'Pitch Perfect' and the Rise of the Gross Girl
This past weekend, the seemingly impossible has happened. A group of better-than-average-looking, a capella singing, vulgar-mouthed women has topped the box office, beating out the likes of testosterone-stuffed action movies like Mad Max: Fury Road.
Pitch Perfect 2 has made $70 million in its debut weekend, putting it on track to become the highest-grossing musical in film history.
That's cause for celebration.
Aca-believe it.
The sequel to 2012's surprise hit, Pitch Perfect, is by no means, well, pitch perfect. The comedy doesn't quite land at points, the film struggles to find places for the quirkier members of its huge ensemble cast to shine (here's lookin' at you, Lilly the scary beatboxing girl), and it perpetuates some seriously tired stereotypes, including the "Germans are uber-competitive and evil" trope.
However.
The film also celebrates female individuality and girlfriend-ships without succumbing to cheesiness. This is done through its irreverent approach to comedy. One particularly great moment in Pitch Perfect 2 occurs when Becca (Anna Kendrick) walks in on the rest of the Barden Bellas having a run-of-the-mill, slumber party pillow fight. She stares at them for a moment before saying: "You realize this sets women back about 30 years, right?"
Boom. Right there is why films like Pitch Perfect and its sequel are what we need right now.
Pictured: Females in their Natural Habitat
Through this single gag, Becca shuts down stereotyped images of women, and particularly of female friendships. This, and many such moments, help to reject an image of women as Snow White wannabes, while revealing and supporting the image of what I like to call the Gross Girl.
The Gross Girl isn't afraid to talk about her body. She might bring up her period in conversation. She might talk about how her dress is giving her major boob sweat. She might discuss sex as something she enjoys outside of a relationship. She is the new feminine.
In Pitch Perfect 2, the best example (though there are many) of the Gross Girl is, of course, Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson). Her confidence is contagious, and it's hard not to fall in love with her when she delivers certain lines like, "I'd like to be the meat in that man brisket." The film opens with the Bellas' performance at Nationals. Fat Amy is above the stage, doing an aerial trick. Suddenly, her unitard rips, displaying her bum to the entire audience. As she hangs there, she rotates around, and, well, everyone gets quite a view of her front as well. Later in the film, a Bella hopeful auditions for the other girls. She turns to Fat Amy and anxiously says, "You have a lovely vagina." Fat Amy smiles, nods, and says quite calmly: "Proceed."
Fat Amy: Not Just a Flash in the Pan
It's one of those moments in the film where the female characters take control of the discussions surrounding their own bodies, where female sexuality isn't spoken of as a myth or legend, but as something real and, of course, fun.
The Gross Girl isn't exactly new to the scene, but she has been growing bigger and bigger, grosser and grosser in recent years. Even looking at a frat-boy comedy like American Pie, you can see faint glimmerings of the Gross Girl, small little propechies that foretell of her glorious arrival. As you might expect, this is all through Allison Hannigan's character, the band geek who bores Jason Biggs's character with dull stories all beginning with, "This one time, at band camp..."
Jason Biggs is in for quite a surprise, then, when, at their prom, Hannigan delivers this now-famous line:
~*~*~*~*~*90s Romance~*~*~*~*~*
Though this might seem like a total Gross Girl move, the line is only funny because Hannigan's character shouldn't have said it. She's an innocent band geek--the comedy comes from the disjunction between what she's saying and who she actually is. So let's call her the Early Gross Girl, sort of like a Neanderthal with feminist underpinnings.
The true Gross Girl, like Fat Amy, is open with her Gross-ness. She might bare her vagina to the world at an a capella competition.
Apart from Fat Amy, the Gross Girl has been excitingly on the rise. Just look at shows like Broad City, (one of the best on television right now). It doesn't take much to notice that the show's two creators and protagonists, Abbi and Ilana, are Gross Girls to the extreme. This past season, there was an entire episode devoted to pegging. And who could forget season one's episode during which Ilana informs Abbi that she stashes pot in her lady-hole because "the va-yine-yah is nature's pocket"?
Preach
That's not to say that the Gross Girl doesn't meet with some seriously negative reactions. One guy I talked to once said that he hated Broad City because, "I don't like it when girls act gross." So basically, he wanted back the innocent band geeks whose flutes stay well away from nature's pocket.
Another friend of mine said she was hesitant to start watching Broad City because, "I don't find either of them attractive." This just struck me as ridiculous because she's a huge fan of The Office and it's not like Steve Carell or Rainn Wilson ever did much for the aesthetic development of the human species. Sorry boys.
As a side note, after I forced my friend to watch the first couple episodes of the show, she became addicted--it's funny as shit.
This is why we need these Gross Girls. From Fat Amy to Abbi and Ilana, and even to Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) from 30 Rock, these women defy feminine norms and fight for the chance to control the discussions surrounding their bodies and their sexualities. Fat Amy is obsessed with sex; Liz Lemon would rather watch TLC. Both women, though, are hella confident in what they like and do not like to do with their bodies.
So the fact that Pitch Perfect 2 is crushing box office records is, once again, cause for celebration. Because its success doesn't just indicate that comedies are still bankable, but that female-driven comedies can hold their own--comedies that celebrate and support the development of the one and only Gross Girl.
So here's to you, Gross Girl. May you forever penetrate the comedy market.
