I wonder what Ernest Hemingway would think of the modern-day bromance. Might he be skeptical of the intimacy that characterizes so many of the 21st-century’s fictional male friendships? What would he say after sitting through a screening of “I Love You, Man?” If his body of work—or more accurately, the comparatively limited parts of it which I’ve encountered—is any indication, I imagine he might be a bit perplexed by the sight of Paul Rudd and Jason Segel lobbing affectionate nicknames at one another. I say this because it seems to me that Hemingway’s characters are often solitary people, more commonly characterized by their overwhelming fears and fixations than the quality of their friendships.
Santiago, from “The Old Man and the Sea,” comes to mind. He is the titular character of Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novella and his companionless struggle to catch a marlin off the coast of Cuba takes up the bulk of the short work. When Santiago finally reaches the shore after a brutal three days, he is physically alone and solely responsible for his quasi-victory. The solitude is a theme characteristic of the Hemingway oeuvre.
Attempting to make broad generalizations about an artist’s work is a facile endeavour, but it’s safe to say that works like “A Farewell to Arms” and “Hills Like White Elephants,” contain no duos or friendships comparable to what we’ve come to know as the archetypal modern bromance. That is to say, you won’t find the brand of hyper-intimacy shared by the leads of “21 Jump Street” among Hemingway’s characters.
Perhaps “The Sun Also Rises” contains the best example of a healthy Hemingway friendship. Jake Barnes—the protagonist—and his friend, Bill Gorton, are consistently kind to one another in a novel full of virulence. One day as they eat lunch, Bill tells Jake he is “fonder of [him] than anybody on earth.” He quickly qualifies his statement with a series of homophobic remarks, delimiting the platonic bounds of said fondness, but the affection is sincere. By the end of the novel, the duo’s friends—made volatile by passion and cheap wine—have become the posterchildren for the anti-friendship cause. Jake and Bill on the other hand escape unscathed by the surrounding conflict; their relationship is perhaps the most optimistic aspect of the novel.
When I first read the “The Sun Also Rises” in high school, the duo of Jake and Bill inexplicably reminded me of another piece of art: “Superbad.”
The connection may be startling and some might even challenge my characterization of the movie as art. Clearly, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the screenwriters, are no literary geniuses; they are however the duo whose last collaboration gave us a lengthy and literal representation of the term “food porn.” Yet, despite the film’s pedigree, “Superbad”—or more precisely, a few of its key scenes—seems to echo Hemingway’s rendering of male friendship.
Towards the end of the movie, the two leads—Seth and Evan—retreat to one of their basements after a night of drinking and partying. They arrange their sleeping bags side-by-side and as they nod off, each of them declares their love for the other. Their affirmations are heartfelt—and very funny—but come morning, neither of them want to talk about the previous night and their brief conversation is quickly capped off with a lecherous quip.
The scene is not unlike the interaction from “The Sun Also Rises,” in which a drunk Bill declares his platonic fondness for Jake with a series of homophobic ramblings. It certainly doesn’t reflect well on “Superbad” that 80 years later the same same sort of anxiety surrounding male affection persists within the movie’s script and improvisation. While the film can be reasonably characterized as a capable exploration of codependency, it is also an alarming example of homophobia and sexism.
It’s unfortunate that as we grew up, many of my male friends and I looked to films like “Superbad” to inform our interactions with one another. We would have been better advised to take after the friendships portrayed by humanist filmmaker, Tom McCarthy, who always seems to be making a plea to his viewers: remember, we are all each other has. Of course, we were watching for the debauchery and graphic language, not the life lessons.
Thus, we grew up happily misinformed about what constitutes healthy viable friendship. Movies produced by the Judd Apatow rat pack seemed to suggest that through break-ups and college admissions, friendships could persevere; that in fact, they were likely to. So when ninth grade rolled around and the middle school friends I had grown up quoting “Superbad” with made their way to different high schools, we were optimistic about the easy continuance of our friendship.
Little did we know the cards were statistically stacked against us. A 2015 study published by Psychological Science tracked 573 reciprocated friendships beginning in the seventh grade and found that “Fewer than one in ten friendships…survived the transition from middle school to high school,” while “Only one percent…continued to the 12th grade.”
In the end, the researchers provided a better predictive model than the comedians.
Today, only a few of us remain close, and according to the Psychological Science study, our “compatibility is a function of similarity between friends rather than the presence or absence of a particular trait.” I’m more inclined to believe the fumes of nostalgia and our ability to be increasingly candid with one another are the roots of our continued—albeit loose—friendship. In any case, the typical codependency of the comedic bromance is unviable.
In “The Sun Also Rises,” Jake and Bill remain friends while separated by an ocean—Bill resides in America and Jake in Europe. Their bond traverses the logical bounds of geography until they are able to meet up again. So, as the semester begins and many of us—particularly first-year students—leave our friends back home to meet, and reunite with, those at Duke, I encourage you to remember this: If the expatriates’ bromance can traverse an ocean, we—with our iPhones and laptops—can manage to preserve old friendships too.
Jake Parker is a Trinity sophomore. His column, “thinking too much, feeling too little,” runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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