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Dude, Where's My Car?
Directed by Danny Leiner
with Ashton Kutcher, Seann William Scott, Jennifer Garner, Marla Sokoloff
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As George W. Bush's government is shaping up to be more and more conservative (big surprise), there's little doubt that homosexuality-- indeed any sexual deviancy-- is going to be targeted. Bush's first-choice Secretary of Labor, Linda Chavez, has a long history of queer-baiting-- including support of reparative therapy. And Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft regularly denounces homosexuality as a sin and opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. And Lynn Cheney-- vigilant doyenne of neo-con morals and behavior-- is lurking far, far too close to the halls of power.

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As scary as this is, one must marvel at how far these people are from popular sentiments. What can we make of the fact that the surprise sleeper hit of this past month is Dude, Where's My Car? Made for less then eight million, the film, which is marketed as a dumbbell teen comedy, will probably gross over five times that in a few weeks. And there is no way that Chavez, Ashcroft, LaCheney and their ilk are going to be happy.

Dude is a stoner comedy of the genre that encompasses Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clerks. The plot is incidental to the film's conceits: that getting stoned is cool, getting laid is cool, eating pizza is cool, and driving around stoned is cool, too. As directed by Danny Leiner and written by Philip Stark, the plot of Dude is simplicity itself: Jesse Montgomery III (Ashton Kutcher) and Chester (Seann William Scott) were so stoned the night before that they can't find their car. It's a problem because they left the birthday presents for their twin girlfriends Wanda (Jennifer Garner) and Wilma (Marla Sokoloff) in said vehicle. But this is the least of their troubles, for apparently they were so wasted last night that they can't remember anything, including meeting several groups of aliens, some of whom are planning to destroy the universe. Luckily, after a day of adventures-- including discovering an intimate liaison with a larcenous transsexual stripper, a trip to a very passive-aggressive drive-through Chinese restaurant, a visit to a friend who keeps a murderously vicious and very stoned pet dog, and the revelation that they both got big tattoos on their backs-- everything works out for the best, even if some of the aliens go on a rampage reminiscent of that great 1957 classic The Attack of the 50 Foot Women.

Dude is consistently funny, clever, and charming. It's also literate enough to follow Chekhov's dictum that if you introduce a gun in act one you have to kill someone with it in act three-- only here it's chocolate-swirl Jell-O pudding (don't even ask). But what's truly amazing about the film is that it's so queer. Historically films aimed at teen audiences-- particularly boys-- have reinforced the codes of heterosexual masculinity. Sure, the main characters might be cool, but they were still "real guys." One way the films fortified this message was to have a geek character, the nerd who was always the comic relief and the stooge for the "real guys." Well, Dude takes the traditional nerds and turns them into the film's heroes, and Jesse and Chester are continually represented as totally queer.

True, true-- they have girlfriends. But they also have an intense physical relationship with one another. All of their physical scenes together are playful and fun and they have no trouble touching. Even sitting in their car-- not the missing car but a really cool one they leased when they were wasted the night before-- they engage in a passionate kiss just to compete with the really cool guy (the ever popular and cool Fabio) in the cool car next to theirs. At one point one of the dudes says, "I gotta go and take a crap," and the other says, "I know, hey Dude, I know your body as well as you do." Combine with this sexual escapades with transsexual lap dancers and a complete nonchalance about being masculine and Dude, Where's My Car looks pretty radical. If this were released toward the end of the Clinton years (don't they look good now?) it would have been seen as representation. But in the first months of the Bush administration, it looks like a call to arms.

Dude comes out of a tradition of films that have challenged ideas about masculinity for adolescent boys. American Pie focused in the sexual inadequacies and foibles of its main characters. Road Trip did the same, but upped the ante by having a main character (the most butch) become increasingly interested in having fingers shoved up his butt-hole when he was coming. Dude, Where's My Car ups that ante again by having its heroes engage in queer sex and imply no stigma or consequence. It presents a vision of sexual freedom and license at odds with the stated new morality. In Dude the really, really cool guys are simply too stoned to even think that passionate kissing in public is wrong or even odd. But that's cool, because being stoned is really cool, too. Of course one of the greatest warnings about drugs is that they allow you to act sexually "inappropriately" and what is really cool about that warning is that it's true. In the new age of Bush and the oncoming culture wars, Jesse and Chester may end up being our first heroes.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com