The Waterboy and Gender Roles in Terms of College Sports

College movies tend to promote the idea that men’s sports, mainly football are what defines the college’s reputation, leaving women with more supportive sports like cheerleading. In the movie The Waterboy starring Adam Sandler I decided to take Deborah Tannen’s “How Male and Female Students use Language Differently” article and use her views of gender inequality in the educational system. Men do communicate more through physical sports and taunting whereas girls tend to sit in groups and like to use words. Tannen makes the argument that females tend to stay in smaller groups and share intimate and personal bonding time which helps strengthen their bond as friends. Being a guy I can only believe what I see and read because I do not have firsthand experience, but I can agree that the majority of females that I am friends with or have seen do prefer to hang out with their own sex. While they are talking they are more passive and far less aggressive than guys are when they are together. Going back to Tannens claim that men tend to keep too far less communication with words and more physical activity is completely highlighted by this movie. The scene that I chose to look at is when Bobby Boucher is at one of his first football practices with his new team The Mud Dawgs at South Central Louisiana University. In this scene the coach is trying to bring out the anger Bobby had when he tackled one of the Mud Dawgs after he was taunted. Bobby is then told that the only way that he will be able to tackle well is to visualize someone that makes him really angry and then use it to tackle. He uses this technique and it works throughout the movie.  While all this is happening the cheerleaders are all sitting in the stands talking and drinking. For most of the movie the cheerleaders don’t even cheer.  On the field though College movies portray football as the most important sport and this defines the overall ranking of the college. And of course in this movie as in most college sports movies the team is the male football team. This could masculinize collegiate sports because it discourages women from wanting to pursue a college sports team, but instead will join a more supportive role. This role was shown in the movie is the cheerleading team even if it was a poor example. Now off course this movie has outliers in it as far as all females fitting in with what Tannen believes how girls communicate. Characters like Vickie Vallencourt and Bobby’s mother are very strong females who aren’t scared to get aggressive and role with the big dogs. However these strong females do differ from the strong males in the movie. When Momma needs to be dominant she is not afraid to say what she needs to say even if sometimes it can wreck others’ lives, what I am trying to get at with this is that the strong woman in this move are more verbal than physical, they used their words first to try to fix a problem then resorted to being physical which Vickie has no problem with. Moving on, while the men are headlining the show the girls are off on the sideline sitting around talking and getting wasted. When viewers at home see this they begin to think and accept the idea that men’s football is the headliner and that cheerleading is the only sport worth it for a girl to pursue in college because movies rarely show any other female sports. Leading to my question which is, when did the norm for girls or at least girls in movies be to become the supportive role while the man is scoring the points and in the spotlight.  

22 Jump Street and Speech Patterns

In the modern classroom, there is said to be speech habit differences between males and females. It is said in an article written by Deborah Tannen called, “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently,” and it is widely known. The article goes into showing, with her personal experiments, that in today’s classroom, males express themselves in a different way than women and that as a result, the modern classroom setting can be labeled as ”unfair” because women tend to not express themselves as much or as fluently as the males do. In a movie that I am analyzing called, 22 Jump Street, there is a scene, which the claims in Tannen’s article comes to life. In the scene, two of the main characters, Maya and Schmidt are sitting on a bench together in the sculpture park on the MC State campus. Maya and Schmidt begin to talk out personal things such as their majors. Since Schmidt is a poetry major and Maya is an art major, they joke about not being able to go anywhere in their lives, financially and not having real jobs. This part of the scene can be related to Deborah Tannen’s article because being in only a group of two, Maya feels comfortable joking around expressing herself, in a way that, according to Tannen, she would not do in a larger group setting. Since they are sitting in front of a sculpture that looks like two eggs leaning on each other, Schmidt asks what Maya thinks about the sculpture. Maya answers with an in-depth analysis of what she understands the sculpture to be. She began by explaining that it was 2 beings, leaning up against each other in perfect balance and it one were to fall, they would just lose each other, so she says that it is just about support. Then Schmidt, being a normal teenage male said, “You can’t admit that it looks just like giant testicles?” Going along, Maya then said, “That’s exactly what it looks like.” This part of the scene, even though it does not relate to Tannen’s article, it is obvious that Schmidt does not care about what he says, he does not have much of a filter, but this act is what makes males different from females in speech. Women tend to think more about what they are going to say before they say it and males, not so much. Maya then begins to speak in a more personal way, she explains to Schmidt that she loves to be alone and in peace. Now Schmidt is trying to go along by saying that he too loves to be alone. Maya tells Schmidt that she is going to go and hang out with people if he wanted to come. Schmidt replied by saying okay repeatedly. At the end of the scene, when Maya begins to speak about liking to be alone, this is a perfect example of what Tannen sees as the representation of a woman. Speaking about personal things is something that is generally done in a small group and according to Tannen, women send to come out of their shell when they are in small groups and that is what Maya was doing at the end of the scene. Based on the previous analysis of men and women in their speech habits, do you believe that this is true in real life too or is it just a Hollywood representation of what male and female speech habits are like?

Gender roles

Deborah Tannen’s article “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently” points out the difference between male and female students in a college classroom. In Tannen’s opinion, male and female students use language differently. Males become best friends by hanging out and doing things with each other. Females form the bond by sharing their secrets. According to Tannen, males also tend to like challenge and argument more so than females. Males are stereotyped as tough, irrational, and violent. Females are usually relying on the males to take charge. In the movie Neighbors, there are some representations of gender stereotypes. Like most college movies, women are underrepresented in those movies. There is a lack of strong female lead characters in this movie. Despite that, the movie gives Kelly (Rose Byrne) something more to do than being the supporting wife to the husband. In addition, despite the usual portrayal of gender roles, Kelly usually is the one to take the initiative to make plans to destroy the fraternity. There is a particular scene in the movie where Mac, Kelly and their friends try to infiltrate the party. They want to break the fraternity by making Teddy and Pete fight over Brooke. The group want Teddy to see Brooke and Pete hooking up. This scene presents Kelly as a strong female lead. Kelly is the leader of the group. She shows her domination by telling each members of the group what to do. In contrast, Mac doesn’t have a plan. He has to follow his wife’s lead. Kelly is more rational than her husband. The group is able to get Pete and Brooke to hook up. They manage to stir up conflict between the two fraternity brothers. As a result of the plan, Teddy found out and got mad at Pete. Pete tries to apologize at first but then they eventually fight each other. The fight starts almost immediately when Teddy sees Pete. Teddy wants to show Pete his domination. They use violence to solve the conflict. In Neighbors, as a male and as the president of the fraternity, Teddy likes challenges. He does everything he can to assert powers. Teddy fits into the typical gender stereotypes. Moreover, Tannen claims that males like challenges more so than females. This is true for Teddy’s character. Teddy wants to fight Pete for sleeping with his girlfriend. Mac’s character also fits into Tannen’s claim. Mac wants to appear as a tough guy. Mac and Teddy fight each other later on in the movie at the biggest frat party of the year. In Neighbors, we see the guys fight but not any girls fight. This shows that males like to take control. It relates to college education and the interaction between male and female students in college. Male students tend to dominate the class discussion. In my opinion, the movie Neighbors did a pretty good job in giving more power to the female lead. I liked that Kelly’s character isn’t just there to support the males. 

"My Father was not there for me"

                Through out my childhood and until now I have seen lots of stereotypes, whether it was at school or just around my town. Stereotypes are portrayed in movies and through social media each and every day but sense everyone is use to them, no one really notices. Bits and piece of race and gender based stereotypes will be thrown in different movies every so often and people just laugh and giggle when they see it. Tatum talks about how blacks and other races seem to segregate themselves from each other and she also said that if the blacks gain achievements in their earlier years that they will want to continue to learn.

               In the movie Drumline, there are many scenes that I could explain about racism/gender and their stereotypes, but there was one scene that really caught my eye because I see it almost every day. The scene I am referring to is the scene right after Devin Miles graduates and leaves from his mother at the school to go to the subway to talk to his father. He arrives at the subway and slides a ticket to the guy inside of the ticket box. The guy sees it looks up at Devin and just stares at him. Devin begins to tell him how he has made it through high school without him and how he has got a full scholarship to the A&T College. After that, they stare at each other but Devin has an aggravated and is very tense while his dad has a sad and lost look on his face. This scene shows one of the biggest stereotypes based on race that is seen today. The fact that the “black boy” not having a dad is what is displayed in this scene. When you think of someone that does not have a daddy and is black, you think that he does poorly in school and that he would never make it to college. But in this scene it is twisting the stereotype to correct what it is causing. Devin is going to college and has made it through high school. College education would be considered impossible to someone like Devin. Since Devin does not have a father then Universities would give him more money to attend the school. It would open him up to more opportunities for college. Also, it can be gender based because people assume that a black female has a father but a black male does not. Why does it seem to appear this way? I do not see the difference, why can’t they both have dads? The media takes many stereotypes and places them all throughout movies and all over the internet. In his earlier years maybe he won some achievements and wanted to continue and he started to play the drums and he wanted to continue on. Tatum said that “In the black’s younger years if they gain some achievements then they probably continue to pursue something.

Garfield Loves Lasagna

As an African-American young man, individually I connected with Beverley Daniel Tatum’s writing in “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria.” Beverley Tatum’s claim falls most in line with my own individual claims. Beverley Tatum’s claim being more generalized would be worded that “one that has conformed to one group does not favor interacting with any other group, due to the fact that that action is so uncommon.” In order to connect Beverley Tatum’s claim to the movie I earlier analyzed Neighbors I must first identify the groups/cliques that are formed within the movie. The most identifiable group in Neighbors would of course be the Fraternity, Delta Psi Beta. This group would be identified by their general stereotypes, just as all groups have been stereotyped throughout history.  The breakdown of this group is most challenging due to the fact that you would most likely focus on the racial point of view of Fraternity being mostly Caucasians. But Neighbors did help hide that opinion by inserting characters like Jerrod Carmichael’s character Garf and every now and then inserting a non-Caucasian extra into scenes. Before diving deeper into the assignment I would like to shine a light back on the character Garf. He can be labeled as “the black guy” in the fraternity and if you disagree that would be your own opinion.  Garf is a character that is used for comic relief that could be due to the fact that he is black. Garf can be compared to Will Smith in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The character is used to lighten the mood. Which could show that the African-American role in Neighbors cannot be a serious one. My personal opinion of such could be trump but that fact that Neighbors is a comedy so why not have a comedic role.

The Fraternity group is one that is rowdy and obnoxious but what more can you expect from a group of adolescent males. The second group has to contain the main character played but Seth Rogen, who would most likely be joined by his wife. The two groups spend a lot of time throw hate in each other’s direction throughout that movie. Each group preformed acts that would hurt or cripple the other group simply because they didn’t get along. The last two sentences could be inserted into a paper about any two opposing groups because that plot is so universal. Two groups that hate each other try to gain an upper hand on the other. I watched this simple plot unfold as a child while watching Saturday morning cartoons. One scene in which Tatum’s claims are challenged is when the Radners go inside the Delta Pi Beta house and begin to cohabitate with one another at a party. Both groups drink and have a grand time with one another although the peaceful time doesn’t last for too long.