You Just Don’t Get It, Do You?

You Just Don’t Get It, Do You?

While watching the new Perry Mason show, I heard one character say to another, “You just don’t get it, do you?” and I wanted to ring a bell. Ding, ding, ding! Every screenwriter’s favorite line!

There was a bit of a stir around a movie clip video supercut a while back which featured one character after another saying, “You just don’t get it, do you?” As you watch, you can start to feel crazy as one person after another says, in almost exactly the same tone (because there’s really only one line reading for this text), “You just don’t get it, do you?” with occasional text variations.

The video went viral and I would have thought eight minutes of a single line repeated would have alerted every screenwriter to flash a red light whenever this phrase slid out of their pen or keyboard. I certainly put a mental pin in it. But apparently folks are still saying, “You just don’t get it, do you?” onscreen.

I feel like I read a breakdown of why this phrase was both so ubiquitous and so lame but I cannot find it now, twelve years later apparently. Maybe the folks at Perry Mason thought no one would notice their cliché because twelve years have passed since this trope got called out. I don’t remember what folks were saying about this in 2011, when this video went around, but now, it’s clear to me that it is a way for a character to explain something going on in the story, a way to squeeze in some exposition or context. It’s a funnily stylized way to include information.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say this phrase in real life — but it is relentlessly common on screen. It sounds natural because we hear it so often but it is just an exposition delivering mechanism, disguised as a tiny conflict between two characters. I was thinking about this phrase while watching (I know, I know, I thought I was done but apparently not). I don’t think they actually used this line but the whole show feels like a fleshed out, “You just don’t get it, do you?” story. This is partly because of the enormous amount of exposition that the show indulges in but mostly because of the attitude. The show feels like someone is playing that line under everything, whispering it, declaiming it, shouting it — over and over again it, the series feels like one big, “You just don’t get it, do you?”

And the problem is, I DO get it. I DO understand why the women in this show are angry and why there is enormous appeal in the evolution of a power that shifts the angle of the playing field. It feels somehow condescending to have these things explicitly stated or illustrated or demonstrated. And I imagine that that patronizing feeling is much worse for men watching the show and very possibly more alienating in the ways it tries to include them and “educate” them. A show that keeps reiterating that you, the audience, just don’t get it, do you, is a show that is fairly likely to push away its viewers. We all like to think we get it. Even men without a stitch of exposure to the feminist movement don’t like to be told they don’t get it, even if they don’t.

We all have things we don’t get. I’m sure there are a lot of things about being a man that I don’t get and it’s clear that there are a lot of things that many men don’t get about being a woman. And, of course, there are tons of things cis people don’t get about being trans and so on.

Part of the reason we’ve had movements like #MeToo and #YesAllWomen is that it became very clear how much was not understood. It can feel like we live in different worlds sometimes. Here’s a conversation I had with a man recently: He said “I like to keep the shades open so I can look out and remember I live in a city.” And I said, “And I like to keep them closed so I don’t get stalked and raped and murdered.” And then there was silence. I could have said, “You just don’t get it, do you?” But there’s no need when we put beauty and fear of violence on the scale. I think he got it.

I guess I feel like, if someone doesn’t get it, finding a way to demonstrate it or feel it or even just explain it, is a more useful way forward than leaning into cliches would be. I mean, you get it, right?

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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on May 20, 2023.