Why I hate 'Chasing Amy'

This is a paper I wrote for Sociology of Human Sexuality a few years ago. I thought I would post it because several people have been shocked when I tell them I abhor Chasing Amy. So, now I can point you all here. Again, it was a paper with certain requirements so forgive the awkwardness at times.

Part I

Chasing Amy (1997) written and directed by Kevin Smith.

The main characters of the film are Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), and Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams). Holden, the main character, is a “normal” guy who co-creates a comic book with his long-time friend, Banky. Holden meets Alyssa, another comic book creator, through a mutual friend, support character, Hooper (Dwight Ewell), a gay black male. Holden develops a crush on Alyssa and difficulties ensue when he finds out she is a lesbian. Banky and Holden’s friendship becomes compromised because of Banky’s jealousy of Alyssa and his passive-aggressive homophobia, which is compensation for his latent homosexual tendencies and feelings for Holden. Holden and Alyssa fall in love despite Alyssa’s self-labeling of herself as a lesbian, but labels begin to blur when Holden realizes Alyssa has not always been a lesbian and has a more colorful past regarding sexual experiences than he can accept. Holden comes up with what he thinks is the perfect solution to heal his relationships with Banky and Alyssa after a conversation with Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) and Jay (Jason Mewes), his live inspiration for his comic book characters, Bluntman and Chronic. He suggests that he, Banky and Alyssa have sex together in order to address Banky’s homosexual tendencies, Holden’s feelings of inadequacy, and to try to build a bridge between Banky and Alyssa. His plan fails miserably.

Part II

Chasing Amy touches on several of the topics presented in class. The topics best represented are the question of what is “sex,” how the idea of what sex is defines a person’s virginity, sexual scripts and sexual identities/orientations.

After Holden discovers Alyssa is a lesbian, questions about the legitimacy of lesbian sex come up several times. The questions are directly asked of Alyssa and implied through the reactions of Holden and Banky. Banky and Alyssa have a conversation in a bar concerning what is and isn’t sex in their opinions. Banky balks at Alyssa’s reference to her having sex with a girl as “fucking.” Banky does not consider anything excluding penetration as “fucking.” For Banky, there must be a penis involved and if that is not possible, then a replacement such as a strap-on is essential. This male-centric point of view is not only homophobic it is also misogynistic. As long as there is a penis involved, it is sanctioned as sex. Two men having sex is better, in Banky’s opinion, because the penis is involved. He even says “all every woman wants, be it mother, senator, nun, is some serious deep-dickin’.” Later, Holden voices his opinion that it is natural for a man and a woman to be together and in his close-mindedness, causes Alyssa to defend lesbian sex as a legitimate form of sex; she explains lesbian sex by miming the sex movements she would use. Holden directly asks her is she is a virgin, because his definition of virgin is penile/vaginal penetration. This isn’t surprising for Holden’s character, when considering most people in American culture view virginity loss in the same way. In Lisa Remez’s article, “Oral Sex Among Adolescents: Is It Sex or Is It Abstinence?” Remez points out that “according to a fall 1999 survey conducted by Seventeen magazine in which 723 15-19 year-old males and females were approached in malls, 49% considered oral sex to be ‘not as big a deal as sexual intercourse,’ and 40% said it did not count as ‘sex.’ A summer 2000 Internet survey conducted by Twist magazine received 10,000 on-line responses from 13-19-year-old girls, 18% of whom said that oral sex was something that you did with your boyfriend before you are ready to have sex; the same proportion stated that oral sex was a substitute for intercourse” (p. 301). Penile/vaginal penetration is a socialized way of looking at virginity loss and definitions of sex. This is proved in Liahna E. Gordon’s essay, “The Social Constructionist’s “Essential” Guide to Sex.” Social constructionists found flaws in a particular study that asked about the frequency at which participants had sexual intercourse. “In particular, they questioned whether lesbians would read the question ‘how often do you have sex?’ in the same way as the other couples. In a culture that typically defines sex as penile-vaginal penetration, some women responding to this survey may not have thought the question applied to them, and thus under reported the frequency with which they were sexually intimate” (p. 34). The idea of virginity based on penile/vaginal penetration is underscored by Holden’s reaction to Alyssa’s sexuality. When he believes that she has only had sex with other women, the night they went out on a pseudo date she revealed to him that she had a casual sexual encounter the prior night and “fucked half the women of New York City,” he doesn’t mind, even jokes about it. But when he finds out that she has not only had sex with men, but also, “multiple sex partners at the same time,” he becomes angry to the point of ending the relationship over sexual acts that happened over 10 years prior to their relationship. Alyssa’s having sex with numerous women meant nothing to Holden because he did not view it as sex. To quote Hooper, “men need to think that they’re Marco-fucking-Polo when it comes to sex.” Holden’s fantasy of being the right man who has been able to lure her back from the dark side is shattered. His Madonna image of Alyssa is tainted and he is left with the “whore/dyke” part of the dichotomy mentioned by Crane and Crane-Seeber in “The Four Boxes of Gendered Sexuality: Good Girl/Bad Girl and Tough Guy/Sweet Guy” (p. 209). He tells Alyssa, “I want something we can’t be…a normal couple.” Because Holden sees Alyssa as more experienced then he is, he shuts her out and demeans her for her experience.

Although all of this thus far is offensive to me, I find that Smith’s portrayal of lesbians and the lesbian community takes the cake. First, Alyssa sends Holden mixed signals from their initial meeting. Granted, some people are naturally flirtatious, but by having Alyssa constantly flirt with Holden, Smith is subtly reinforcing the idea that lesbians are not truly lesbians. All lesbians, for Smith, are women who have not found the right man yet. After the scene in which Holden tells Alyssa that he loves her, she is upset and talks about her identity being at stake by allowing a romantic relationship with him. She is at odds with the label she has put on herself. This scene is unrealistic because if Alyssa were truly a lesbian, there would be no internal conflict. She would not be attracted to Holden sexually. The ridiculousness of this scene is climaxed by the lusty make-out session between the two. If Alyssa is the sexually fluid person she claims to be, leaving “doors open” in order to not shut out the person she is most compatible with, then why would she label herself as a lesbian? I think this part was put into the film purely to facilitate the male fantasy of “turning” a lesbian. I have always disliked this movie for the way it portrays the character of Alyssa. Smith makes Alyssa into a heterosexual male fantasy of what/who a lesbian is and offers no real depth to her life, making her a superficial character whose only function is to play off of Holden’s perceptions of her sexuality.I am unsure as to whether Smith intentionally makes Alyssa into an unrealistic character or if he was simply naïve and buying into the male fantasy of lesbians. In either case, the portrayal of Alyssa is short sighted and stereotypical in the worst way.

Part III

This film clearly shows the benefits of following society’s standards for what is considered sexually “normal.” When Holden finds out that Alyssa has had more sexual partners than he has and has had various sexual experimentations, she is punished. Holden tries to make her feel guilty for her actions, as though she is dirty or wrong for having experienced them. She refuses to apologize, which is one redeeming quality of the film. Another redeeming quality was the scene that touches on how lesbians are considered chic in our society, granted, because lesbians are a male fantasy and non-threatening, but gay males frighten most of society and are significantly less accepted. Unlike Alyssa, Hooper has to keep his sexuality hidden in order to advance his career and keep up the image of a strong black man. Smith tries, with Banky, to address passive aggressive homophobia by showing that Banky is really confused about his own sexual orientation and does not know how to address his feelings. It seems that Smith was trying to say that sexuality should be fluid, we should love people for who they are, not because of their genitalia. I believe one of the tag lines for the film is/was “it’s not who you love, but how.” It’s an admirable idea, but as discussed in class, certainly not something that will happen in our culture in the near future. I don’t think that Smith was intentionally trying to offend lesbians with his film; in fact, I think he was tying to make a decent political statement in some instances. He was just all over the place, and it seemed to have no real focus, no definite statement. I think he, like Holden, fails miserably in the end.