"In A World" full of meta post titles

 

After enjoying Vengeance (written, directed, and starring BJ Novak) and Don Jon (written, directed, and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt) so much, I decided to look up other one shot films W/D/S the same person.

Which is how I ran across Lake Bell's "In a World" about a woman breaking into the world of professional voice acting. 

It was okay. Is this a secret gem that breaks down its own genre and come to a new understanding of authenticity like the other two movies I mentioned? No. Is it a fun comedy for killing an afternoon, yeah let's go with that.

But it's so simple that I am really surprised to find how badly people interpret it. By people I mean "reviews on letterboxed" or wherever else I can google them. Even of the reviews that liked it, there are only two main things people can agree on:

"This film has a strong feminist message, showing that women should believe in themselves and acquire power in every ways in life."

and 

What's up with the side plot about her sister's marriage? It doesn't connect to anything?

Which are complete misreadings of a very basic film!

Let's start with the cast. People praise how star studded this is for an indie film, but it's a bunch of comedians (mainly from Bell's sitcom "Children's Hospital.) Rob Courdy, Tig Notaro, Nick Offerman, Ken Marino, Sy Abelman. Who are great, but we should recognize it as the sort of dying breed it is: throw a bunch of comedians together and they them have fun. Sure this was made in 2013, but it's a distinctly 90's genre that lost ground to MCU blockbusters because they don't make money anymore. It's not going to be 21st century progressive feminist, it's going to be 90's "PCU" ideology as defined by the late kontextmaschine.

The climax involved the activists protesting the big frat party (tagline: “Everyone Gets Laid”), but then realizing “holy shit, we’re against drinking, sex, parties, freedom, and fun, we’re the bad guys” and giving up and chilling out and hooking up with the frat members.

(This is not an endorsement or criticism of either ideology (Anyone who reads this blog knows I am more materialist than either.) It's an analysis of what the movie is.)

Now you say, "Blue, you're overreading this again. What is the evidence this comedy movie actually has that pointed an ideological perspective?"

Because the first scene (after the nostalgic Don LaFontaine retrospective) is:

Dymitry Martin: She sounds like a [r-word] pirate, so the studio is paying to have her work with a coach. And I thought of you. Sorry, I never use the word "[r-word]" in a derogatory way. I hate people who do that. Sorry, if you have a cousin or a friend who's [r-word], I didn't mean it that way. So, sorry about that.

Lake Bell: It's fine. I'll come in today.

(Lake Bell sets up her recording equipment and beings practicing her voiceovers.)

Lake Bell (deep voice): In a world... where one woman, must teach another woman... not to sound [r-word.]

This was made in 2013! They're making jokes about how sensitive liberals are neurotic about saying certain words, while down to earth working still-living-with-parents class just makes knowing jokes about it. The value of confidence over insecurity how others see you.

So even though the movie is about one woman breaking through in a male dominated industry (full of people assuming that audiences and executives aren't ready for female voiceovers,) it's going to be from a 90's "colorblind" perspective rather than a 2010's "identity solidarity" perspective.

Which leads us to the climax, not only when Bell wins the competition for voicing the Hunger Games parody quadrilogy "Amazon Girls" against her father and his protege/her fuckboy, she runs into executive Geena Davis who explains why she won.

Carol, let me level with you. Sure, you have perfect tone and a strong sound that's a fitting choice for the genre. But I'm using you for a bigger purpose. This pseudo-feminist fantasy tween chick-lit bullshit is a devolution of the female mission. It's cancerous to the intelligence of young women. You got this job because whether the general public chooses to acknowledge it or not, voice over matters. Everyone in the world watches movie trailers. Everyone in the world sees commercials on television. Or they hear them on the radio. And that is power!

Look, this quadrilogy is going to make billions of dollars and your voice is going to be the one to inspire every girl who hears it. And that's why I chose you. Not because you were the best for the job. Because frankly, you weren't.

And then Lake Bell looks sad and conflicted.

I haven't found a single review that mentions this speech. We are supposed to feel sad and kind of dirty for her, that this character who was trying to become good enough that she could escape identity politics, only won because of them. (And there's definitely ways they could have written that same message to be inspiring. The writer, who is Lake Bell, chose to make it cynical instead.)

I'm not going to say this movie is a 100% consistent diatribe in favor of 90's PCU politics - it has some pretty complicated family dynamics, including a mother who maybe committed suicide - but that is the core of the morality. So when Bell's character attacks SoCal girls for having too much vocal fry[1], it should be understood as consistent with the morality instead of some bizarre mistake in being a good ally (the latter of which, several reviewers bring up.)

So, the meta-analyst might think, this movie is about "who tells your story", and why the identity of voiceovers is not a neutral choice? Eh, not really. I mean that's a very interesting perspective to build a movie on (Birds of Prey for instance does this well), but it's just not what this movie did. Bell does not emphasize the over part of voiceover, but rather the voice.

Because this movie, actually has a lot of interesting things to say about voices! Bell's character's other job is voice coach and her real obsession is recording as many accents as she can find from people she meets. 

 

Which is where the sister's marriage sideplot comes in! Bell asks her sister to record an interview with a guy with a sexy Irish brogue to get his accent, and she gets seduced by him. But her husband hears the recording and it destroys him. (His scene of leaving her is actually really moving, and much more dramatic and subtle that you'd expect from fucking Rob Courdry.) Rob then says he wish he had some way to understand her, in a bubble removed from the nervousness of real interaction and its demands. So Bell asks her despairing sister what she feels, it's very sweet, records it, and gets the tape to Rob. He accepts her back, yadda yadda. But the point is that all of this plot from beginning to end was about the power of voice.

*****

From a later interview, not endorsed but giving insights into her ideology https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/lake-bell-finds-voice-world-13673/  :

Less controversial is what Bell refers to as the “pandemic” of young women speaking in a baby voice (something memorably skewered in an episode of “30 Rock”). Though Carol practically demands that a young woman stop squeak speaking in “In a World...,” Bell refrains from chastising women on the street.

“I was here earlier,” she says, sipping lemonade in a Brooklyn café after a photo shoot, “and there was a girl who walked in, and I knew she was going to have the voice. She looked lovely, but there was something in her body language where I just knew I was dealing with a live one. And sure enough, she spoke like a 12-year-old girl.” Bell attributes some of the voice’s popularity to the rise of reality TV shows, where women eagerly participate in their own objectification and speak in baby voices to be more feminine and desirable, and bemoans the lack of voices that she grew up considering sexy.

“When I grew up, to be sexual and to be profoundly feminine you would sound like Lauren Bacall or Faye Dunaway. Lauren Bacall was fucking sexy, and she had a normal, big-girl voice,” Bell says. “Sexy baby is an affectation. It’s a dialect. It’s something you put on.”