At the start of last week, I had no plans to see No Hard Feelings (2023). The marketing was largely abysmal, playing up the tropes of outdated sex comedies that from a contemporary lens feel kind of gross. In a time where women have taken men to task for manipulating and abusing younger women, how could there possibly be a film where a 32-year-old woman dates a 19-year-old man simply to take his virginity? There’s something gross and impenetrable about selling this film without sounding problematic. Even the remarks from actress Jennifer Lawrence saying that comedy should be offensive didn’t help matters, even if I agree that any joke can be funny with the right intent. Still, No Hard Feelings didn’t look good.
One of the common complaints I read in the month leading up to its release was from the asexual and aromantic communities. No Hard Feelings was another invalidating raunchy comedy that bows to amatanormativity. You are not a man if you don’t have sex. Having grown up in the era of American Pie (1999) and its many clones, I was confident that I knew the ending of the film well enough, where the attractive Lawrence would take her prey, played by Andrew Barth Feldman, and have one wild night that makes him understand the power of uncontrollable lust. He will be “fixed” as it were by this siren. More than anything, I worried it would perpetuate the myth that asexuality isn’t real and, as the old saying goes, “you just haven’t met the right person.”
This was how I felt until Thursday when I browsed Instagram and found a Refinery29 review by Caroline Cull titled “Asexual Representation Is Scarce In Film — But No Hard Feelings Made Me Feel Seen.” Given that I thought the conversation was going to be entirely absent, I immediately hopped over to read her essay and found myself changing tune. The title is right. Outside of some coded characters, asexuality had been absent from the world of cinema. Even if I consider Good Luck to You Leo Grande (2022) essential demisexual representation, it’s more a reading than a confirmation. I’m willing to believe that Barbie (2023) will also forgo the language even if Margot Robie and Ryan Gosling have respectfully referenced ace-like behavior during interviews. So for No Hard Feelings to have something *close* to good representation, I knew that I had to run out and see it. Cull’s review was that persuasive and I only hope there’s more voices who will speak up.
A conflict of the raunchy R-Rated comedy is that sex is inherently interesting. The desire to explore sexuality to its vulgar heights has always been its draw. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them and prefer it to the pro-sanitizing media crowd that occasionally pops up. Still, the premise got me thinking of my past, where American Pie taught me that I needed to have sex before college in order to be human. There was something desirable about chasing women and sharing stories afterward. Even if it’s never outright mocked, asexuality has always been the enemy of these films, and I am not in the right head space for Jennifer Lawrence to hypnotize this kid into believing that he found Jesus in a blowjob, let alone be surrounded by people who don’t engage with the topic on a critical level.
I went in hopeful that Cull was on the right track and that this was going to be some subversive masterpiece. It’s not, but that doesn’t mean it fails to accidentally be one of the most impressive pieces of asexual representation that I’ve seen in a mainstream comedy over the past decade. It’s still first and foremost a studio comedy that can’t help but be jagged with its humor, but there was something cathartic about witnessing Feldman’s Percy not be the butt of jokes, a victim who is taken control of as we laugh at him not enjoying traumatic sex. Instead, the film progresses towards finding something more human in the characters. Some have complained that it’s not the most explicit or shocking comedy ever released, but I would argue it would take away from what makes it successful. It’s a sweet, beautiful little movie about self-respect and finds both Percy and Lawrence’s Maddie accepting each other as friends
This isn’t to say that the premise is a lie. It’s just more insidious than the trailers would have you believe. Yes, there is something still gross about Percy’s parents bribing Maddie into having sex with him. The idea that it will give him self-confidence because it gave his father (Matthew Broderick) that needed boost reflects the starting point of amatanormativity. He wants “the best” for his son. He wants him to be seen as a man who is respected in society. Nothing says that more than having a story to share of sexual prowess, or so the old 1980s teen comedies had us believe. We need to root for Percy and Maddie because this is socially acceptable, and thankfully the film always recognizes this premise as absurd. Maddie even lies about her age in order to get the job, suggesting the dishonesty that people go to experience compulsive sex.
I start with Maddie, who does not come across as being on the asexual spectrum because I think there’s something interesting about viewing No Hard Feelings as a larger study of amatanormativity between two unwilling parties. Neither are necessarily wanting sex. Maddie starts the film amid personal chaos as she loses her car and home. There’s an additional commentary on how her hometown of Montauk has been overtaken by rich people, meaning she has to take Uber jobs to afford rent. To her, dating Percy is less a product of lust and more of desperation. She needs that car and, because she’s attractive, the idea of luring Percy into a night he’ll never forget seems plausible. It’s what media has taught us. Sex for a car. How novel.
Maddie is the byproduct of somebody who has had to work for everything, at times selling her body to the economy. As she watches those around her contemplate moving, she tries to find excuses for staying. Montauk is her hometown. She loves it. She just wishes that it wasn’t full of rich tourists who ruin her security. In a way, this is all a “dance monkey” simulation where Percy’s family is throwing money at a problem for their own amusement. Because they have power, they can afford to have their son personally assimilated into amatanormativity. They can return to their social status of being “normal.”
So what about Percy? While this is framed as Maddie’s story, there’s a lot riding on the portrayal of Percy, the anomaly of this family. He’s the type to sit in his room playing video games. He has no interest in sex and has traces of being antisocial.
A detail that may confuse those not as educated on the split attraction model is Percy’s obsessive porn watching habit. Doesn’t that qualify as allosexual behavior? Much like how watching The Flash (2023) doesn’t make us fast runners, porn doesn’t make us the people we’re watching. In fact, asexuals watching porn is completely normal. Sometimes we just watch explicit content because of high libidos or simple curiosity. If nothing else, I appreciate this detail because it does feel like asexuals and porn is a weird stigma. The fantasy on screen is different from real life and very impersonal. Porn plays to a fantasy where life rarely does. We’re not expecting to be aroused by every person walking by.
What I loved about the film is how their initial interaction automatically shows the asexual/allosexual divide in action. At his job at a pet shelter, Maddie attempts to woo him with euphemisms. As they fill out paperwork to adopt a dog, she tries to persuade him to give her certain perks. The audience knows to read these innuendos as sexual, but Percy is so dedicated to his work that he’s quick to shut her down. Because he takes the language literally, he even suggests she wouldn’t make a good pet owner. Later efforts to trap him in her house prove unsuccessful as she’s pepper-sprayed. Again, Maddie’s hypersexual personality does little for him outside of coming across as uncomfortable and creepy. He wants to escape her company. It’s a fun way to show that asexuals don’t spend their entire lives thinking about sex and can recognize the absurdity in certain flirtatious customs.
Another thing about the story is that while it never fully commits to its uncomfortable premise, it does capture the pressures that ace individuals are often placed into. Because Maddie is so hellbent on winning that car, she performs the tropes of old sex comedies. This includes skinny dipping at the beach, believing that nudity will lead to immediate arousal. He’s so caught up in it being the middle of the night in unsafe environments – even joking about how it’s the same plot as Jaws (1975) - that it no longer seems fun. Maddie lures him into situations that allosexuals may find attractive but from Percy’s perspective are so absurd that they immediately fall apart. There’s different levels of pressure that Maddie places on Percy, including playing piano at a restaurant and forcing a minor to get drunk in hopes that it would loosen him up. At another point, she attempts to persuade him into sex by doing a suggestive dance to Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” which ends with him not understanding how to do erotic spanking.
The struggles of the asexual are perfectly discussed in the film starting somewhere in the middle act. During the date scenes, there’s clear evidence that plays against audience expectations. In an average comedy, this is where the sex would work its magic. Instead, Percy constantly acknowledges his discomfort. Even then, he feels pressured to perform and it begins wearing on his mental health. He almost does it out of desperation to please Maddie and his parents. He needs to get it over with. There’s no attraction there, and the tragedy of his journey is taken seriously. He acts irrationally around his parents. He destroys Maddie’s prized car to suggest that her gesture is ultimately empty. Nobody is doing this for themselves, and it works against Percy’s core ethics.
Unless someone can prove otherwise, I believe that the writers of No Hard Feelings accidentally created one of the best depictions of being a young demisexual. Midway through the film, he tells Maddie that he is only sexually attracted to people he has a close relationship with. That conflict works against the dynamic of the story and I don’t believe comes from a place of the writers’ sincerely addressing the manner. However, it works because it feels genuine and unformed in a way that’s evident to being a teenager and not entirely sure of what someone wants in life. Even the fact that he’s scared of the song “Maneater” because he thinks the woman is a monster speaks to his level of insecurity. He’s had a traumatic past that’s encouraged him to believe that he should be invisible and silent in public. Without dedicating too much energy to this part of his identity, it manages to create a demisexual that has enough nuance to be convincing. Again, the language isn’t actually used but I still think the idea is there.
While the mileage may vary for those who like dirty jokes, I think that the core humanity of the characters is very much respected. Percy ends the story with his dignity in place and Maddie has learned to respect his wishes. Even then, there’s jokes where Maddie attends a college party and contemplates “Doesn’t anybody fuck anymore?” It’s a joke about Gen-Z not desiring to hook up culture, but reflects again the pressure of amatanormativity to perform certain requests at the drop of the hat. It’s a nice subversion that shows a changing view of sex as a necessity and plays well into showing how Maddie’s Millennial mindset differs from Percy’s Gen-Z one. The values are changing, and it’s likely that the influence of Percy’s parents, Boomers, are the only reason anyone is going to make out in this film.
More than being a good representation of asexual and demisexual behaviors, No Hard Feelings is a nice little comedy about the harm of amatanormativity in an American capitalist environment. Everyone is roped into this project less out of want and more necessity. Percy’s father does it to not feel ashamed of his parenting skills. Maddie does it because she needs a car to make money. Percy is a lone subject without any greater purpose. He doesn’t want to do it. He’d rather hang out with his friends and joke about the upcoming school semester. There’s no want of perversion in his life. As a result, he is the one who feels like he has his life most together – at least at first because this is a comedy and mishaps must happen. It’s a fun irony because it shows how desperate amatanormativity can look when it’s not being fulfilled and somebody goes against the system. How could they possibly succeed without wanting sex? Percy is the perfect embodiment of that.
I love that this is a sex comedy that never gets to places of sexual abuse. Given how many films of the past have submitted to that outcome, I was ready to accept that something would happen that changed the course of events. Instead, there is a comedy that doesn’t shy away from sex but treats the characters’ relationship with it seriously. As a result, it’s a bit more accomplished than its peers. As Cull even points out, sex-repulsed aces will be able to enjoy the film because there’s nothing too explicit. Otherwise, it’s a quaint little movie that works as a nice night out. I don’t know that everyone must read it as asexual to appreciate it, but I want to believe a young ace will and find the acceptance they’ve been looking for in a studio film. One can hope this trend continues and we get more nuanced depictions of intimacy in the years ahead. No Hard Feelings has no right to be this considerate, but I appreciate it so much for taking the extra effort.
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