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Was I wrong to have laughed at several junctures in American Pie?
Probably. This film is sexist, puerile, bawdy and voyeuristic. Or is it?
Perhaps it is so extreme that its sexual grotesquery must be viewed as
farcical, its vulgarity as cathartic and its ribald humour as, well, O.K. to laugh at in moderation.
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Mikhail Bakhtin, in his thesis on 15th Century French humanist writer
Rabelais, argued that the grotesque, as part of the ribald festivities he
called true carnival, "celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing
truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of
allhierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions. Carnival was the
true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change, and renewal".
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In many ways, this is what happens in American Pie, screenwriter
Adam Herz's tale of four male college classmates, all virgins, who pledge to
lose that status before graduation. Each of the boys succeeds in his
"quest", providing a flimsy excuse for much visual titillation. Some of the
material borders on soft-porn, hence the film's MA-rating. But, each of the
male characters also learns much, about himself and his assumptions about
women, and about the moral worth or otherwise of such a pact.
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This is a movie which ridicules, rather than validates, the male quest for
sexual conquest. In the end, these boys are conquered, both by their
testosterone and by their female classmates. They are the clowns and fools
of the Rabelaisian revel, and the prom, at which all final levelling and
erasure of prejudice occurs, is the official feast.
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Despite gratuitous exposure of a large amount of actor Shannon Elizabeth's
flesh, American Pie is not entirely sexist. We also get to see
male flesh, including a strip-tease by lead male Jim (Jason Briggs), and to
see a male character objectified and used by his far-more-sexually-assured
female counterpart when Jim finally teams up with musician Michelle (Alyson
Hannigan).
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There is some stereotype-deconstruction going on here, in the Carnivalesque
hierarchy-busting tradition -- the school "dork" metamorphs into a
self-assured sexual diva, the "jazz-club nerd" into the romantic lead.
"Jock", "geek", "brain" -- all are levelled by a common lack of sexual
experience.
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But are these factors sufficient to keep the film from being exploitative,
and morally "wrong" in its conformity to the stereotyped categories of two
decades of American "coming-of-age" college films such as Porky's
or Fast Times at Ridgemont High? It depends what function or
functions we ascribe to it. If we believe that some viewers will use the
cast of American Pie as role models, perhaps we should be
concerned about the glamorised use of alcohol and the emphasis on sexual
participation of a particular kind. The sex is, at least, reasonably safe
-- condoms feature quite prominently -- but the sexual politics excludes
minority groups such as gays or lesbians, ethnic or religious groups,
constructing limited "normal" behavioural expectations.
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If we see the role of films such as American Pie as depicting an
existing situation, however unfortunate, and using it as a vehicle for
humour, this film is an all-too-accurate piece of realism -- I am sure I
went to school with not one but all of the lead characters. The public
seduction of Nadia, the overseas exchange student (played by Shannon
Elizabeth), is clearly more masturbatory fantasy than realism, yet much of
the rest of the script about prom-night promiscuity holds an eerie ring of
familiarity.
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Potentially, American Pie has captured something accurate, and
therefore painfully funny, about (white, middle-class, heterosexual)
adolescent angst. Is it wrong to laugh at that whilst simultaneously
recognising its limitations?
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Much the same questions were asked of carnival, and its unabashed
celebration of the physical, by critics of Bakhtin. Many have shown how his
wholly positive interpretation of Rabelais obscured the anti-Semitism and
homophobia of the carnival revels.
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The only conclusion possible about American Pie is that it
simultaneously offends and amuses. Rites of passage have
changed little, it seems, since the Middle Ages, and the controversies they
ignite, not at all since Bakhtin was writing in 1940.
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Details
American Pie, by Universal Pictures 1999.
Director: Paul Weitz
Screenplay: Adam Herz.
Cinematography: Richard Crudo.
Production Designer: Paul Peters.
Costume Designer: Leesa Evans.
Editing: Priscilla Nedd-Friendly.
Cast: Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Seann William Scott, Mena Suvari, Natasha Lyonne, Tara Reid, Alyson Hannigan, Eugene Levy.
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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Elspeth Tilley. "College Students in Carnivalesque Spectacle: 'American Pie'." M/C Reviews 16 Oct. 1999.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/pie.html>.
Chicago style:
Elspeth Tilley, "College Students in Carnivalesque Spectacle: 'American Pie'," M/C Reviews 16 Oct. 1999,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/pie.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Elspeth Tilley. (1999) College students in carnivalesque Spectacle: 'American pie'. M/C Reviews 16 Oct. 1999.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/pie.html> ([your date of access]).
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![[image]](http://www.rotten-tomatoes.com/images/subpage/american_pie_poster.gif)