The Invention of Lying: Another (Albeit Hilarious) Tale Teaching Women Not to be Shallow

I checked out the latest cameo-packed Ricky Gervais comedy last night and was delighted the brilliant premise of a world where lying had not yet been invented fulfilled its potential. I laughed, I cried (I teared up, at any rate), I loved it. But I also left slightly disappointed that it drove home the valuable lesson that you should choose love over looks… to women.

For those who don’t live in a land of movie trailers, The Invention of Lying takes place in a parallel universe where no one has ever thought of deceit, deception or false flattery. Everything is otherwise the same, but people respond honestly to inquiries of “how’s it going?” with recounts of their suicidal ideation and first dates are followed up with emails like, “while the date was enjoyable, I am clearly out of your league.”

The allegory is fabulous for making light of human culture. Everything from advertising (Coke: It is Very Famous) to the existence of religion is lampooned. And the honest, animal needs of humans are held up high to be view un-obscured.

But the farce has a moral, of course. But it really has nothing to do with the ethics of dishonesty. It has to do with superficiality: well, female superficiality.

Ricky Gervais’s character, Mark, pursues a very pretty and mildly charming Anna played by Jennifer Garner and through the course of the story, they fall in love. But her desire to have genetically ideal offspring halts her from becoming romantically involved with Mark. Pushed by her mother and general societal norms, Anna instead goes after the much more physically attractive smarmy motherfucker played by Rob Lowe.

The story, set in a land of compulsory honesty, depicts her decision to go after the handsome man instead of the homely one as being entirely a decision of logic, devoid of the idea of love…or female sexual desire, for that matter. The ultimate decision to end up with the less attractive but nicer guy would be a triumph of the heart over the brain… certainly not of “settling” on her part.

But only for the woman, of course. We root for Anna to follow her feelings rather than her reason because that is the right and good thing to do: to choose substance over facade. But a basic question remains: why the fuck doesn’t Mark just go for a nice, perhaps less model-looking woman who wants him back? Out of the question. Anna’s character is nice enough, but far from being the sweetest, most loving person in the universe, even if everyone is harshly honest. Her virtue is in the fact she is kind despite being pretty enough she doesn’t have to be.

There’s no great outrage here, in this plot premise. In reality, it is furthering the idea that love should triumph over money and looks. But this “sacrifice” of reason (and physical attraction) in favor of feeling is only asked of females. Men are still free to choose partners based on whatever they like. It is the responsibility of women to ensure a partnering is legitimate… and that she be attractive enough to have more than one suitor from which to choose

The Invention of Lying is unique and creative, the kind of genius inspiration that makes one wonder “why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?,” much as Mark’s character wonders how he managed to be the first to invent lying itself. But it’s yet another tale of sentimentality aimed at maintaining gender norms, teaching women if they are pretty enough they can have their choice of men but that they ought to pick the nice one, not the one they want to fuck.

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