Apparently 2011 is ‘the year of the schlub’.
I became acquainted with this term just today, putting a name to a trend in hollywood that I have been vaguely aware of for some time.
According to Giles Hardie in this video on Melbourne’s The Age, ‘For this year, to be schlub in hollywood (from the yiddish, meaning to be more talented than you are attractive) is also to be cool.’
The Oxford English dictionary defines it as, ‘A worthless person, a ‘jerk’, an oaf.’ Urban Dictionary has many entries, the top result being ‘Unkempt in appearance, either due to lack of effort or lack of awareness.’
Jack Black
Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen in Knocked Up
Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper and Justin Bartha in The Hangover
Here is the list of actors playing schlubs mentioned by Hardie.
- Nick Frost
- Simon Peg
- the alien in the film Paul, Paul
- Mel Gibson
- Ryan Quanton
- Bradley Cooper
- Zach Galifianakis
- Ed Helms
- Johnny Depp (in an animated feature)
- Jack Black (in an animated feature)
- Paul Giamatti
- Russell Brand
- Robert Duvall
- Kevin James
- Owen Wilson
- Jason Sudeikis
- Stephen Merchant
You will notice that 100% of these actors are men.
I won’t go into how problematic I think the the idea of classifying humans as ‘more talented than they are attractive’ is in the first place. The overwhelming impression I got from this piece though, as well as all the articles I read researching this topic, was that schlubs can only be men; that it is impossible for a woman to be more talented than she is attractive, or that she cannot be valued for being more talented than she is attractive. Men, on the other hand, can be valued for either their talent or their attractiveness.
The film Miss Congeniality does come to mind as one that features a female ‘schlub’, though from memory the triumph of Sandra Bullock’s character is in that she does overcome her unattractiveness to conform to the beauty ideal in the end.
The other thing that terrified me about this piece was the mention of the film Hall Pass and the date rape joke featured in the trailer (watch for it at 2:00).
The ‘oaf’, the ‘jerk’, all manner of inappropriate and unacceptable behaviours can, through these schlub-like characters, be glorified and celebrated. This is a trend that worries me in the way that retro-sexism worries me, because bad behaviour depicted in film can be widespread and excusable in the name of character development or entertainment value.
