Sleeping with Other People

Sleeping with Other People was everything Trainwreck wasn’t, and more. I love every single line in that movie and would watch it over and over again. A romantic comedy, it follows the paths of two sex addicts who lost their virginities to each other and run into each other 10 years later. Determined not to ruin their friendship with sex, they resolve to remain platonic, and in doing so both become best friends and fall in love.

While I would like to think of most of this movie, or at least the humor incorporated, as refreshingly original, its plot follows some scripts that make me pause. While both Lainey and Jake classify themselves as sex addicts and admit to sleeping with a lot of people, throughout the movie only Jake is the one being seen waking up with a new girl each night. Lainey, on the other hand, displays the traditional stereotype of being emotionally torn up over one man who couldn’t commit to her. While the movie attempts to be sexually freeing and acknowledge the female sexual capacity, I find it missing the mark at times. According to the concept of sexual scripts, “sexuality is learned from culturally produced messages that define what sex is and explain how to recognize sexual situations and how to behave in such situations” (Markle, 2008), viewers will learn to emulate this gender traditional behavior and expect it to reflect reality. Despite the guise of a sex addiction, the movie leaves me wondering at the essential difference in the depicted female version of a sex addiction and the traditional, promiscuous male version.

Sleeping with Other People also displays the very traditional, romantic comedy stereotype of “Love Finds a Way.” Lainey and Jake are separated for ten years, yet find each other living in the same place again. And when they realize that they are in love, Lainey has to move to Ann Arbor for medical school, leaving Jake behind in another relationship. Despite these trials, at the end, love conquers all and space proves no boundary, following the traditional romantic script Lippman (2014) studies. This follows the finding that “Exposure to RTST movies—which most commonly promote the message that “love finds a way” (Hefner &Wilson, 2013)—was positively associated with endorsement of the belief Love Finds a Way” (Lippman, 2014). I find it tough to reconcile myself with the stereotypicality that some of the gendered and romantic portrayals follow. At the end, it makes perfect sense that love found a way with them – how could it not have? In this way, I see the romantic messages promoted in many romantic screen genres working on me as well, even if I am conscious of them.

References

Lippman, J. R., Ward, L. M., & Seabrook, R. C. (2014). Isn’t it romantic? Differential associations between romantic screen media genres and romantic beliefs. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(3), 128-140. doi: 10.1037/ppm0000034

Markle, G. (2008). “Can women have sex like a man?”: Sexual scripts in "Sex and the City". Sexuality & Culture, 12(1), 45-57. doi: 10.1007/s12119-007-9019-1