October 10, 2009
-{12:25 pm}-
Filed by trumwill from Elsewhere

HCW: Don Hertzfeldt’s “Lamour”


I saw this at a movie festival in Ephesus and it stuck with me. A recent post by Phi.

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16 Comments »

  1. I was feeling a little sorry for him until he walked right by the ugly one without comment.

    Comment by stone — October 11, 2009 @ 10:21 am

  2. That’s the part that completely makes it work. Without it, it’d just be a screed about how cruel (and superficial) women are. The tacit admission that guys are the same (and the implication that perhaps Mr. Stick Man is trying to punch higher than his weight class) makes it less of a sermon and more of a laugh.

    Comment by trumwill — October 11, 2009 @ 11:12 am

  3. I agree with trumwill. That part shows much more self-awareness than the average internet beta. Though as a below average internet beta, I’d add that in general rejection hurts much less from people way out of one’s league. When someone you feel you’d be settling for rejects you, that shit hurts.

    With girls at school, I find myself torn between a)totally ignoring or b)minimal interaction. As far as I can tell, both are equally creepy. But if one were less creepy than the other, I’d prefer doing it. Sadly, this is not a question one can ask without being terrifyingly creepy.

    This likely does not apply to even the average too-old male student. I can’t even hide the crazy in class. I don’t have any interest in freaking people out, so I’m willing to do pretty much anything short of apologizing for existence to not scare normal people.

    Comment by rob — October 11, 2009 @ 6:38 pm

  4. Rob, most guys are invisible in groups unless they smell or act out. It’s really easy for men to blend in without offense. And women are naturally predisposed to like men who don’t put sexuality on display.

    Comment by stone — October 11, 2009 @ 7:28 pm

  5. I agree with the self-awareness comments regarding stick-man’s walking by fat-girl. However — and I realize that we’re only talking about stick figures here, but bear with me — by what standard was fat-girl the appropriate match for him? While the other girls seem on the same attractiveness level as stick-man, fat-girl was probably twice his body mass!

    Now, in a monogamous world, the median man should rate the median woman, and vice-versa. But there appears to be vastly different ideas between men and women as to what those are exactly.

    Comment by ? — October 11, 2009 @ 11:23 pm

  6. By the inverse of the standard that says that Kevin James’s and Leah Remini’s characters are suited for one another.

    I think that these different ideas exist at least in part because everyone wants to believe that they are in a higher class than they are. Even when we’re talking about other guys (or girls about other girls), we’re really talking about ourselves. Further, our eyes gravitate towards the most attractive of the other gender and so what we tend to think is “normal” overlooks the ones we’re not noticing. Meanwhile, on our own side of the gender line, we see guys like ourselves.

    Comment by trumwill — October 11, 2009 @ 11:50 pm

  7. Kevin James . . . Leah Remini.

    Oddly, though, I’m pretty sure that Sheila commented a while back on the implausibility of that particular pairing.

    But you seem to be forgetting that that’s a sitcom. It supposed to serve up unreality for entertainment purposes. Were I a man of Kevin James’ build grousing that Leah-Remini-quality women were ignoring me, then you yourself would be pointing out that these pairings are extremely uncommon in real life (although the real Kevin James appears to have pulled it off). But here you are offering them as an argument as to why stick-man and fat-girl should be together? Please tell me you see some . . . irony in this turn of the argument.

    Your cartoon, as entertaining as it is, appears (at least to me) to be making a didactic point: that fat-girl is somehow the appropriate target of stick-man’s affections. Because in an ordinal ranking of humanity, these two have the same numbers? How exactly is that calculation made?

    Comment by ? — October 12, 2009 @ 1:32 am

  8. It supposed to serve up unreality for entertainment purposes.

    Ultimately, though, I think the stick figures fall into the same category. That’s the link I was making. I really don’t think the point of the story is “Stick Man would be happy if he would just become less particular.” To the extent that there is an artistic point being made, I think it’s pretty nihilistic in nature.

    I would also add that the grotesqueness of the woman is itself for entertainment rather than referential purposes. She had to look that way just to get the point across to us that she was significantly different (and in a negative way) to everybody else. Otherwise, it would have been more head-scratching than funny.

    (although the real Kevin James appears to have pulled it off).

    James is a celebrity. His character on King of Queens is not.

    -{Comment modified by author at 8:12}-

    Comment by trumwill — October 12, 2009 @ 7:51 am

  9. Didn’t I do a list once about famous fat guys I think are hot? Tops were Patton Oswalt (”Spence”) and Numa Numa Guy, but I think James was also on there. James is an uncommonly handsome, talented fat guy. Rimini gained weight later — and even skinny, she had some social drawbacks, such as unpopularity and a penniless father who had to live with them. IRL such things matter.

    It’s hard to judge the attractiveness of stick figures. But I think we can surmise that he failed to meet those women’s standards somehow. Maybe he was broke or had a bad face. But it’s revealed that he, himself, has some shallow physical standards.

    Phi, your double standard is showing. It appears you bristle at the idea of women having standards, but fight tooth and nail for men to have theirs upheld. Any undesirable characteristics a guy has, you gloss over as “beta.” Any desirable characteristics you lack, you demean as “alpha.”

    Comment by stone — October 12, 2009 @ 11:50 am

  10. gloss . . . demean

    I’m pretty sure I have done this only seldom. If anything, reading Roissy has made me realize how show-stopping beta behaviors really are. As far as demeaning alpha qualities, I only do that with the ones that are objectively anti-social.

    bristle at the idea of women having standards

    Did you actually read any of my comments? If the point of the film was to show that stick-man’s standards were too high, it failed. We don’t have to “surmise” anything: obviously he wasn’t meeting the female standards. But nothing about the film gave us any hint as to why this should be so. Also, if the point was to show that a relationship with fat-girl was appropriate, it failed at that as well. Again, obviously stick-man wouldn’t be attracted to a woman twice his body mass, and there is no imaginable standard by which we would expect him to be.

    In fact, the only way the film works on a conceptual level is to assume that both stick-man and fat-girl are at the same percentiles of their sex’s attractiveness distributions. But who among us would actually make that assumption based on their artistic rendering?

    Comment by ? — October 12, 2009 @ 5:31 pm

  11. My assumption was not that he was well-suited for the fat girl, but that he was somewhere above her but below the others. That’s how it works for me. On one hand, you are tempted to feel sorry for the guy who keeps getting rejected. On the other hand, he does the same. Such is life. Presented in an exaggerated and humorous fashion with stick figures.

    Of course, he is gentler with his rejection than are the girls, but that’s a luxury afforded to guys insofar as if we’re not interested in a girl, we simply don’t ask them out.

    Comment by trumwill — October 12, 2009 @ 6:07 pm

  12. but below the others

    Granting that the medium is limited, but that wasn’t apparent to me from the pictures. With the exception of fat-girl, all the stick figures looked pretty unremarkable (I mean, before the girls turned into chainsaw-wielding Gorgons).

    Comment by ? — October 12, 2009 @ 6:39 pm

  13. but that wasn’t apparent to me from the pictures.

    Well, based on the pictures, no. It may or may not be based on appearance. But if you keep trying to sell yourself and you keep coming up short, then the likelihood is that you’re aiming too high. Thus I assume that he is “below them”. Perhaps not physically, but in some relatively tangible way.

    Comment by trumwill — October 12, 2009 @ 7:25 pm

  14. I think Phi is reading too much into it. I think it’s just a sort of quickie, condensed remembrance of how difficult the romantic world was pre-marriage. Maybe we’re not even supposed to think those women are rejecting him right away — that’s just him skipping to the end of the relationship.

    “If anything, reading Roissy has made me realize how show-stopping beta behaviors really are.”

    Yes, Phi, it’s possible to really read your comments and still disagree with you. :) What do you mean by “show-stopping?” I think of it to mean a fantastic technique, but I don’t think that’s how you mean it. And why do you put faith in anything those anonymous snotty dudes on the Internet say? It bugs me to see smart guys falling for hoaxes that play you for chumps.

    Comment by stone — October 12, 2009 @ 8:00 pm

  15. I thought he meant show-stopping the other way. As in they do something outrageous and make it impossible that any female present would ever, ever want to date him. Something like that.

    Comment by trumwill — October 12, 2009 @ 8:05 pm

  16. the likelihood is that you’re aiming too high.

    This is looking like a tautology: “if a women reject you, you aimed too high.” What resonates with many men is their impression — rebutable of course — that they are aiming at their own percentiles. I understand that perceptual biases are possible, especially considering I gleefully accuse women of just such biases, but men can be guilty of this too. But anyone who looks at this cartoon and mentally matches stick-man and fat-girl has a strange notion of what these distributions look like.

    Sheila may have a point that we’re just looking at how brutal the dating scene is for guys. Judging by the experience of both me and my peers, this almost always works out eventually.

    Comment by ? — October 13, 2009 @ 5:58 am

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