Just Go With it, 2011 film co-produced by Kim et al.(2007)?

So while I used to watch movies to simply watch movies, I now find myself unable to watch them without analyzing everything that is going on between characters. Now I always point out scenes in them out and say to myself “oh my goodness, this totally relates to everything we talk about in comm.” I still find it funny how all these movies that I have already seen before demonstrate so many of the coding schemes that we have talked about in class, yet I never noticed them before. This weekend, i just so happened to watch Just Go With It, and since nobody in class did their movie analysis on it, I thought I’d touch on the film and a scene that I found to be one of my favorite. 

First off, here is a brief summary for those who have not seen it. Just Go With It is about Danny Maccabee (Adam Sandler), a successful plastic surgeon in Los Angeles, who fakes unhappy marriages in order to get women, in other words, pretending he is some sensitive guy. Keep in mind Danny is a perfectly stereotyped male, fitting all categories of Kim et al.’s (2007) coding strategy of sex as masculinity. He is preoccupied with women’s bodies, constantly consumed by sexual thoughts, and occasionally talks openly about his sexual desires and experiences. Typical man right? The reason for these fake marriages is to simply avoid romantic commitment that may eventually lead to heartbreak. Funny how this also completely matches the masculine commitment coding strategies in the Kim et al. (2007) reading we did in class. (p.153). I'm beginning to think Kim et al.'s study were the co-producers of this film (haha). Anyways, the movie continues and, at a party Danny meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker) a beautiful, skinny, tall blonde... basically everything you would expect media to make a “perfect” girl to look like (picture displayed below)

Picture Perfect Palmer

Anyways, he happened to not be wearing his wedding ring when they first met, and the next morning, after they had hit it off, Palmer finds the ring. Assuming that Danny is cheating on his wife with her, she refuses to date him. Instead of telling her the truth he presumes to tell her that he is getting divorced from a women named Devlin. Smooth move on his part, right? Well, it was until Palmer insists on meeting “Devlin” so she can tell him that this in fact isn’t a lie. Danny asks Katherine (Jennifer Aniston), his office manager, to pretend to be “Devlin.” This is where the movie gets awesome.  Katherine’s kids get involved, yada yada yada the movie goes on, watch the movie, its great, you’ll love it.

            Anyways, below I have included a clip from the film that I found hilarious. 

This is a clip of the first time Palmer meets “Devlin”. I think the thing I like best about it is that “Devlin” is totally demasculinizing Danny. She is coming up with fake statements about Danny to make him appear less sexually pleasing and attractive. These comments totally going against Kim et al.’s masculine courtship strategies of the fact that men use active and powerful strategies to win women’s affection and appear valued for their strength and power (p. 152-153).  The comments that were made were, “I’m just happy his thing-a-ding can still ring-a-ding” and “he has a serious small issue with ED (erectile dysfunction)” and "its like trying to throw darts and you just, all you got, is you're shooting with rubber cooked spaghetti." Danny becomes extremely defensive and begins making comments about Katherine to try and protect his shrinking masculinity. I love seeing a women take a stand and call a man out when he is a dishonest player, but that’s just my opinion.