The Many Punchable Faces of New York
I tend to believe all works of art fall somewhere on a narrow spectrum of appeal to a majority of beholders. Each of the far ends of this spectrum are the furthest degree to which an artwork can achieve great significance, whether it be for positive or negative praise. But the middle of the spectrum is the accursed land; where artworks come to die for being neither terrible enough to provoke strong negative emotions nor fantastic enough to provoke reverence.
Though where they fall on this spectrum says more about the preferences of the beholder than the object being held, the spectrum nevertheless can reveal a great deal about an artwork’s purpose. And as somewhat of a creative person, I try to avoid harsh takes when judging someone else’s creative exploits. But those purposeless creations caught in the middle of the spectrum really get my goat.
Dating and New York is one of those films and is among the most vexing I have ever bore an audience to. Not for a while have I endured a story so seemingly unsure of its own purpose. Jonah Feingold’s directorial debut truly proves the age-old advice of “write what you know” only applies when the what has an equally compelling why.
Overall, the 90-minute romp is a deeply conflicting experience that lacks very much substance, yet overstays its welcome in the mind of a person who regards film as a scientific art form. This is because the film’s themes and setting are at odds with one another, yet it is obvious that almost everybody involved in the film’s creation gave it their all. Neither the actors nor the folks behind the scenes were phoning it in, which would seem to imply the primary weakness is the script. And rest assured, the script is barely more than a list of half-baked ideas hamstrung together by a cast of off-putting yuppies living their day-to-day lives, which are brimming with privilege.
It is as if the characters, plot, and setting were etched out by three different people who have never spoken to one another. Perhaps the best example of this comes in the second act; the main character, Milo, in a moment of downtrodden spirits, is told by the female lead, Wendy, that he is “funny” and “smart” and “kind”; three supposed traits that are never explored yet the audience is expected to accept without questioning are dead-ringer characterizations of Milo.
There are more examples of first-draft idiocy in abundance, however; there exists a whole two-minute scene in the third act that serves to do nothing more than pad out runtime by making bodega jokes. And this is where the wheels truly begin to dislodge from the wagon. Beyond the atrocious and bothersome dialogue, whole scenes exist in this film that serve no purpose whatsoever than to simply crack “only in New York” jokes — the most uninspired, depraved, and kleptomaniacal “genre” of comedy there is. Indeed Dating & New York is appropriately named, because it offers little more than vague, uninspired snippets of simplistic dating and New York exceptionalism.
But I must take a moment to acknowledge my own bias here: I loathe New York City exceptionalism. The inconsistency of this mentality is what makes it so unendurable, and likewise Dating & New York. While a small, happy few are privileged enough to see New York City in the same manner in which a child sees a playground, the vast majority of those who swear by New York’s magic will just as soon go postal over a bad subway ride as they will fawn over a half-decent slice of pizza. They are caught in a never-ending, unpatterned frenzy of uncertain love and vitriol.
And what is most ironic is their inability, or refusal to shake that mentality even in the face of limitless evidence that would suggest New York City is in fact no more unique than Selma, Alabama, or any other city in this whole goddamn country. Instead, they convince themselves that the awfulness of New York City is where the charm derives … “only in New York City can you kiss someone in front of a pile of garbage and it’s still romantic,” says Milo. To which I say “only in New York can you make such a meaningless statement and have it be interpreted by the locals as clever or even genius.” Perhaps it is true that the grungier sides of a place provide a sense of charm; I would never argue against that, coming from a city before New York which is characteristically grungy, and is in fact why I love that city so much. But to suggest that the effect is only present in New York City is just a bad-faith argument.
Fortunately, the actors give at least decent performances, but much of their hard work is compromised by the characters they portray, which are shallow, hackneyed, and underdeveloped all at once. Admittedly, these characters offer an appropriate color palette to paint the New York yuppie lifestyle with, but in effect cripples the audience’s ability to root for such unlikeable characters. Milo, Wendy, and every other character is an archetype; as deep as a kiddy pool. It takes nearly 30 minutes for the film to reveal what Milo does for a living, then never brings it up again. Not once does the film mention what Wendy does for a living, nor does it once mention her life dreams, aside from a quickly-abandoned idea to move to Los Angeles. And perhaps unsurprisingly, this whole scene exists to do nothing more than provide an opportunity to crack an “only here” joke, that being the inane rivalry between New York and LA.
Fluff and folly is the name of this film’s entire game and so too are its characters. In addition to literally every female character in the film, Wendy serves the sole function of being an emotional caretaker for every male character. There is a scene in which this character trait is treated as a point of humor, but insufficiently so, thus obfuscating what the joke’s intention is. This oversight in development presents, at least to me, a disturbing window into the writer’s understanding of gender roles and how they affect both the dating process and one’s own mental health — an essential topic to acknowledge when discussing modern dating in a place as cold and lonely as New York City.
The script is simply indecisive and inconsistent; it cannot even decide who or what the true antagonist is. Because the already unlikeable characters lack self-awareness, this leaves little room for quality man-versus-self conflict. So it is instead substituted with a secondary antagonist in the form of man-versus-environment: New York City. And unsurprisingly, this too is poorly thought-out; the script cannot decide between treating it with disgust, mysticism, or plain ambivalence.
But these shortcomings and oversights are only worthy of being described with such scornful words as “egregious” because they fail to follow some of the most fundamental mechanics of storytelling. The further you peel back the onion, the more you realize this film exists not to tell a story but to instead provide an opportunity for the storyteller to have their 15 minutes. And a storyteller arrives at such a misguided understanding of why oral tradition exists only from a lack of true purpose in the story they are telling.
The first and most obvious way to explore this problem is how the film attempts to craft a romanticized vignette of the New York yuppie lifestyle; a practice I have nothing but contempt for. This is because the yuppie New Yorker zeitgeist is and always has been as simple and thoughtless as “wow, everything sucks. Isn’t that funny?” It is not funny…not one bit, made even more disconcerting by virtue of how intersectional the problem at hand is. Because of New York’s immense diversity, let alone the size of its population, it deserves to be treated with humility and nuance because its problems affect so many people in so many ways. And boiling down those problems — most if not all of which are the results of decades of inaction, indifference, or insidious motivations from privileged elites — to a broad stroke statement of “this place is tough but fun” helps to obfuscate the problem’s many forms to those who have the means to ignore those problems. In other words, those who are not privileged enough to laugh the toughness off are further marginalized by their counterparts, who wield lackadaisical attitudes and have their fingers in their ears, screaming “hahaha.”
And the fact remains that the New York yuppie lifestyle is a legitimate one; this city exists to indulge their fantasies before anyone else’s. So it is not unwarranted to criticize how the film’s main characters both inappropriately and lazily attempt to embody the middle class through sheer avoidance of the premise. Because the film spends little if any time at all exploring the socioeconomic status of any character while simultaneously allowing them to comment on the socioeconomics of New York, one cannot help but feel this is an admission of the writer to the belief that exploring such aspects of a character is unimportant. In fact, one’s socioeconomic status is perhaps the most simple yet effective trait through which to explore what a character living in New York may believe or experience in their day-to-day life. But the film’s heavily airbrushed, overwhelmingly-white cast makes it difficult for the viewer to suspend their disbelief if they wield some level of self-awareness. And the problem here is compounded because the film’s target audience is a subculture that famously lacks self-awareness. Thus whatever valuable criticisms of the New York Yuppie lifestyle the film might have been able to put forth are invalidated by its execution of those themes.
The second avenue through which to explore the writer’s intent of purpose is to explore how the setting and conflict interact with one another. The “New York or Nowhere” nonsense can be found here too because this function is an absurd one; I reject the premise that dating in the 21st century is somehow harder in Manhattan than it is in Seattle or anywhere else. While I can personally attest that something is definitely in the water when it comes to 21st-century dating, suggesting it is relative to a location seems indicative of some deeper problems at hand.
New York’s status as a seldom-open gateway to the good life for lucky creatives is more often a curse than a blessing. Not everybody deserves to make it big, and that’s okay … that is what New York is meant to teach people. In fact, I might argue that a form of “making it in New York” is realizing you neither can nor want to do so.
But that lesson frequently breaks people down into shallow outlines of their former selves in the process. This happens not because those people are weak to breaking down, but because they simply have to. They have been cheekily told ad nauseum by those who went before them that breaking down is adapting. And failing to adapt to the New York lifestyle is for some reason seen as an admission of weakness throughout all aspects of a person’s life. For some reason, many people dating in the 21st century want something that is elsewhere from where the action is happening yet cannot bring themselves to break from the chains of what is trending. They deny themselves what they need in lieu of what they think the world wants for them.
I wish not to tell Mr. Feingold how to write his own movie (who am I kidding…of course I do), but why did Milo and Wendy even have to end up together? Being such palpably toxic characters, I had generously expected that by the end of the film, our “heroes” would come to a conclusion that repackages all the annoyances along the way into something pensive and perhaps even devastating. I thought it possible this film would not have a “Hollywood ending” — that Milo and Wendy would realize they are incompatible with one another and would endure shameful heartache for the sake of self-actualization, and take from that heart-wrenching experience lessons that answer some of the bigger questions they clearly have about adult life. Stories such as these need soul-crushing lessons to impose a sense of realism and relatability. When approached as snippets of a real person’s life and not an Instagram reel, it ultimately shows that the cost of dating is worth the risk. Those moments, devastating though they can be, allows an audience to explore the lives of Milo and Wendy as real people rather than as characters in a cheesy rom-com.
And that is what truly makes Dating & New York such a frustrating experience to sit through: how much of a missed opportunity the film is. As with many unrefined romance films, all the pieces for a truly splendid work of art are there and could easily fit together if completed by someone who knows why they want to build this puzzle. The cinematography, though nothing particularly special, demonstrates competence. The music, uninspired though it may be, is thematically appropriate. The pastel title card artworks of New York City, easily the best aspect of the movie, are actually great … not thematically appropriate with the film, but great!
But it is nonetheless both taxing and disheartening to sit through 90 minutes of film, expecting a point to occur in which the themes stick their landing, only for the credits to roll before any such moment arises.
Life and art are inextricably intertwined; I’m not sure if the chicken came before the egg … if life imitates art or vice-versa. Nevertheless, America has a problem with art…our values are making it harder and harder for art to exist. The facade of our status as the quintessential institution for simultaneous success and provocation is quickly slipping. I cannot help but feel this is partly consequential of Americans descending further into isolation. If that is the case then certainly entertainment shares some level of responsibility for this problem.
As is seemingly compulsory under the observance of capitalism, snake oil salesmen will hock Band-Aids to shooting victims. Today’s entertainment industry is incessantly capitalizing on this unfortunately lonely state of affairs, which only steepens an already slippery slope. The Billboard Top-40 is lined wall-to-wall with someone’s dirty laundry about a person they had sex with 10 years ago. Viral so-called “protest art” merely points at the problem, foregoing the advertisement of the problem’s cause or offering solutions in the form of emotional impact.
Indeed, these days the problem itself sells better than its effects or causes. But, demand has skyrocketed and so has the supply, and nobody seems to know why anymore, nor do they care to ask; they simply proceed to plunder. So it comes as no surprise that countless movies and tv shows about the difficulties of dating in the digital age are the results of a misguided soul scraping the bottom of a very deep, shit-filled barrel. These creators are worsening the isolation we all feel by presenting us with pie-in-the-sky purviews of uncomplicated love that is removed from any postulation and, worse yet, purpose.
It is easy to write off romance films as an illegitimate genre because the vast majority are little more than seasonally-based pump-and-dumps for picture studios. But doing so is a disservice to what the idea of love has done for art. Is Gustav Kimpt’s “The Kiss” any more legitimate than Casablanca or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? That is a question of one’s own interests and values, of course. But something that is not up for debate is an artwork’s purpose; that is the reason artist statements exist as a practice.
Writing isn’t easy, but anyone can do it about any subject, even if they don’t know the subject inside and out. You might have to start at the end and work backward, do some intense research, or even live a character’s life before writing it. You might end up with complete shit. You equally might end up with a stroke of genius. But the latter is only attainable if you know why you’re writing — what the essence and lessons to be had are. Without it, all you have are words anybody can pull out of the air; none of them are your own.
