Superbad's Sexual Scripts

Entertainment media places a lot of emphasis on the losing of one’s virginity. They don’t place near as much emphasis – if any – on abstinence or waiting to have sex. Generally, a theme of waiting to have sex is not a theme at all – it just isn’t discussed in entertainment media unless it is being made fun of. Of course, there are always exceptions, but the popular entertainment media rakes in the bucks by producing story lines that have sex in them – it’s that simple.

This commonality of sexuality in entertainment media is why I find the movie Superbad to be so interesting. Superbad is a quintessential funny movie aimed at guys, with crude jokes and hot girls. The entire plot of the movie is essentially that a group of guys wants to get drunk and lose their virginities before they go off to college – completely fulfilling Kelly’s (2010) urgency script. That they place so much emphasis on losing their virginities before they step in to the real world is not shocking and fits well with the ideology that entertainment media is pushing out to its consumers. This theme is in very stark contrast with what happens near the end of the movie.

In this clip (and subsequent scenes that I’m unable to find), it’s clear that Michael Cera’s character is very reluctant to have sex with the girl that is throwing herself at him. You find out that he feels extremely uncomfortable having sex with her because she is so drunk. This really flips his character from originally pursing the urgency script to pursuing more of a management script, in which he puts an unexpected “emphasis on ‘appropriate’ virginity loss” (Kelly, 2010, pg. 482). While Kelly’s (2010) article focuses on girls’ virginity scripts, I think it’s interesting to place guys within them and see how they fit. Superbad portrays a first sexual encounter for a guy as less exciting and more inhibited by alcohol – which goes against the entertainment media norm – and for a girl as far more reckless and enabled by alcohol… until she throws up on him, of course.

I think it’s really healthy for viewers of content such as Superbad that tend to place a lot of emphasis on an urgency script and that “males constantly desire sex” (Kelly, 2010, pg. 485). From this analysis, it is clear that “there are multiple and often contradictory sexual scripts” that could potentially confuse viewers regarding sexual health and encounters, but that can also open their minds to several potential ways to approach sexuality (Kelly, 2010, pg. 488).

Kelly, M. (2010). Virginity Loss Narratives in "Teen Drama" Television Programs. In The Journal of Sex Research.