“Texts of pleasure. Pleasure in pieces; language in pieces; culture in pieces” (51)

Bring It On is nothing if not a gentle satire of modern adolescent behavior. In this sense, the film epitomizes Barthes’ assertion that a pleasurable text is one that delivers culture in a recognizable format. For example, in the beginning of Torrance’s opening dream sequence, the cheerleaders dance in a sexually suggestive way while chanting, “I swear I’m not a slut!” This pokes fun at the popular stereotype that all cheerleaders are mindless vixens who make up for their ignorance with their good looks. Even the name of the high school, Rancho Carne (“Meat Ranch”), is used to further construct a culturally recognizable environment; if the audience could not identify with the characters and their circumstances, the satire would not make sense. Therefore, by appealing to the common denominator to criticize the shallow youth culture, Bring It On ends up fulfilling one of Barthes’ primary qualifications for pleasure, for the film is simply a montage of snippets of American culture.

“Pleasure is simple, which is why it is championed or disdained”

Despite being a somewhat creative satire, Bring It On also contains many simple slapstick comedic elements; Torrance’s bratty brother, who cannot let a scene pass without a snide comment, gives the film an element that reduces the its complexity level at times to nearly zero. After Torrance chides her brother for interrupting her on the phone, she unplugs his video game, to which he responds by yelling, “Bitch!” This is a comment that is sure to elicit laughter from an immature audience, and requires little or no thought to understand. Scenes with the brother keep Bring It On simple, and because of that Barthes would certainly agree it may be described as merely a pleasurable text.

[While Bring It On contains few, if any, blissful moments, I can guarantee that if I viewed the film in a theater and it skipped repeatedly, I most certainly would be running to get my money back. So, maybe even Bring It On can escape the realm of pleasure, if only through accident or coincidence.]

"Our pleasure is individual—but not personal." (Barthes 62)

Bring It On is a text of pleasure by this definition because it engages the part of us that is acting in society—that is, the individual in us. The individual is the character we present ourselves as in society. For Americans, part of this individual identity is grounded in our experience of high school. The first scene is a cheer introducing the cheerleaders. It is an indulgence in stereotype. The cheerleaders are sexy to look at, are proud bitches, popular and cute to boot. If you hate cheerleaders, you enjoy the stereotype because you as an individual are superior to that stereotype. If you are a cheerleader or have an affinity for them, the superior attitude they have throughout the cheer will please you too. If you are a pervert, you are pleased with come hither look that is given to the camera. It does not matter if personally I do not think this is a good film, because while I am watching it I am defining myself through what pleases me. So I can say I don’t like the movie (which would only be more definition of my individuality) but I could also tell you many scenes that kept me entertained and pleased.

"Text of pleasure…the text that comes from culture…is linked to a comfortable practice of reading." (Barthes 14)

When the audience is first introduced to Cliff with a shot of his shoes. These are not just any shoes but Converse. It is a tracking shot of his shoes walking down the hall and there is rock music playing. When I saw this shot, I knew immediately that he would be the "different" guy. He would change the protagonist’s point of view, make her question everything, be her love interest (that no one was expecting from the head cheerleader) and always be an individual, or something close to that. He is the stereotype of the "different" individual. This shot was all I needed to see to know what role this character would play. This shot comes from my culture. I read it and assume things about this character according to culture, and because this film is a text of pleasure my reading was right. I read this shot and film comfortably.

As posited by Roland Barthes in his work The Pleasure of the Text, pleasure is a state of enjoyment in response to a specific stimuli—in this case, it is tagged onto film as well as literature and, in Barthes’ opinion, usually falls short of explaining the true experience. One could pose that the term missing in Barthes’ definition is depth. In Bring It On (2000), directed by Peyton Reed, there are at least two instances that meet with the author’s description of pleasure. These contexts demonstrate the term described, and also reveal a lack of depth, therefore possibly attributing to the pleasure factor.

Barthes describes the flaw in pleasure:

Like those productions of contemporary art which exhaust their necessity as soon as they have been seen (since to see them is to understand to what destructive purpose they are exhibited: they no longer contain any contemplative or delectative duration), such an introduction can only repeat itself—without ever introducing anything (18).

Keeping the scholar’s words in mind, apply them to a scene taken from Bring It On (hereafter, Bring) where, within the first ten minutes of the storyline, we are treated to an exposition of aesthetics via cheerleading in unison. The scene serves to build the backdrop of a plot that is meant to deliver a moral (to high school-aged kids) of doing the right thing. Here, both the pleasure gained from viewing synchronicity, and the message contained in the context of the story, are trite and soon lose their necessity and appeal as soon as the credits roll at the end of the film. In short, pleasure (in this context) is not profound—only entertaining.

Though the breadth of Barthes’ text is seemingly written in what he would call bliss (abstract mentality), and what others would describe as an absinthe-soaked episode, he does, in fact, tap into a truth in the psychology involved with the response to pleasing stimuli. The author states: “Pleasure is championed against intellectuality, the clerisy: the old reactionary myth of heart against head.” This pearl of wisdom makes sense when considering that pleasure is not derived from a choice in the realm of reading text and/or viewing film, but rather from a knee-jerk response to the information being given or presented.

To deliver the above-mentioned point, consider a replacement tryout scene from Bring. The segment depicts different contenders for the slot opened up by the loss of an injured cheerleader. Each candidate takes their turn in front of the cheer board with an array of comedic routines and personas—everything from a male, ballet dancer to a girl with no “cheer” whatsoever in her lack-luster performance. Again, as we’ve seen before in the film, this scene has no life-altering bit of profound wisdom to impart, no depth, but rather serves to entertain. To entertain, as many could argue, is just that—and nothing more. Comedy has a peak and a valley, and it is important to understand that if comedy is to be effective it must be understood—this, by Barthes’ meaning of pleasure, is what defines it as pleasure

Perhaps if Barthes’ discourse on pleasure could be boiled down to a few simple lines, the new “leaflet” would summarily then say, “Pleasure is the act by which one experiences the ‘build-up’ of enjoyment. Additionally, one should not expect to find enlightenment during the crescendo of pleasure, but instead expect to be entertained—and nothing more.”

Although it is possible for a text to be described as both a text of pleasure and a text of bliss, the film Bring It On encompasses what Barthes defines as a text of pleasure by several definitions. In the first pages of his book, Barthes speaks of a text that he is offered. He states that:

This text bores me. It might be said to prattle. The prattle of the text is merely that foam of language which forms by the effect of a simple need of writing. Here we are not dealing with perversion but with demand. The writer of this text employs an unweaned language: imperative, automatic, unaffectionate, a minor disaster of static…it has been said that after all you have written this text quite apart from bliss; and this prattling text is then a frigid text, as any demand is frigid until desire, until neurosis forms in it. (4-5)

This statement describes how Barthes feels about a text of pleasure: consisting solely of what is demanded by the writer and full of an urgent yet meaningless content. Throughout its entirety, Bring It On delivers the “uplifting” message that “if you believe you can achieve” and conveys to its target audience exactly what they expected to see. This film is aimed at “average” teenage girls, all of whom can relate to most of the topics it presents. Find a girl who hasn’t had a hard time in school, been completely obsessed with a boy that they shouldn’t have been obsessed with, or had an annoying little brother (or sister) who despises them, and you have found an atypical teenager. Kirsten Dunst’s character goes through all of these problems in the film, allowing its target audience to feel like they have connected with the character in some way. This text may seem like anything but entertaining to some viewers; however, it has fulfilled its duty as being a text of pleasure.

Another clear definition Barthes provides for a text of pleasure is, “The text that contents, fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading" (14). Bring It On is a film that represents America’s culture from the year 2000. Though viewers who are outside of the twelve to sixteen year age range may find the scene when Torrance and Cliff are standing in the bathroom brushing their teeth for five minutes to be long and pointless; viewers who are in that age range most likely would define the awkward scene as “cute”. If my grandfather watched this film he most certainly would be appalled by its content, specifically the “slipping digits” routine that Jan uses at football games, and the language that is used throughout the film; however, I remain un-phased when an 18 year old girl calls a 6 year old a whore. This film's production had a purpose and a goal: to make the most money it could by drawing in the largest crowd possible; and as defined by Barthes, any film with such a goal will most certainly fit into the category of “text of pleasure” just as neatly as Bring It On does.

1. Page 18: “Like those productions of contemporary art which exhaust their necessity as soon as they have been seen (since to see them is immediately to understand to what destructive purpose they are exhibited: they no longer contain any contemplative or delectative duration), such an introduction can only repeat itself—without ever introducing anything.”

Being a text of pleasure, which contains no shocking images and very few moments of surprise, Bring It On allows the viewer to simply watch without exercising mental muscles. Once Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) rejects the would-be wimpy little sis candidate and announces that “This is a cheerocracy,” the picture unfolds as expected.

2. Page 14: “Text of pleasure: the text that contents, fills, grants euphoria; the text that comes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading.”

Most readers of the film have a common experience: high school. Whether you liked it, hated it, were a cheerleader, a jock, or a nerd, Bring It On is familiar. The introduction of Missy (Eliza Dushku) as she rebelliously walks into the gym, the male cheerleaders being predictably called "fags," or the new boy being heckled in class may not be pleasant memories, but they are comfortable in the sense they are not new.

3. Page 12: “Whence two systems of reading: one goes straight to...ignore the play of language (if I read Jules Verne, I go fast: I lose discourse, and yet my reading is not hampered by any verbal loss—in the speleological sense of that word);...”

Our viewing of the second screening was severely hampered, but because the narrative is a predictable story, one can easily surmise the outcome: 1) there will be a sequel, 2) Torrance and the pseudo-punk will get together, 3) Big Red will get her due, and 4) the two rival cheer teams will become either true competitors and/or semi-friendly. Missing the second half was slightly disappointing (no matter if you’ve seen the film in its entirety) just because I wanted to see if Torrance could, yet again, “bring it.”

4. Barthes explains further this desire on page 47: “...I know these are only words, but all the same...I take pleasure in hearing myself tell a story whose end I know: I know and I don’t know, I act toward myself as though I did not know: I know perfectly well Oedipus will be unmasked, that Danton will be guillotined, but all the same . . .”

Because the story of this film is based on a collective experience, perhaps part (maybe all) of the enjoyment (pleasure) is derived from a shared temporal viewing. We laugh in the same places, think the same scenes are corny, revel in the ribald, all the while looking upon these characters as caricatures of ourselves.

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Last update: 10/23/2004