In DJ Shadow’s 2016 Classic Nobody Speak, El-P from the hip-hop duo Run the Jewels starts off the song as follows:
Picture this
I’m a bag of dicks
Put me to your lips
I am sick
I will punch a baby bear in his shit
Two 2019 coming-of-age films feature this charming tune. First, we have Booksmart, which I wrote about a bit earlier as one of the best films of the year so far. And second, we have Good Boys. Good Boys is…something different. This might say something about gender, film, and childhood in the US.
Booksmart, Good Boys, and Bags of Dick
So how did these two movies use these lines about bags of dick? In Booksmart, it comes near the end. The two main characters make a mad dash for their high school graduation ceremony just after getting one of them out of jail. Ultimately, it’s a slapstick comedy scene full of irony. There’s an entire film where two high school girls learn to preserve their academic fire without taking themselves so seriously. What’s wrong with a little laugh?
In Good Boys, you get it prominently in the trailer. And, ultimately, the song plays underneath some gross-out antics. Whereas it’s comic relief at the end of Booksmart, Good Boys presents it more as a part of the film’s regular narrative.
But let’s get clear about a couple of things. First, Booksmart is the better of the two films. It merits consideration for awards, and it’s one of the best movies of 2019. Good Boys doesn’t, and isn’t. But Good Boys isn’t a bad film at all. It was pretty well reviewed, and it reasonably deserved to be well reviewed. Problems aside, the film makes sense and makes its point. There’s even a scene that, I think, successfully navigates the fraught boundaries between comedy and consent.
Gender and Coming-of-Age
And so, there’s the part about gender. We might think about Booksmart and Good Boys analogously. Yeah, the girls are older than the boys. And, yeah, they’re from different backgrounds. But I think Booksmart says something about the pressure girls face to achieve narrow visions of success without ever failing. Good Boys says something about how, while people might view boys suspiciously, they do view boys more indulgently.
Obviously this matters for various cultural expectations we place on girls and boys after they grow up. It might also impact US politics, from opening up certain kinds of political campaigns to influencing media coverage and success (or lack thereof) of those candidates.
Ultimately, we get a mixed bag from films like these. They portray gendered expectations. Sometimes they endorse those expectations, and sometimes they criticize them. They portray people overcoming them and people succumbing to them. There’s no monolithic presentation here and no monolithic way to sort these films into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ piles and call it a day. And, sure, I’d rather my films allow me to embrace the complexity involved in these issues.
As I result, I think both Booksmart and Good Boys are successful films.
