6 Reasons Cross-Dressing Comedies Should Be Retired
"Adam Sandler Sucked Into Jet Engine" was the headline many newspapers were reluctantly unable to use this weekend, following the release of Sandler's poorly received comedy movie Jack and Jill. Sandler plays both titular roles in the film, a gender bending dual-performance which by all accounts will earn him many invitations to stand close to jet engines in the near future. "Holy shit, Mr. Sandler," many of these critics said in their reviews. "Holy shit," they added, jabbing the pen into their notepad to form a final spite-filled period, before throwing both pen and pad over their shoulders.
This is as good a time as any to point out that I haven't actually seen this film, and don't intend to. Why? Because this isn't that kind of website and because you can't make me. But it turns out that I probably didn't have to see it to comment on it because of the fact that it features a man dressed as a woman. Having grown up in an era when VHS cassettes were the only form of non-book entertainment available, I've stood witness to many other cross-dressing based comedies before, and can report that this is not a genre known for its startling originality.
I know you refuse to believe that the Corey Haim would deign to star in a derivative piece of trash, but it's true.
It turns out that every single film which decides that a dude wearing pantyhose is a funny idea routinely relies upon six tiring cliches. These have been collated below for the benefit of bored office workers and archaeologists of the trivial.
#6. A Real Sturdy Woman
This is the most primitive level of humor related to cross-dressing, sight-gags featuring a burly man with his burly features, donned in a lady's accouterments. The audience is expected to react as thus:
Audience: Ahh, look at this lovely woman with her dress and blouse and humongous hands and mustache? BWAAAAAH??????
This is sort of funny the first time you see it, especially if you're watching in a movie theater and everyone around you goes "BWAAAAAH??????" at the same time (it's kind of contagious). And then, like every joke ever before, it becomes less funny when you see it again. And again. And again. This is well known, and few directors will dare use the same joke multiple times in a film, but the thing that many forget is that this same effect occurs even when watching different movies. It's why test audiences loved it when Cameron Diaz got semen in her hair in There's Something About Mary but hated it when the same thing happened a couple months later to Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth -- an embarrassing realization which forced an 11th hour scramble to fix the scene.
"Well then put a tiny little hat on her instead. No, tinier."
But this isn't a lesson that cross-dressing filmmakers seem to get. They don't realize that Adam Sandler in a dress = Rob Schneider in a dress = Martin Lawrence in a dress = Robin Williams in a dress = Dustin Hoffman in a dress. We get it. We get that ladies don't normally have broad shoulders, or massive packages, or throat testicles. Stop rubbing our faces in it. Nothing gives you that right.
#5. Lady Activities
Ladies, bless them, have vastly more involved grooming routines than men, many of which involve products and equipment unfamiliar to the average male. Each individual body part has its own set of waxes and scrubs and pneumatic chisels, the application of which is necessary lest a woman become ostracized from society. Consequently, there isn't a single cross-dressing movie that doesn't have at least one scene of the hero messing around with wax, or nearly sheering his knee caps off with some kind of high pressure depilatory jet.
I think women use this one to make their eyes twinkle more.
"Men Are Idiots," these scenes say triumphantly, and although most of my adult life suggests that's not too far off, it's unfair to suggest that all men are as dim as me. Ripping hair out hurts -- it's the most fundamental aspect of that activity, something that we all know at a primal level. The world doesn't need another scene where some guy figures that out in a 3-minute montage set to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
#4. Fucking Aerosmith Songs
Actually, scratch that. If there is a montage in a cross-dressing film (there is [probably several actually]) it's almost guaranteed that it will be set to Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)." This is the one where the chorus goes "dude looks like a lady" which is a handy way for an audience to be reminded that the director is a fucking moron. It's the least original choice for a soundtrack ever, having been featured in every cross-dressing movie, novel, movie novelization and other gender bending work for the past 500 years. Scholars have found references for it in the margins of some of Shakespeare's original folios.
Chorus: "She hath the figure of fair Venus, Lord imagineth mine surprise!"
why aren't adam sandlers movies as good as his old albums?
ReplyRegarding #2... "Nobody's perfect." And nobody's done it better since.
ReplyAgreed...The whole "genre" should have stopped after that one beautiful, beautiful line! It's been constantly downhill ever since! :P.
Agreed - once Marilyn f*****g Monroe has got in on the genre it's time for everyone else to go home..
Someone needs to show Tyler Perry this article. and give him a goddamned handgun with one bullet.
ReplyI love how people don't mind that Sandler played a borderline retarded adult going back through elementary school with little kids, but for some reason him dressing like a woman is just too horrible.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThat is actually the only movie in my entire life that i did not watch from start to finish. And i always do just out of principle, don't know why. This is coming from a guy that forced himself to stick through the entire "Meet the Spartans" the whole 60 minutes of fork-to-the-eyeing of it.
a) how about you check your privilege and ableism-speech at the door.
b) this article is specifically on the minstrelization and trivialization of the trans experience, not Adam Sandler films. If you were an actual avid and informed reader of cracked, you would know very well that the tragedy of Sandler's 'comedy' as been lambasted in the 'comedies that should never have been made' article.
c) Adam Sandler is a terrible person. He is terrible for Happy Gilmore as he is terrible for Jack and Jill. It's not a decision between one or the other.
Yeah, that's what we call a false dichotomy.
Man! You just don't get the comedy behind guys dressing as uptight hos. I'm pretty sure they weren't really targeting nerdy white boys.
ReplyI don't even think black people liked "White chicks".
You should stop reading Cracked, Mr. Wayans. Shoo! SHOO!
I remember really wanting to see 'Wong Foo' with Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes in drag....and then the drugs wore off.
ReplyTo Wong Foo was actually about drag queens, not straight guys pretending to be women for some weird reason (or just plain playing another character in the movie, for the entire movie). I believe they are all gay, too, which is another crucial difference. It was actually a really funny movie, I was surprised. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and Bird Cage, are a couple other drag queen comedies that I really liked, too. Don't get the Drag Queens mixed up with the cross-dressing straight guys though :)
I think you meant Picasso instead of Dali; Dali only painted his wife's saggy boobies... but they were always parallel.
ReplyI thought the female in the Jack and Jill poster was Sarah Jessica Parker :/
ReplyYou poor child.
WAIT. Sarah Jessica Parker....is a WOMAN? Get out.
werent able to see (have no intent of seeing) jack and jill, but biologically speaking is even it possible to have an identical, different gender twin?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesUntil puberty, pretty easily. After puberty, theoretically possible but it would be really hard to pull off, since the same genetic stock that might make an appropriately androgynous woman would be hard pressed to cause the same effect in a man.
no, by the definition of identical. They'd have to be fraternal twins (two eggs fertilized at once). Identical twins are caused by the same zygote splitting in two, meaning that both twins have to contain the exact same set of chromosomes.
Actually there are at least one set of male-female identical twins in the US, but one of them is transgender. So if you mean gender and not sex, then yes, since gender dysphoria is caused by biology.
:P
No cross-dressing movies here in Singapore but our local comedians often cross-dress e.g. Hossan Leong, Kumar and Jack Neo (famous as liang po po)
ReplyLa Cage aux Folles was funny because the movie spent ages introducing us to the characters before Albin showed up in a dress, and the humor came naturally from the characters' personalities.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesVictor/Victoria was a great movie because the characters were fascinating, stylish, engaging people who were fun to watch.
Some Like It Hot had one of the most awesome endings in film history - once you see it, you'll never forget it - because at this point we like all the characters and it would have been depressing to see Osgood get upset and dump Jerry. And when he doesn't we're laughing because, well, because the scene was funny, but also because it was incredibly heartwarming and we're relieved and we feel great.
White Chicks ... um, I think one of the generic guys would have lost his job or something if he didn't dress up as a girl. Whatever.
Don't forget one of the final scenes where T Curtis kisses Marilyn Monroe while she thinks he's a woman, AND SHE'S INTO IT. And when he asks her why, she says,"I told you,I'm stupid." Genuinely funny movie and one of the only times I've seen Jack Lemmon completely unable to steal a scene.
Man, Some Like it Hot was such an awesome movie. Definitely the only cross-dressing movie I'd see more than once. In fact I think I want to watch it again right now since I've been reminded of it.
Some Like It Hot did it right. It's just that simple.
Cillian Murphy in Breakfast on Pluto. Nothing short of amazing.
ReplyI'm dying to see this.
Don't lump Tootsie in with those lame ass movies. It's effing awesome.
ReplyOh, please, Tootsie was a pathetic attempt at Oscar bait by Dustin Hoffman, and a blatant attempt to upstage the much more elegant Victor/Victoria with a streetwise, "real American" cross-dressing film, where the cross-dresser has the decency not to assume the cross-gender persona full-time. It's idiotic and exploitative.
Not to mention that Hoffman's character is a total sleazebag whose only dynamic development is from dressing as a woman and somehow magically gaining sensitivity, which set the tone for (and therefore pre-emptively ruined) all future cross-dressing comedies.
Did anyone else notice that all the horrible examples were of men playing women? Is that because it's so much bloody harder to be a woman than to be a man? On the other hand, one of the few "woman as a man" movies out there, Victor/Victoria, is one of the best freaking movies ever.
Reply Hide All See All 13 RepliesThen, there is Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. That is a great movie. But it's not really a cross-dressing movie. It's a movie about drag queens, which is an entirely different thing. Even a movie about cross-dressers would be an entirely different thing, although Glen or Glenda? is not it. It is an Ed Wood movie, though, which is a genre in itself.
Can you name a comedy where a woman plays a man? Society is barely starting to grasp that female transvestites exist, much less know what to do with us, and as the Hollywood Stereotype article shows, movies drag their feet even more than the rest of the world.
Commenters: Please note I said "comedy". COMEDY. Boys Don't Cry doesn't count. Stop that. God you are a terrible person what is wrong with you.
Just One Of The Guys.
Crying Game? She's the Man? That's all I can think of.
She's the man
"She's the Man" starring Amanda Bynes.
She's The Man! Amanda Bynes dresses up as a man to play soccer.
Did nobody think of She's the Man?
I was intrigued that there were 5 responses to Delcat42's question, but than I realised there were only actually 2. Although it was neat that each commenter seemed to add more info about She's the Man.
Also, She's The Man is a terrible, terrible movie. And not just because Amanda Bynes' voice is like nails on a chalkboard, but that's a big part of it.
Who the hell wants to watch an hour and a half of a woman wearing a fake mustache, paying bills, killing spiders, and lifting heavy furniture? This is America, not some French art house!
Does Connie and Carla count?
She's The Man. Butch Jamie.
@Delcat42:
She's The Man with Amanda Bynes.
@Delcat42: did you miss where I mentioned Victor/Victoria? It's one of the best comedies of all time, way better than Tootsie. So much better than Mrs. Doubtfire, it's in a whole other class, and so successful, it because an award-winning Broadway show after being a movie.
You know, I started thinking about how this genre does need to be retired and I came up with an example that might be an exception to this rule and has yet to be mentioned: Cpl. Klinger from M*A*S*H*. Everyone knew he was trying to get a Section 8 and no one was convinced he was a woman. Does he still fall under bad example of this trope?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesKlinger, if anything, is a subversion of the trope, dating from before it really became a trope. That's how tired and worn out the trope is... it was M*A*S*Hed in 1972!
Hey, don't knock MASH. One of the best com/drams ever.
Scruno - stop saying trope! We get it, you like tvtropes. Grand. Now, invest in a thesaurus...
One thing I think we can all agree on is that the world is a more beautiful place with Dave Foley in drag. And Bruce McCulloch. And Mark McKinney. Hell, all of the Kids (except for Scott Thompson who should always remain in full-on Danny Husk mode).
ReplyI love you.
I look at Dave Foley and I'm angry that that skeleton and that ability to dodge testosterone belongs to someone male-identified... but yeah, totally.
Gotta defend Tootsie here too... for us "older kids."
ReplyTotally agree though. This s**t is old and the Jack & Jill preview makes me want to shoot myself. Adam Sandler is quickly taking Rob Schneider's job.
Shit, Adam Sandler is practically the only reason Rob Schneider has had work for the last 15 years at least...
Let's face it: Hollywood just refuses to recognize that Wacky Comedy is a dead genre. You can no longer throw together a generic plot, put an SNL alum in front of the camera, and cash the checks.
ReplyUnless it's Will Ferrell apparently.
Why are so many movies so f*****g horrible goddamn
ReplyBecause even if they are horrible, people still go to them. If we paid for them after we saw them, instead of before, Hollywood would start making much better movies very quickly. But we don't learn. No matter how bad the last film that director, writer, star and studio made, we are still hopefull, and go to see the next one.
Still... I like Bosom Buddies...
Reply