First comes love. Then comes marriage. Not quite. In our modern society, as Michel Foucault put it, “our epoch has initiated sexual heterogeneities,” and thus, our form of entertainment has progressed along to include more sexual heterogeneous situations. Whereas before there were clear cut expectations- man loves woman, man marries woman, man gets child from woman- those expectations were not only clear cut, but there was no divergence from that train of thought. Now, woman can love man, woman can have sex with man before marriage and if it doesn’t workout, woman can choose new partner, repeat, until woman decides man is right for woman to marry. And, that’s only if she chooses to get married. Though that seems to be the staple of our every day life, in celluloid, that is called “radical romance.”
In Clerks II, the protagonist, Dante Hicks, is a fry cook at a fast food restaurant, on his last day of work, who is engaged to Emma Bunting, a controlling woman who “probably wouldn't have given Dante the time of day back in high school” (Clerks II). Emma is extremely excited to be getting married to the underachieving Dante, albeit, after she has "already played the field for a decade." In the film we find out that Dante had been working in a convenience store for a decade before it burned down, and is now working at a fast food restaurant at the age of 33. His marriage to Emma is ensuring that he leave the state of New Jersey to work at a car wash (owned by Emma's father), to live in a house (bought by Emma's parents).
Dante, the character we are rooting for, isn’t a character without flaws. In a typical romantic comedy, the flaw of the male is that he wants sex. As it says in Tamar Jeffers McDonald “Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre,” “at the heart of every romantic comedy is the implication of sex, and settled, secure within-a-relationship sex at that.” Dante seemingly already has that with Emma, but then that would be the end of the story because they are a month away from getting married, therefore, Clerks II is not simply a romantic comedy, nor a sex comedy (since sex isn’t the goal), but a radical romance due to the steering away from the formulaic genre.
Dante’s flaw does not come in wanting to have sex. It comes in having sex with another woman, that woman being Dante's boss, Becky, a 20-something-year-old, which is now pregnant with Dante's child. Becky chooses not to tell Dante that she is pregnant because she simply does not want to jeopardize his engagement to Emma. Becoming pregnant after a one-night fling with Dante, Becky remains tight lipped about her pregnancy throughout the day (the entire film takes place in the course of one day). Another major flaw in Dante is the fact that he is willing to leave Becky behind, so long as Becky doesn’t say anything, just to ensure that he is able to forgo his plans with marrying Emma, a girl who Dante “isn’t too crazy about in the first place” (Clerks II).
Becky’s character can ultimately be described as a recherché and independent woman, whose personality is seldom seen in films and who is aware of both her sexuality and freedom as a woman. In fact, I would suggest that Becky is a "postfeminists." As Chris Barker's book, "Cultural Studies," describes it, postfeminists "are not necessarily oppressed by dint of being women. Not all men are oppressors and it is unhelpful to understand gender relations in terms of 'men vs. women.'" To articulate, Becky found herself in a situation where most women would succumb to feel the necessity of a man by their side for such a crucial event in their life, but, Becky’s “recognition of male loss and vulnerability" and "the understanding that women can wield sexual power" empowers her character beyond the typical romantic comedy female character that is constantly trying to get the attention of the man, or making themselves vulnerable for the male lead to save them.
I make the same argument for Emma’s character, whom after finding out she has been cheated on wastes very little tears before beating up and leaving Dante for his infidelity. After finding out about Dante’s adulterous act, she never played the victim, which is what a feminist would have done, but the postfeminist argues “ the performance of victim identity reinforces the myth that women are the ‘weaker sex’ they say, and risks perpetuating the power dynamic inherent between victim and perpetrator (or victim and voyeur)” (Barker). Clearly, neither of the women in the film are ever in any state of “weakness,” but rather stand tall with what has been dealt to them (Becky and unexpected pregnancy and Emma a cheating fiancée). This case also breaks the with a generic genre of romantic comedy which states “crying is frequently occupies an important space in the narratives of the romantic comedy: as an index of the pain a lover feels when apart from the beloved, when rejected or lonely.” Both Emma and Becky faced either a rejection or a state of isolation from Dante, but neither of them cried.
Although it may seem like Becky has become what Simone de Beauvoir called "just a womb," Becky's character is not debilitated by becoming pregnant with a man who is about to get married to another woman. Also, in opposition of de Beauvoir's statement, "[woman] cannot think of herself without a man." Becky does not tell Dante that she is pregnant until Dante confesses his love for her. This flips the tables again for what Barker has in his book which states "men are less inclined to verbalize emotions." Here, it is Dante who is confessing his love to Becky, while Becky never gave any inclination about her feelings (to her sex is just human nature and does not requisite the emotion of love, but more on that later), she describes her part in the affair as someone who just "fucks ugly, indecisive losers in the kitchen," but with a smile, of course.
Aside from the strong feminine characters’ personalities with how they deal with situations commonly associated with a female breakdown, Becky also exhibits an unconventional ideology about sex and marriage. In the first thirty minutes of the film, Becky and Dante have a conversation about marriage that is more inclined to the quote of Foucault. "I think marriage goes against our primal nature," "To be loved?", "[No], To fuck as much as possible." While Dante takes the role of 19th century conservatives who thought that sex and marriage "constitute[d] a sexuality that is economically useful and politically conservative," (despite not being too conservative himself), Becky's part in this dialogue goes from a "fact" Foucault had when he said, "this power [over marriage-less sex] had neither the form of law, nor the effects of the taboo. On the contrary; it acted by multiplication of singular sexuality. It did not set boundaries for sexuality; it extended the various forms of sexuality, pursuing them according to lines of indefinite penetration."
Becky is basically the spokesperson for Foucault’s eighteenth century ideas on sex and sexuality. Dante, being a very flawed male character, does not necessarily man up to the pregnancy, leaving Becky to assume that she will have to deal with her unborn child on her own. In her stride she goes to an abortion clinic and the film leaves it ambiguous (for some time) whether she made the appointment to abort it or not. That is another radical idea that is never mentioned in light-hearted romantic comedies. For instance, most comedies try avoiding the idea of abortion, never even saying the word, like in “Knocked Up.” When Allison, the woman who gets the honor of being the titular character who got knocked up, goes to her mother for advise, her mother asks Allison what she plans to do with her unplanned baby and suggests only to have it “taken care of,” never actually saying “abort it,” while Ben’s friend, Jonah, also tells him to “take care of it,” and continues to tell him to have a “schmishschmorshun.”
Becky’s character asked no one for advise, taking it upon herself to make the decision. Foucault “argues that from early eighteenth century onwards, women’s bodies were subject to the discourses of modern science. These discourses produced women as hysterical and nervous subjects while reducing them to their reproductive system” (Barker). That discourse that Foucault argued can be brought up in the comparison of characters between Allison from Knocked Up and Becky from Clerks II. As noted, Allison is told by her mother and is suggested by Ben (after getting advise from his friends) if she may want to abort it. Allison hardly knew Ben and yet she tagged him along for the ride throughout her pregnancy, despite him showing a distinct lack of interest. In opposition, Becky knew Dante was not interested and took it upon herself to deal with her situation.
I am not making an argument that people are stronger when they do not get support, but I am saying that Becky is not reduced to just her ovaries at any point in the film, even if she is pregnant, despite any lack of social support. Allison, on the other hand, is only picked on for her “hysterical outburts” caused by the imbalance of her hormones due to the pregnancy and despite having her mother, sister, and man who impregnated her by her side. Simone de Beauvoir said “woman has ovaries, a uterus; these pecularities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as his testicles, and that they secrete hormones.” Despite what de Beauvoir stated is true, it is the woman who makes the excuse for the man saying that it is her “imbalanced hormones” that cause her emotional outbursts, giving Ben an excuse to come to her aid.
After Becky returns from the visit to the abortion clinic, Emma discovers the affair between Dante and Becky during a sex donkey show at the fast food restaurant where they work, which was a gift to Dante by his best friend Randall. Here Emma accuses Becky of being a whore, and ends the relationship with Dante by kicking him in the testicles. When it comes to Emma’s character and the categorization of whether this is more radical than typical romantic comedy, I took into consideration other films where this happens (i.e. male lead has wife, fiancée, girlfriend, etc., but chooses female lead and the one that got cheated on/replaced/rejected just accepts it without rhyme or reason). In the movie Twister, Bill Paxton’s character ends up with Helen Hunt’s character despite Paxton having a fiancée. As stated, the fiancée simply accepts it without questioning it. In Disney’s Enchanted, the same exact thing happens, which in all honesty makes a strong case for women’s inferiority as a sex.
Of course, in this film, Emma does not take it with a grain of salt and shows an actual reaction that is more likely to happen once a woman realizes they have been cheated on. Why is it that most mainstream Hollywood films have the woman succumbing to such a demeaning act? As de Beauvoir put it, “‘…man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.’ And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex,’ by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being.” The women from Twister and Enchanted certainly fall into this “sex” category that de Beauvoir mentions, but Emma (nor Becky) does not. Using her better judgment, she leaves Dante without question again, making it a radical romance, where there is no chance of reconciliation.
What some may be argue makes this film a more typical romantic comedy is the ending of the film. Becky decides to keep the baby and Dante, in the most unromantic of ways, proposes to her through the drive thru window where they both work (I presume. The film never explains what Dante does during the 8 months after that he finds out about the pregnancy to whether he still worked with her or not), making it a radical proposal to a less radical trope. Still, if you compare The Graduate, which is categorized as radical due to the last 30 seconds of the film (the facial expressions of uncertainty shared by the two leads), then this film can also be assessed as radical because everything but the last 2 minutes is radical, including the characters personalities, actions and developments.
Though the formula for the typical romantic comedy is the “meet cute” blue print, where in short, “boy meets, loses, regains, girl,” Dante and Becky never actually go through any of those motions. The plot to Clerks II is ultimately a bit more complicated than that. Though it ends with the saccharine marriage proposal that all romantic comedies are indicted with, the trials and tribulations that get them there are the true marker that separates this would be generic romantic comedy and propels it to the likes of The Graduate and its predecessor Clerks, which doesn’t end with a marriage proposal but with an infidelity, a break up, a fight with a friend and no reconciled love life. The reason I chose Clerks II is because it is much more fascinating in its complicating categorization. Though some may argue that due to it’s conventional ending it simply is a romantic comedy, I have clearly argued against it, mainly just the ending.
With my arguments for and against "radical romance" and conventional romantic comedies, I cannot help to think that this movie is much more radical, than its predecessor and contemporaries. McDonald wrote that a radical romance is "[self-reflexive] as a modern and more realistic form of romantic comedy in contrast to earlier [film] texts," which Clerks II certainly is, but with all it's unorthodox plot points and characterizations, it found a median that other radical romances and typical romantic comedies cannot do. It provides a look at contemporary romantic life and problems such as unplanned pregnancy, infidelity, dead end jobs, unsure futures, and real life consequences to those mistakes. Dante did not end up winning the lottery to conveniently be able to raise a kid, have a home and maintain his bride-to-be, Emma left Dante without looking back, and Becky continues working at her “McJob” because bills need to be paid.
Isn’t that what makes The Graduate a quintessential radical romance, uncertainty
of the choices made? There’s a feeling of happiness in knowing that despite Dante is imperfect he still get s the girl, but he doesn’t know what will happen. As Benjamin and Elaine ride off in the bus, and as Dante and Becky move forward into a future, uncertainty is present, just like in real life.
Work Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage
Publication, 2008.
Clerks II. DVD. Dir. Kevin Smith. View Askew Productions, 2006.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. 1870.
Knocked Up. DVD. Dir. Judd Apatow. Universal Pictures, 2007.
McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. London:
Wallflower, 2007. Pg. 9, 15, 67
