ASHLEY JUDD'S NEW MOVIE, SOMEONE LIKE YOU, SHOWS HOW PEOPLE OFTEN
LOOK TO THE LATEST ANIMAL RESEARCH IN A HASTY ATTEMPT TO SORT OUT THEIR
OWN BEHAVIOR. BUT WE LEARN THAT CAPRICIOUSLY APPLIED SCIENCE IS NO CURE
FOR THE REAL COMPLEXITIES OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS.
In the newly released film Someone Like You, based on the popular
book Animal Husbandry, Ashley Judd plays Jane Goodall, a woman who
formulates a stunning new theory of relationships shortly after a
romantic disappointment. Although the character has no relation to the
famous anthropologist, Goodall's theory owes something to her chimp
observing namesake: it sees all men (read: males) as animals -- not apes or
pigs, but bulls in constant pursuit of a new cow.
For Judd/Goodall, this notion conveniently explains why her
boyfriend left, and why he wasn't worth her time after all. The new
theory proves so popular that she is soon masquerading as a psychologist
who writes an advice column on relationships. New-cow theory sweeps the
country, and women everywhere see a lot of bull in their previous
partners.
Judd's character cobbles together her cow theory from snippets of
real science reports and bits of biology books. Its prime proposition
takes shape when she reads that bulls refuse to copulate with a cow they
have already mated with, even when researchers disguise the old cow with
the scent of a new one. New-cow theory posits that all males will leave
all females eventually because their biological imperative is to find the
new cow. Voila, all relationships are eventually doomed, bull-based balm
to dumped damsels.
We laugh not just at the movie's exaggerated analogy between men
and beasts, but because it accurately illustrates the way Americans seize
on the latest pop-psych invention to help them understand relationship
failure. "We use animal theories to explain our own behavior because we
want some reason to explain why I am doing what I am doing," proffers
relationship therapist Janice Levine, Ph.D. "However, if we use this
information to justify our behavior instead of as a tool for a different
point of view, it becomes dangerous." In the movie, as in the real world,
a simplistic theory is seductive to people who are confused by the
complexity of human emotions and relationships.
The laziness of such logic has not stopped a spate of science
articles purporting to teach us about ourselves via the slimmest slice of
animal behavior. What is left out of the stories is the overwhelming
variety in animal mating rituals: suicide (the drone bees), aggressive
harem-keeping (silverback gorillas), sexually aggressive females
(crickets and birds), and insecticide (insects and spiders). Finding the
correlation between the mating habits of cows -- or spiders or
silverbacks -- and our own may be an amusing parlor game, but it is hardly
a complete picture.
"You have to meet strict scientific criteria to make a claim of
similarity," says Ralph J. Greenspan, Ph.D., a geneticist at The
Neurosciences Institute at San Diego, whose observations of fruit-fly
mating rituals appear in the book to suggest how low men are on the
evolutionary scale. "One of the ways species are most divergent is in
their mating behaviors," he points out. "It is sloppy thinking to make
extrapolations based on superficial similarities."
By the end of the film, Judd's character realizes the folly of a
one-size-fits-all theory of relationships. "It is not helpful to graft
scientific explanations onto human affairs when it doesn't help you in
the end to make a decision, to make a choice," adds Greenspan. "Because
we are willful beings we still have to make choices that can't be reduced
by science."
Making choices is an integral part of being human. And while it's
enticing to think there is a formula for making choices, we happen to be
a little more complicated than cows.
PHOTO (COLOR): Judd in Someone Like You: Taking a wry look at human
relationships.
Michael Seeber is the deputy editor of Psychology Today.
