FEBRUARY 29, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 4

A man gripping a horse erection while screaming, "I'm a farmer, I'm a farmer," isn’t an image of high-brow humor, nor for that matter is swinging a newborn infant from its umbilical cord while blood and afterbirth splatter the room. These are just two moments from Tom Green's only film, Freddy Got Fingered, a father and son story filled to the brim with tasteless, grotesque, and utterly stupid gags that push the boundaries of "gross-out" humor as well as try the patience of anyone who sits through it. It may sound like I hated the film, but that couldn't be farther from the truth, yet Freddy Got Fingered was not only a flop, it was decimated by critics.

The harshest of all was Roger Ebert. He wrote, "The day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny." Is that fair? Or rather, is that even true? The problem with a film of this nature is the question, who decides what is funny and what is not? I understand Ebert's reluctance to consider this film at all. By 2001, this was just another in a long line of gross-out comedies. The genre has been steadily active since John Water's Pink Flamingos in 1972, but found a frenzied renaissance in the late nineties with 1998's There's Something About Mary and American Pie the following year. The Farrelly brothers saw their greatest gross-out successes during this time as well as popular but forgettable films like Rob Schneider's Duce Bigalow: Male Gigalo and Animal, and 2000 gave us Scary Movie, launching its own prop comedy gross-out sub-genre.

But is Freddy Got Fingered just one more forgettable comedy that's main attraction is fecal matter and prosthetic penises? No, actually. Many critics failed to consider the film's unique aesthetics and what lies underneath Green's alienating humor. True, taken at face value, there is nothing redeeming or interesting about Freddy Got Fingered, it simply boils down to whether you prefer Green's comedy or not. The film may lack the iconic sequences of a Farrelly Brothers' picture, or the topical lampooning of the Scary Movie series, but it is the work of an underrated comic genius who is expressing what all great screen comedians have; Green has given voice to a culture in distress, he is crying out for a generation, not simply making dick-and-fart jokes.

When assessing a comedy, it is standard procedure to compare it to the greats, those everlasting comedic gems that have been embraced by audiences and critics alike. These remarkable laugh-ins, from Buster Keaton to Monty Python, share a particular anxiety, an inability to cope with and blend into the societies in which they live. Keaton made his career with slapstick shorts where he is ill-equipped to function in a modern, mechanized metropolis, often becoming a mixture of a man and technology, a silent era cyborg. The Pythons made their name by mocking themselves as upper-class Englishmen, blurring the lines between tradition, banality, and silliness. Luis Buñuel, known for his silver-tongued satire of bourgeois society revolted against church and class, creating worlds that offer no alternative to the superficial, absurd castes we create for ourselves. Green offers up contemporary American suburbia to the list.

In the film he plays Gord Brody, the son of middle-class parents living in a quiet and comfortable neighborhood. After a failed attempt to make it big as an animator, he moves back home with his passive-aggressive mother, played by Julie Hagerty, and his overbearing father, played by Rip Torn. With Torn's character we understnad the central themes; unbridgeable generational gaps, reconciliation with the father, and the pressures and expectations of society. Gord's father is disappointed in his oldest son, the one whom society charges with carrying on the family name, the primogenitor. Throughout the film, Gord is expected to "become a man" by getting a practical job, having a heterosexual relationship, and follow in his father's footsteps. This is the stuff of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, the archetypical story of the hero reconciling with the father-god.

More than just a retelling of an age-old story, Green adds his touch through his performance aesthetic. While the members of Monty Python perform as outrageous caricatures, saying and doing silly things, Green acts like a child. His performance is as embarrassing as a temper tantrum, over the top and infantile. Green has pushed mockery over the edge to the point where it is near unbearable to witness; it is utterly irritating. Suffice it to say, the performances in this film are horrendous, but it is a calculated directorial decision that achieves a specific effect. It is not the work of an amateur.

Bad acting, or camp, has always been a staple of cinema. Some forms revel in it, such as the recent exploitation films revivalists have advertised. Films like Grind House sell tickets with the promise that it is so bad, it is good. Going back to the idea that Green is giving a voice to a people in distress, we are able to look at his antics in a new light. The film's scenes play out with two major factors. The first is the dialogue. Take for example the scene when Gord's father gives him a LeBaron before he leaves to find work. The language is clichè and melodramatic in the worst way. Second are the performances. The actors are going through the motions of what an emotionally dramatic scene should play out like, they are playacting through life. This is not only evident in Green's performance, but in Torn's as well. Torn is so buffoonish, it appears as though he is phoning this one in, working with Green only for the paycheck. At times I cringe while he is onscreen, but the effect is perfect. A professional actor is matching Green's lack of seriousness, his imbecility and infantilism within the scene.

Green's humor is not reliant on jokes or irony to convey his angst against society, instead he refuses to take his own film seriously. Unable to cope with the pressures of his father, he simply gives us a grotesque rendering of those actions- a job, a relationship. He is mirroring how ridiculous these institutions seem to him and his performance is an act of rebellion. For instance, in the scene of Gord's date with Betty, he borrows his father's straight-laced black suit and tie and brings with him a "cell phone" for business contacts. Mirroring what he has witnessed of professional behavior, he begins screaming into the phone, the conversation is supposed to be that of a stockbroker and associate. Not knowing anything about economics he simply spouts out buzzwords: CNN, the Dow Jones, fifty million Duetsche marks!, buy!, sell! Green's humor is often rooted in repetition, the way a child repeats the newest word they have learned, over and over. That is what this film most closely resembles, the developmental stages of a suburban child. Now mix that with living in an America that hasn't changed much since the President Eisenhower days of social conformity and you have the essence of Freddy Got Fingered.

Freddy Got Fingered may very well be a terrible film, but if it is then it is terrible in the same way as Robocop or Starship Troopers. To draw one last comparison to another foreigner making films in the United States about the United States, Green, a Canadian, is closely linked to Paul Verhoeven, whose Hollywood "blockbusters" are often received at face-value, and judged poorly. Verhoeven uses the model of the American action film the same way Green uses the American gross-out comedy. Both are mocking a genre in order to critique a society in peril, specifically an American society that has become complacent behind moral values tied to conformity, where self-expression and individuality are shunned above all things.