it's like ... she's one of my limbs.
A couple weeks ago, I saw the trailer for Friends With Kids and thought "hahah, that looks like the classic two-dudes-end-up-co-parenting-a-kid-and-fall-in-love fan fiction plot device" and when I saw the movie (with my DAD, zomg) last night, this was only more self-evident. It was so self-evident that I kind of expect someone to comment and say, "Yeah, this has already been discussed ad naseum, welcome to the internet, throughadoor."
Anyway -- Jason and Julie self-represent as so not attracted to each other that it might as well be a matter of sexual orientation, they decide to be non-romantic life partners in raising a kid together (although we are missing the part where aliens make them do it or a piece of advanced technology produces a kid for them in a pod, et cetera), then there is kid raising and feelings and misunderstandings and then they fall in love.
What's interesting to me is that putting a straight couple through the paces of inverting "love, then marriage, then the baby in the baby carriage" is an accepted rom com trope, and it's even been done several times recently (Knocked Up, obviously, and that movie I didn't see but had that Passion Pit song I like in the trailer, where the two single friends of the married couple get custody of the kid when the married couple dies). The part where the two characters choose to raise the kid as platonic friends and are so confident that it'll work is so funny to me because so many classic slash fan fiction plot devices are about mining and repurposing romance novel and romantic comedy tropes and now here's one that's been mined and repurposed and been made to work as a way to bring together two people who didn't know they could be gay for each other and now it's re-re-repurposed to get together two people who don't think they can be straight for each other.
[Somewhat tangentially -- I rarely find the "we're not gay, we just love each other" slash fan fiction plot device to be as offensive or sub-textually homophobic as some do (and this is more of a 10-years-ago argument that was sort of having its last gasps when I first got into fandom, I think? I don't know if that's a comment on the evolution of acceptance of sexual fluidity or because no one's writing Sentinel smarm anymore). I've always read "we're not gay, we just love each other" as a repurposed romance novel plot. Because romance novel plots are about sociological obstacles, right? "He's a wealthy landowner and she's a servant but they just love each other!" "He's a small-town lawyer and she's a new girl in town with a mysterious and possibly criminal past but they just love each other!" "She's engaged to be married to the prince and he's the prince's younger brother, but ... et cetera." For me, "He thinks he's straight! And HE thinks HE'S straight! But they just love each other!" just seems like a repurposing of the class barriers that dominate romance novels.]
So I found Friends With Kids very charming, because it didn't seem to know it was slash kidfic, and I am apparently now hardwired to enjoy narratives where the two main characters have to stumble around unaware of their own obvious sexual preference while also trying to raise a child. What's funny is that I kind of hated Kissing Jessica Stein and felt like Jennifer Westfeldt was trying to co-opt queerness to tell a straight rom com story, so I'm glad she's figured out a better way to go about it.
Anyway -- Jason and Julie self-represent as so not attracted to each other that it might as well be a matter of sexual orientation, they decide to be non-romantic life partners in raising a kid together (although we are missing the part where aliens make them do it or a piece of advanced technology produces a kid for them in a pod, et cetera), then there is kid raising and feelings and misunderstandings and then they fall in love.
What's interesting to me is that putting a straight couple through the paces of inverting "love, then marriage, then the baby in the baby carriage" is an accepted rom com trope, and it's even been done several times recently (Knocked Up, obviously, and that movie I didn't see but had that Passion Pit song I like in the trailer, where the two single friends of the married couple get custody of the kid when the married couple dies). The part where the two characters choose to raise the kid as platonic friends and are so confident that it'll work is so funny to me because so many classic slash fan fiction plot devices are about mining and repurposing romance novel and romantic comedy tropes and now here's one that's been mined and repurposed and been made to work as a way to bring together two people who didn't know they could be gay for each other and now it's re-re-repurposed to get together two people who don't think they can be straight for each other.
[Somewhat tangentially -- I rarely find the "we're not gay, we just love each other" slash fan fiction plot device to be as offensive or sub-textually homophobic as some do (and this is more of a 10-years-ago argument that was sort of having its last gasps when I first got into fandom, I think? I don't know if that's a comment on the evolution of acceptance of sexual fluidity or because no one's writing Sentinel smarm anymore). I've always read "we're not gay, we just love each other" as a repurposed romance novel plot. Because romance novel plots are about sociological obstacles, right? "He's a wealthy landowner and she's a servant but they just love each other!" "He's a small-town lawyer and she's a new girl in town with a mysterious and possibly criminal past but they just love each other!" "She's engaged to be married to the prince and he's the prince's younger brother, but ... et cetera." For me, "He thinks he's straight! And HE thinks HE'S straight! But they just love each other!" just seems like a repurposing of the class barriers that dominate romance novels.]
So I found Friends With Kids very charming, because it didn't seem to know it was slash kidfic, and I am apparently now hardwired to enjoy narratives where the two main characters have to stumble around unaware of their own obvious sexual preference while also trying to raise a child. What's funny is that I kind of hated Kissing Jessica Stein and felt like Jennifer Westfeldt was trying to co-opt queerness to tell a straight rom com story, so I'm glad she's figured out a better way to go about it.