40-Year-Old Virgin
Essay by 24 • November 6, 2010 • 1,020 Words (5 Pages) • 2,642 Views
40-Year-Old Virgin Movie Review
In today's society sexuality is no longer the taboo topic it used to be. It's discussed quite openly among scientists and scholars all the way down to classes offered on the subject and socially among friends. Although movies about sex have been around for roughly 80 years, more and more come out each year discussing an array of topics relating to sex. The 40-Year-Old Virgin is one of these movies. It's the story of Andy Stitzer who has managed to make it 40 years without having sex. The story basically takes the viewer through his life and how his friends and co-workers tirelessly tease him and try to "help" him get laid.
Andy's sexual development isn't discussed in depth. The developmental sexual stages of infancy, early childhood, preadolescence, and adolescence are left out of the movie, but several instances are shown in his young adult to adult life in which he was on the verge of doing "it" with girls in college that show him fumbling with the situation. In one instance, he's getting involved with a girl and as they begin foreplay she licks his toes and he kicks her in the face. This obviously kills the mood and inevitably kills his chances of sleeping with the woman. It is assumed that during adolescence and into high school Andy was a loner, and didn't have many friends, and definitely no female friends. This could've led to several crises in Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. He never had the chance to develop skills in adolescence to sustain long term relationships, or become knowledgeable about certain sexual subjects kids learn from one another in social situations. The crisis between identity and role confusion was probably one of the major one's that molded Andy into the person he'd become, simply because he didn't really have career, he just started in an electronics store and never seem to be concerned with doing anything more, until the end of the movie, and also he showed a preference for more childish things, such as his massive collection of figurines, comic books, and video games. He never left the childhood things behind to develop into more of an adult.
To Andy his sexuality wasn't a problem. He was happy with his life and kind of just assumed that after the few disastrous sexual encounters he had had that maybe it just wasn't going to happen for him so he quit trying. As he begins hanging out more and more with his co-workers, all of whom are prototypical male "chauvinistic pigs," he's constantly peer pressured to do the deed. They make it their mission to get him laid and begin taking him out to bars and hanging out with slutty, drunk girls. The movie addresses exactly what goes on in most social situations in bars. Groups of girls or guys meet in bars, drink, and in some cases end up going home together and sleeping together. That's become somewhat of a norm in society today. But once Andy has been introduced to the new way of getting laid, he becomes agitated with his friends. He doesn't want to just sleep with a woman, he wants to form a close loving relationship and make it a meaningful act, while his friends just want him to do it because they see it as more of a recreational act rather than an emotional act. Once
...
...