Film – Page 3 – Three Guineas

February 3, 2013October 23, 2013

The End of Men

Perhaps 2012 was the year of the aging hero. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the The Dark Knight Rises’ limping Batman while watching James Bond repeatedly fail his physical tests in Sam Mendes’ Skyfall. Although the film was trumpeted as a feminist Bond, an intellectual Bond, an artful Bond, it is, more than anything, an elegiac Bond. During the first three-quarters of Skyfall, it appears as though we are witnessing not just the decline of Daniel Craig’s Bond but the decline of Bond himself—that eternally youthful masculine archetype who uses physical strength and gadgets to fuck and kill his way across the globe. But the film clings to this archetype, yearning for the past even as it looks warily to the future. Elegy and nostalgia have always been interrelated concepts: you can’t long for the past unless you are mourning its passing. It should then come as no surprise that a film questioning the need for Bond should so fetishize the totems of Bond. Watching Bond and M travel through London in an Aston Martin initially thrills the audience, but the viewer is also jarred by the sight of a powerful woman sitting in the passenger seat of this mid-century masculine toy. This relic has no place in the modern world. Mendes hints at this possibility—that the 21^st century no longer needs Bond—but after stepping toward this precipice, he immediately stumbles back onto more comfortable ground. Continue reading “The End of Men”

October 15, 2012August 28, 2013

Cruel Intentions

Remember how critics described Bridesmaids as a game-changing, female-centric, raunchy manifesto of a woman’s right to behave badly on screen? While I truly enjoyed how Bridesmaids featured women with flaws greater than a propensity for falling down, the film was still relatively tame and—outside of the poop, anal bleaching, and penis impersonations—a classic romantic comedy with a happy ending that even included the standard cute Irish fellow. None of the women behaved that badly or produced meltdowns that approximated normal female behavior. Don’t get me wrong: I really liked Bridesmaids, and I realize it was never meant to be a dark film. But critics acted as though it was an accurate depiction of girls gone bad. Twenty minutes into a viewing of Bachelorette and I began to think, “ah … so this is the film critics imagined when they were watching Bridesmaids.” Not only is writer/director Leslye Headland’s Bachelorette decidedly darker but it is also a much more poignant look at female self-destruction.

Although I’m not a massive bitch and barely drink, I get the girls of Bachelorette—self-absorbed, troubled women on the cusp of 30, who characterize men using the classic Krakow/Catalano taxonomy and treat their bodies either with complete disregard or like unruly children in need of strict discipline. Most of the titular bachelorettes can’t quite transition into adulthood (i.e., your classic Apatovian fault), but they also exhibit more specifically female flaws: they use sex for validation, talk about their friends behind their backs, and, most significantly, despise their own bodies. In short, they behave like a lot of women I know. Continue reading “Cruel Intentions”

September 20, 2012October 23, 2013

Weekly Girl Crushes: When You Can’t Watch Mad Men…

Global warming autumns are now so common that I no longer find it odd to be wearing a tank top and shorts on a September afternoon (whether it is appropriate for a 29-year-old to don such an outfit is another question entirely). Apparently, television and film are mirroring this climate trend because we are still mired in the late-summer pop cultural doldrums despite having already celebrated Labor Day. Now is, therefore, the perfect time to delve into those books, films, and lesser known television shows that can sustain us until Mad Men returns and the Oscar season officially begins. Continue reading “Weekly Girl Crushes: When You Can’t Watch Mad Men…”

August 16, 2012August 28, 2013

“When I Fell in the Pit”

Am I the only one who began to hum the oh-so-catchy Parks and Recreations ditty when Bruce Wayne…well…fell into a pit? Because he stayed in that pit for a long time. Would this pit—an obvious allusion to the earlier childhood pit and his current depressive abyss—transform Batman (I’m sorry, “The Batman”) from a super strong masculine fighter into a fresh brand of cerebral hero? Now, I realize Batman has never had super powers and has always relied on his toys, but his powerful male body has also always been his primary tool. But I sensed a change. Hobbling around his mansion in a bathrobe and getting physically bested by—horrors!—a skinny woman, this Bruce Wayne hinted that Nolan was, for once, creating stakes in a superhero film by suggesting that continually bruising and battering a man’s body could have an effect not just on his morose soul but also on his knees.

Next, he loses all his money. This manufactured plot point is even less believable than the whole sun-setting issue. Bane is holding the stock exchange hostage during the day (i.e., before 4 pm), yet he is then chased (maybe thirty minutes later) in total darkness. Holy daylight saving time, Batman! More to the point, you can’t trade away your entire company by pushing one button; Nolan seriously needs to hire a consultant who has read The Wall Street Journal at least once. If one is willing to dismiss reality (this is a comic book film after all), then you are left to ponder the more interesting question of whether this aging, physically damaged, and semi-impoverished (if you don’t count that mansion and BatJet) Batman could defeat the forces of chaos as a broken man. But then he fell in the pit. Continue reading ““When I Fell in the Pit””

August 13, 2012August 28, 2013

Men at Work

Mike Lane (Channing Tatum), the titular figure in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike, is perhaps the nicest man I have ever encountered on screen outside of a Hallmark Christmas film. Although I initially found it easier to believe that a half-lizard man was stalking Manhattan’s sewers than that someone with Tatum’s looks could be so kind, I quickly realized that Soderbergh was using this hyper-sweetness against Mike. It’s the initial warning that he’s not your father’s hero. When Mike first saunters across the frame, he is nude. I point this out not simply as an excuse to include this gif but because it’s significant that Mike first exists as mere body. This body underscores his physical masculinity (he does in fact have a Y chromosome—a very, very nice one), but the film calls into question the cultural signification of this flesh. He may be male, but does this make him a man?

Since Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex in 1949 and drag queens burst onto the pop cultural scene in the 1990s, people have acknowledged that femininity is something you do, not something you are. As Judith Butler taught generations of gender studies majors, femininity is an act that must be continuously performed in order to have meaning. Masculinity, on the other hand, has mostly remained the default position. Men are assumed to be masculine—unless they act in an obviously feminine manner—and women who are not performing their proper feminine roles are immediately derided as masculine. Masculinity itself is, therefore, taken for granted, the natural gender at odds with feminine artificiality. With the help of a few rip-away pants and leopard thongs, Magic Mike attacks masculinity’s unassailable position by revealing that it is no less a performance than femininity. Indeed, in Magic Mike, masculinity is entirely a performance—one centered on money. Continue reading “Men at Work”