Last night I watched a movie featuring a female, 40-ish protagonist investigating the murder of a local young woman. Who did the murderer turn out to be but her own husband! (I’m not mentioning the title of the movie to avoid spoiling it for anyone.) It reminded me of a book I read (written by an acquaintance of mine) in which a fortyish, middle-aged (but still hot) woman discovers that her husband is trying to kill her (while she’s having an affair with a ghost.)
Now, every family sitcom ever made is centered around a family where the husband is an oafish, retarded moron, whereas the wife is a beleaguered yet fundamentally hyper competent functionary. (The Flintstones, the Simpsons, According to Jim, Everybody Loves Raymond, that new sitcom with the wife from Everybody Loves Raymond etc.) Additionally, in between the segments of the sitcoms, you always see ads for things like detergent premised around the idea of some retarded husband soiling his clothes and having to sheepishly turn to his wife who uses the product being advertised to fix the problem.
Television, of course, is driven by advertising. The targets of this advertising are usually the person who controls the family budget for household expenditures: mom. (This is changing over time, of course.) So, TV shows and advertisements are built around appealing to mom by offering narratives that appeal to her. Judging from these television shows, it seems that the narrative of “my husband is a buffoon” appeals to a lot of women.
So the question becomes, why do fortyish, middle-aged women hate their husbands and seem fascinated by stories in which their husband is either a buffoon or a homicidal maniac? I would pose this theory: as the book “Sex at Dawn” argues, people are not really wired for monogamy. Men are somewhat comfortable with this fact; you don’t have to do a lot of arm twisting to get a man to admit that he wouldn’t mind sleeping around on his partner. Women have a much harder time with this admission. The idea that they might get bored of the same stumpy, slowly balding fellow waving his stubby penis at them every night is anathema. BUUUTTT… if your husband is trying to murder you, well, then cheating is okay. And if your husband’s a complete dolt, well, then you’re slowly growing revulsion for him doesn’t seem so bad.
The fact that I figured this out is proof that men are superior to women.
The secret to a successful relationship with a woman is pretending not to know about all the guys she is running around with behind your back and making a huge amount of money that she can spend on whatever shit she likes to spend money on. Oh, and don’t forget to do all the housework while she is out fucking everybody in town and spending all your money.
Ever see a Japanese Movie called “The Eeel”? There’s this awesome scene where this guy catches his Wife in bed with some jerk, cuts the jerk a little bit with a huge kitchen knife so he jumps up and runs away, and then cuts his Wife up into a million pieces. Probably the most accurate portrayal of Male-Female relationships I have ever seen in a Motion Picture. It actually made me want to get Married.
Hmmm, no I have not seen that movie.
There’s another good scene where a man and a woman are in bed and when the guy puts a vibrator inside the woman she asks “Where did you get that?” and he says “Your Mother gave it to me!”. Then she looks and sees her Mother looking at them.
“The Eel”!