Under the Red, White, and Blue in Whine Country
Last night, my family decided to watch Sideways. I'd never seen the movie. Actually, I still haven't seen the whole thing, because it just isn't my kind of movie, but I still got some entertainment out of the parts I did watch.
After about two minutes, I asked, "Hey, have you guys noticed that everything in this movie either red or blue?" There was a red car, and a bunch of blue cars, and a blue house, and the characters were almost all in red or blue shirts. Then they drove up to Miles's mom's house: the house was blue, her robe was red, the emroidered picture on the wall was red and blue, etc. Then I wandered out for a while, because watching loser assholes rob their mothers isn't entertaining to me.
I came back when Miles and Jack were somewhere in wine country after they'd met Stephanie. The bedspread in the hotel room was muted reds and blues, the picture on the wall was red and blue, the guys were still in red and blue shirts, as were a huge number of the extras... after counting an overwhelming number of red and blue things, I got bored again and started over-analyzing to keep myself entertained. I said, "Actually, maybe the theme is red, white, and blue. There's always white walls or white trim on the blue houses or something. Did you know that one of the titles Fitzgerald considered for The Great Gatsby was Under the Red, White, and Blue?. He meant it as a commentary on American life or something. Maybe this movie's doing the same thing."
But as we kept watching, we started thinking that actually, maybe that wasn't a joke. At one point, the guys stood near an extra wearing a t-shirt with an American flag on it. Soon after, they stood near a TV which flashed images of a woman in an American flag bikini. And the red, white, and blue color scheme continued everywhere else. Huh. Well, Miles is a fairly standard "neurotic guy" character, complete with an ex-wife, an unpublishable novel, a mother he doesn't like who guilt-trips him into spending time with family, and a friend who's a player. And Jack is a fairly standard "goofy dumb friend/cheating asshole guy" character. Pairing a neurotic guy and an outgoing guy is also really standard, and in general, these two character types are pretty standard "average American guy" characters. The movie showcases the neurotic, depressed guy trying to find meaning and human connection in his shitty life while travelling in a place full of material abundance and snobbery (hello, wine and golf courses) with a friend who seems to be good with people but who is also seeking that human connection in a more... physical way. And Jack totally misrepresents himself to get women. The "trying to find meaning in a materialistic society" thing and the "deception as part of attempt to get friends and/or women" remind me a lot of Gatsby (though granted, I haven't read it in a few years). So maybe the idea that the movie is trying to comment on American life in a similary way as Gatsby isn't that far out.
I still couldn't stand the characters - Miles just annoyed me, and Jack was a jerk, and I didn't find this funny, especially since I've seen the "loser friends doing loser things haha" plot a few too many times, and Stephanie seems much cooler so why can't we have a movie about her instead? - so I kept counting red, white, and blue things. My sister joked that someone could write a paper about it. (Then when Jack spent about five minutes hugging Miles, I said, "Paper topic two: homoerotic tensions in Sideways." Of course the characters immediately started discussing whether or not Miles was gay. Thanks, guys!) When Miles was reading an issue of Cosmo for some reason I don't recall, the cover was red and blue (and advertised "nine ways to pleasure him:" commentary on American life and homoerotic tensions in one package!). So I started joking about "those sex-obsessed Americans." Then Jack hooked up with this girl Cammi (who lived in a blue house with white trim and a red bean-bag chair), and it turns out that she and her husband get off on him coming home to find her with another man. And Miles sneaks in to get Jack's wallet only to see Kimmie and her husband having sex while talking dirty about her sleeping with Jack with George Bush on TV right behind them. Commentary on American sex-weirdness, flabby American asses, and politics! And then the guy chased Miles out to the car naked, so we got Flabby American Guy's cock in our faces, which I'm sure is highly symbolic of something or other.
There's also the meta issue of how the movie is about these jerks and their inner angst while the female characters are on the periphery. When Miles walked in on Jack and Stephanie having sex, Jack waved Miles out of the hotel room - the two men interacted - but Stephanie didn't even react. She just kept lying there. And after she gets her revenge on Jack, we never see her again. Miles and Maya talk about her once, but the real subject of discussion is whether Miles is a jerk for covering for Jack, and then once Maya reads his book she calls up and talks only about Miles. Though we don't actually see her again either - Miles just goes to her (blue and white) house, and the focus is on him reaching out for human connection by going, and on hope that he will find it. Even Stephanie and Maya's clothes are different: I saw Stephanie in a silvery shirt and an orange shirt, and I remember Maya in a green shirt. The colors contain red or blue, but are one color over on the color wheel. They aren't fully part of the "America" color scheme. Miles's mom and Cammi do dress in the color scheme (red and blue for Mom, white shirt for Cammi), but Cammi's only role is pretty much to gush over Jack and get fucked by two guys, while the mom cooks, so I wonder if they're more like add-ons - "Girltoy and Mom and apple pie." On one hand, I think the movie is critiquing what jerks these guys are, especially to women... but on the other hand, the women in the movie are pushed to the sidelines or out of the movie entirely once they don't affect the men, they're on the sidelines even when they're in it, and they're sometimes coded "a little different from all the rest of the rwb Americans" by their clothes since the main males always wear rwb. And it's pretty inexplicable why these women like these loser guys to begin with. So third paper topic: "patriarchy and representation of America as loser asshole guys, intersection of."
Other interesting rwb instances: a Chevron sign (oil!) and the that bastion of American-ness, the fast food joint (blue and white menu, blue walls, white books, red Coca-Cola sign...). But there's something in every single shot, and it's not hard to find. Once you start looking, you see it everywhere. This is where the drinking game comes in: take a bottle of Pinot noir, and take a drink every time you see a screamingly obvious sign of the rwb color scheme. But don't actually do it, because you''d probably be comatose in about ten minutes.
And that's quite enough rambling about a movie I don't even like enough to hate.
After about two minutes, I asked, "Hey, have you guys noticed that everything in this movie either red or blue?" There was a red car, and a bunch of blue cars, and a blue house, and the characters were almost all in red or blue shirts. Then they drove up to Miles's mom's house: the house was blue, her robe was red, the emroidered picture on the wall was red and blue, etc. Then I wandered out for a while, because watching loser assholes rob their mothers isn't entertaining to me.
I came back when Miles and Jack were somewhere in wine country after they'd met Stephanie. The bedspread in the hotel room was muted reds and blues, the picture on the wall was red and blue, the guys were still in red and blue shirts, as were a huge number of the extras... after counting an overwhelming number of red and blue things, I got bored again and started over-analyzing to keep myself entertained. I said, "Actually, maybe the theme is red, white, and blue. There's always white walls or white trim on the blue houses or something. Did you know that one of the titles Fitzgerald considered for The Great Gatsby was Under the Red, White, and Blue?. He meant it as a commentary on American life or something. Maybe this movie's doing the same thing."
But as we kept watching, we started thinking that actually, maybe that wasn't a joke. At one point, the guys stood near an extra wearing a t-shirt with an American flag on it. Soon after, they stood near a TV which flashed images of a woman in an American flag bikini. And the red, white, and blue color scheme continued everywhere else. Huh. Well, Miles is a fairly standard "neurotic guy" character, complete with an ex-wife, an unpublishable novel, a mother he doesn't like who guilt-trips him into spending time with family, and a friend who's a player. And Jack is a fairly standard "goofy dumb friend/cheating asshole guy" character. Pairing a neurotic guy and an outgoing guy is also really standard, and in general, these two character types are pretty standard "average American guy" characters. The movie showcases the neurotic, depressed guy trying to find meaning and human connection in his shitty life while travelling in a place full of material abundance and snobbery (hello, wine and golf courses) with a friend who seems to be good with people but who is also seeking that human connection in a more... physical way. And Jack totally misrepresents himself to get women. The "trying to find meaning in a materialistic society" thing and the "deception as part of attempt to get friends and/or women" remind me a lot of Gatsby (though granted, I haven't read it in a few years). So maybe the idea that the movie is trying to comment on American life in a similary way as Gatsby isn't that far out.
I still couldn't stand the characters - Miles just annoyed me, and Jack was a jerk, and I didn't find this funny, especially since I've seen the "loser friends doing loser things haha" plot a few too many times, and Stephanie seems much cooler so why can't we have a movie about her instead? - so I kept counting red, white, and blue things. My sister joked that someone could write a paper about it. (Then when Jack spent about five minutes hugging Miles, I said, "Paper topic two: homoerotic tensions in Sideways." Of course the characters immediately started discussing whether or not Miles was gay. Thanks, guys!) When Miles was reading an issue of Cosmo for some reason I don't recall, the cover was red and blue (and advertised "nine ways to pleasure him:" commentary on American life and homoerotic tensions in one package!). So I started joking about "those sex-obsessed Americans." Then Jack hooked up with this girl Cammi (who lived in a blue house with white trim and a red bean-bag chair), and it turns out that she and her husband get off on him coming home to find her with another man. And Miles sneaks in to get Jack's wallet only to see Kimmie and her husband having sex while talking dirty about her sleeping with Jack with George Bush on TV right behind them. Commentary on American sex-weirdness, flabby American asses, and politics! And then the guy chased Miles out to the car naked, so we got Flabby American Guy's cock in our faces, which I'm sure is highly symbolic of something or other.
There's also the meta issue of how the movie is about these jerks and their inner angst while the female characters are on the periphery. When Miles walked in on Jack and Stephanie having sex, Jack waved Miles out of the hotel room - the two men interacted - but Stephanie didn't even react. She just kept lying there. And after she gets her revenge on Jack, we never see her again. Miles and Maya talk about her once, but the real subject of discussion is whether Miles is a jerk for covering for Jack, and then once Maya reads his book she calls up and talks only about Miles. Though we don't actually see her again either - Miles just goes to her (blue and white) house, and the focus is on him reaching out for human connection by going, and on hope that he will find it. Even Stephanie and Maya's clothes are different: I saw Stephanie in a silvery shirt and an orange shirt, and I remember Maya in a green shirt. The colors contain red or blue, but are one color over on the color wheel. They aren't fully part of the "America" color scheme. Miles's mom and Cammi do dress in the color scheme (red and blue for Mom, white shirt for Cammi), but Cammi's only role is pretty much to gush over Jack and get fucked by two guys, while the mom cooks, so I wonder if they're more like add-ons - "Girltoy and Mom and apple pie." On one hand, I think the movie is critiquing what jerks these guys are, especially to women... but on the other hand, the women in the movie are pushed to the sidelines or out of the movie entirely once they don't affect the men, they're on the sidelines even when they're in it, and they're sometimes coded "a little different from all the rest of the rwb Americans" by their clothes since the main males always wear rwb. And it's pretty inexplicable why these women like these loser guys to begin with. So third paper topic: "patriarchy and representation of America as loser asshole guys, intersection of."
Other interesting rwb instances: a Chevron sign (oil!) and the that bastion of American-ness, the fast food joint (blue and white menu, blue walls, white books, red Coca-Cola sign...). But there's something in every single shot, and it's not hard to find. Once you start looking, you see it everywhere. This is where the drinking game comes in: take a bottle of Pinot noir, and take a drink every time you see a screamingly obvious sign of the rwb color scheme. But don't actually do it, because you''d probably be comatose in about ten minutes.
And that's quite enough rambling about a movie I don't even like enough to hate.