Yesterday I was looking for a video of James Ingram’s song, Just Once for reasons. Was expecting to find the song sung over the album cover-- and I did-- but I also found this.
The song was apparently used in the movie The Last American Virgin which, according to this video, is one of them most '80s teen movie ever. My husband remembers the movie but not any of the specifics. I do not. However, I have come to the conclusion that the movie is about the beginning of the Incel movement chronicling the first creeper stalker who finally chose virginity over the slut woman he couldn’t have.
Let’s not get into Phil Collin’s Groovy Kind of Buster movie.
Wow, hot take. I don’t remember the movie too well, but I do remember the ending as being tough, sad and very unlike the typical 80s teen movie ending: the girl chooses the asshole jock over the nerd virgin. So I must have sympathized with the titular virgin to some degree.
Maybe because, in high school, I was more in the ‘nerd who pined after more popular girls who were out of his league’ camp than the ‘asshole jock who can have any girl he wants’ camp.
Oh, I didn’t get at first that you had not seen the movie and are basing your impression of the movie strictly on the music video. Since I have seen the movie (albeit a long time ago) but had not yet watched the video when I posted, my experience was more or less the opposite of yours.
So I just watched the video and wow, yeah that is about the 80est 80s movie ever; and further distilled into a music video it’s like a super-concentrated essence of the 80s. It also pretty much summarizes the entire movie, ending and all. I still don’t get a creepy stalker vibe from the character, I get more nerdy nice guy who gets hard-core friend-zoned. The jock is cheating on her. He apparently knocks her up and abandons her, while TLAV takes her to get the abortion and brings her gifts in the hospital. He really cares about her. Wow, what a creepy, awful guy
But, as I said, in high school I was more AV (American Virgin) than AJ (asshole jock), so I guess I’m a bit more sympathetic to the character than some may be.
I don’t think I ever got around to watching that, but I remember seeing it on the shelves at Blockbuster (with the unzipped jeans VHS box art) and remember that it was a remake of an Israeli movie (which was not called “The Last Israeli Virgin”).
I get that the so-called ‘nice guy’ is not always as nice as he seems. The term ‘incel’, as I understand it, connotes a young man who thinks of himself as a nice or good guy but is unlucky with the opposite sex, and blames it on the young women, who he sees as shallow and superficial. He carries a lot of anger and resentment toward them, and thus is not nearly as nice and respectful toward them as he thinks he is. Or, he even knowingly treats them disrespectfully because he thinks they ‘deserve it’. He either can’t or won’t address his own complicity in his lack of romantic success.
Strictly speaking, ‘incel’ is short for ‘involuntary celibate’ which, in that strict sense, I certainly was in high school. But I looked toward no one but myself for my lack of success in the romance department, and took positive steps to overcome social awkwardness and work out so I wasn’t such a skinny little pipsqueak. And when I did become more successful I treated my dates with respect. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are ‘nice guys’ and there are nice guys.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to turn a lighthearted music video thread into a confessional thesis on gender relations from the 80s to the modern day. But can we at least agree that the American Virgin character is slightly more likable than the asshole jock, who cheats on her, knocks her up and then immediately abandons her?
I sure do. It starts immediately in the video. Maybe in the movie it was cute (I have not seen the movie) but in the video he is all kinds of stalker within 15 seconds (which is about where I stopped watching…too creepy).
I see ‘sad but well intentioned nerd who is pining after a girl who is out of his league’, you see ‘dead-eyed, slack-jawed creepy stalker’. Oh well, to each their own.
Meanwhile, nobody seems to have a problem with the asshole boyfriend who treats the girl like dog shit…
Ok, I get that the thread is ‘judging a movie by its music video’ and I’m kind of cheating since I’m partly going on my memory of having seen the movie, however little I remember of it. But I will say that in many romantic movies, especially ones of that era, the male romantic lead essentially does stalk the female lead, repeatedly making advances that are rebuffed until she relents and agrees to go out with him. That’s not what appears to be happening here, even going by the video- she’s not rebuffing repeated advances on his part; on the contrary she seems to be positively responding to his attention. Though it’s not clear if she’s giving him reason to expect a romantic relationship or merely ‘friend-zoning’ him the entire time. So, maybe he does look like a creepy stalker, but he doesn’t act like a creepy stalker.
The TLAV is like the ur-incel. We didn’t understand things like that back then, just like we didn’t understand the actual rape-yness in Revenge of the Nerds.
As for the OP, I submit Phil Collins Against All Odds. It’s been a long serveral decades since I’ve seen the movie, but the video seems to be pretty people doing pretty things, and not the neo-noir the film actually is.
I did. When I first saw the movie I thought ‘Christ, this movie is one sex crime after another. How did they think this was OK?’. Up to and including full-on rape-- the nerd deceiving the cheerleader into thinking he was her boyfriend in the Darth Vader costume and having sex with her was clearly and undeniably rape, even in the 80s.
