Superbad

At the ripe age of 15, I watched, what would come to be, one of the funniest movies of my young adult life.  Superbad, starring Jonah Hill and Michael Cera, follows the narrative of two high teenagers whose high school days are coming to a close.  When a girl asks them to buy alcohol for a party she's throwing, Seth (Jonah Hill) takes this opportunity to show his worth.  Tagging his friend Evan (Michael Cera) along, both boys embark on this long and bumpy journey to score the ultimate satisfaction of impressing others at the party, but most importantly, losing their virginities to two girls in attendance.

Solely based on the premise of the movie, it is abundantly clear that Seth and Evan are exhibiting specific sexual scripts of one of Kelly's virginity loss narratives, the urgency script.  This script revolves around the idea of virginity loss as "not only a highly enjoyable activity but as a necessary to affirm a gendered identity as a sexually sought-after individual... and to achieve social status" (Kelly, pg. 482).  Seth makes an abudance of explicit comments about how much he wants to have sex including "Momma is making a pubie salad and [she] needs some of Seth's own dressing, she wants to fuck man, p in the v, tonight is the night fucking is a possibility."  All of these vulgar statements reference how badly he wants to lose his virginity.  When Evan was hesitant about the whole plan, Evan screams, "Stop being a pussy for once and we can fucking fuck some pussy already!"  The questioning of Evan's masculinity plays into Carpenter's theory of males having "great anxiety due to the threat of failed performance of masculinity" (Kelly, pg. 480).  A common characteristic of the urgency script is the desperation to have sex (Kelly, pg. 482).  The things that Seth and Evan go through to obtain aclohol for this party and ultimately lose their virginity makes desperation seem like an understatement.  Getting hit by a car, crashing a sketchy party, fighting with friends, and almost getting arested by cops were just a few of the incidents in between Seth, Evan, and their virginites being lost.

The influence that media such as Superbad can have on adolescents is significant.  I can firsthand adhere to this.  After I watched this movie with my friends, I vividly remember having a conversation with them about when we think we were going to lose our virginites and with what girl it would be with.  Kelly's study and many other prior to hers highlight this fact that "teenagers' experiences of virginity loss are shaped by the socially constructed meanings of virginity and virginity loss" (Kelly, pg. 480)  Adolescents, especially males, who watch movies that deal with the urgency script begin to idealize this virginity loss narrative and apply it their real lives.  Hopefully the scripts in Superbad are not internalized too much by America's youth and other scipts such as management and abstinence in other more sexually positive media are internalized as well.

Maura Kelly (2010) Virginity Loss Narratives in “Teen Drama” Television Programs, The Journal of Sex Research, 47:5, 479-489, DOI: 10.1080/00224490903132044