch with his feminine side. Now meet Zooey Rice (Rashida Jones), sweet, attractive, easygoing co-owner of a retail boutique. The two live in a beautiful house in the suburbs of LA, and Peter has just proposed. They have it all, which usually signals the end of the movie. Not in this case.

See, Peter is missing something--friends. Oh, he has co-workers and acquaintances, even fencing buddies, but no one close enough to stand up for him at his wedding. After he overhears Zooey's BFFs critiquing his social skills, he has an epiphany: "I gotta get some f****** friends!" he vows. From that point on, he becomes a man on a mission to cleverly exploit every parallel to contemporary dating cliches. In the process, he endures misguided "set-ups" (one of which includes possibly the best projectile vomiting scene in cinematic history), discovers that men online lie about their age, and agonizes over how soon to call for that first "man date." The expected hilarity ensues, not just because Peter isn't actually romancing these guys but because it hits home that much of the same hope, anxiety, frustration, and excitement that we associate with dating applies to courting a new friend, as well.

Now enter Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), a womanizing, Cheeto-munching, bar-brawling, air guitar-riffing man's man. Here the movie takes a detour to Fight Club Lite as Sydney bonds with Peter, teaching him to speak Guy (a language he flubs often and spectacularly), obey the rules of the brotherhood, and grow a pair. It's all good, and Peter is feeling the brotherly love until his fiancee fears that their relationship is threatening to become a menage a trois.

Because this is, after all, a Hollywood comedy, alter egos Peter and Sydney must each know something the other needs to learn in order to grow and change. Peter, obviously, needs friends. Director John Hamburg has decided that Sydney needs a girlfriend. Or maybe not a girlfriend yet--mercifully, the set-up that Peter and Zooey force on him doesn't work out--but the maturity and interpersonal skills necessary to land one. Therein lies the reason for my love-hate relationship with I Love You, Man.

What the movie does right is present a positive model for a balanced relationship that is not overly couplecentric. Peter and Zooey love each other and enjoy spending time together, but, by the end, they also have fulfilling lives apart with their own friends and career interests. The message that marital partners can't be each other's "everything," that they need platonic friends outside the relationship, is so enlightened and exceptional in the entertainment world that singles with singletude can't help but fall hard for this film.

On the other hand, as much fun and heart as Sydney brings to this story, he's still a caricature of the aging bachelor who refuses to grow up while all his friends are settling down. In one troubling scene, he phones everyone he knows to make weekend plans but is rejected by one after the other. Turns out his friends have wives and children who top their priority lists. Ok, Mr. Hamburg, we get it. When push comes to shove, family trumps friends. Fine. But then you pull out the heavyweights, the three Bs, and leave Sydney looking bummed, bored, and bereft. This is a guy who supposedly has a successful investment business, a collection of high-end guitars he rocks out on, a dog he's devoted to, and friends he hangs with a few times a week. Yet the one day everyone is busy, he's presented as a pathetic no-life who can't find a way to amuse himself on his own. Then there's Zooey's token single friend, who is, of course, a whiny, desperate Plain Jane (the cool, sexy one is married) and a mini-lesson toward the end about respecting the privacy of interactions within the sanctum of the relationship. These elements combine to proclaim a message that matrimaniacs are losers, but singles are losers, too, that to strike a successful balance, one should find a happy, healthy relationship or at least accept that relationships make the world go round. I'm down with the first half of that thesis but not the second.

In fantasyland, Sydney teaches Peter what he needs to learn without ever succumbing to the vices of stereotypical bachelorhood. But then there wouldn't be a conflict, and as all wannabe screenwriters know, a script without conflict is like a platinum wedding without a bridezilla. Or something. Anyway, it doesn't sell. Though I can't commit my whole heart to I Love You, Man, as the only movie in recent memory to call out matrimaniacs and lampoon intensive coupling, it still has me pretty infatuated.




How important do you think it is for a couple to maintain separate friendships outside their relationship? What can couples do to balance time together and time apart? How do you think bachelors are usually portrayed in Hollywood? Is the Hollywood version of the bachelor at all representative of the single men you know? If you've seen I Love You, Man, what are your thoughts on the movie? Do you think it has a positive or a negative message about singles in general and single men in particular? What does it say to you about matrimania/intensive coupling/enmeshed or codependent relationships? By the end of the movie, do you think Peter and Zooey provide a healthy model for couples or not? Can you recommend any other movies that tackle matrimania?


Fun Link of the Day


Do you have a question for Clever Elsie about some aspect of the single life? Have an unpublished rant or rave about singlehood? Write in, and you just might see your question in a "Singletude Q&A" or your rant or rave in a "Singletude Sound-off"! Singletude makes every effort to republish submissions in their original form but reserves the right to edit your submission for length and clarity.

"Bachelor Portraits": Photographs of Single Men by Justyna Badach

Bachelors sometimes complain that "single" has become synonymous with "woman," that the media overlooks the single male and his unique interests and concerns. Well, photographer Justyna Badach is focusing the world's attention on single men through the intimate lens of her camera and illuminating the obscure, sometimes misunderstood corners of their inner spheres with her bright studio lights. In a series entitled simply "Bachelor Portraits," she captures the so-called untamed bachelor in his own abode to examine how single men can be both masculine and domestic. She is also interested in the symbolic resonance of the home for single men, portraying it as both a retreat from society and a barrier to interaction.

In an excerpt from Badach's artistic statement on the "Bachelor Portraits," she says:

The images . . . depict the safety of places where the men withdraw from the world to think, meditate and act out their fantasies. I am interested in the way that these personal spaces serve as both portrait and the junction between masculine and feminine, the man and myself.

Like bachelorhood, these spaces are both a refuge and a prison; the place where the man gets back in touch with themselves by depriving themselves of an emotional connection with the outside world . . . Many of the men expand [sic] a great deal of effort to arrange their living space, developing a kind of personal iconography or domestic vernacular. At times, this space is so profoundly personal, that it feels like I am standing in someone else’s skin.

The photos do conjure a private, cave-like realm for each of these single men, intensified by Badach's choice of subjects with individualistic and highly developed decorative styles. But there is a darkness to these photos, too, both literal and metaphorical. Although the subjects are bathed in white light, the rooms in which they pose are almost uniformly dim, muted, and often cluttered. The observer can almost smell the mustiness and feel the dust tickling the back of the throat. Most of the men are casually dressed, even unkempt, and sprawl or slouch in their environments, reinforcing the impression that the onlooker is on the threshold of the bachelor's personal territory, in which he is both sovereign lord and endangered species. While more visually interesting this way, Badach's representation of single men plays into the stereotype of the bachelor as odd, incompetent, and antisocial.

She provides a more detailed rationale for the web site Thomas Kellner--Photography in Art, in which she tries to categorize the single men she encountered, explaining, "Some are extremely shy; others have dedicated their lives to caring for a family member, while another group was so completely immersed in creative or intellectual pursuits they had little time for a relationship." Yet there are only hints of these other dimensions in her collection. The men are frozen like specimens to be studied rather than dynamically engaged in their daily lives. Badach could have showed us a bachelor getting ready for work, maybe shaving or adjusting his tie. She could've showed us bachelors passionately pursuing the hobbies she refers to, perhaps reading, painting, cooking, or playing instruments. She could've showed us a bachelor doing the household grunt work that single men are responsible for when they live alone. She could've showed us bachelors surrounded by photos of family and friends, talking on the phone, or chatting on the Internet.

But she doesn't. We see the occasional pet, maybe a child's toy in a nook or cranny, waiting for a visit, but the predominant tone is one of isolation. So it's not surprising that there's also an air of melancholy about this series, which Badach acknowledges when she says that tragedy reverberates in more than a few of her portraits. The solitude in so many of these pictures is less meditative or stimulating than it is lonely and remorseful, the light ghostly, the color palette subdued, the men themselves glum.

Badach is to be commended for exploring the lives of single men at all, and I understand that she wants to explore a side of singleness that's private, sometimes to the point of detachment. But by magnifying that side, she minimizes the side that is actively connected to the world despite the sense of physical disconnection. In my mind, it would've been more interesting--and truer to the lives of single men--to see photos that depict this contrast. Furthermore, by presenting single men as inherently different, as other, the photographer shies away from that about them which is universal. Again, it would've been refreshing to see portraits that demystify bachelors, showing them engaged in relatable activities instead of withdrawn into cocoons from which they emerge remote and eccentric.


What do you think about Badach's "Bachelor Portraits"? What message do they communicate to you about single men? If you're a single man, how is this similar to or different from how you view yourself and other single men? If you're not a single man, how is this similar to or different from how you perceive single men? What kinds of photographs of single men would you like to see in a series like this?


Fun Link of the Day


Do you have a question for Clever Elsie about some aspect of the single life? Have an unpublished rant or rave about singlehood? Write in, and you just might see your question in a "Singletude Q&A" or your rant or rave in a "Singletude Sound-off"! Singletude makes every effort to republish submissions in their original form but reserves the right to edit your submission for length and clarity.