I just came back from seeing Magic Mike XXL
I was extremely charmed by it. It's a movie about male strippers going on a roadtrip and it delivers on both the stripping and wacky roadtrip hijinks fronts. That said, what charmed me most about it was how queer it was.
Hear me out.
One of the characters is explicitly non-straight, as she says "I'm not in a Boy Phase". Channing Tatum's character is completely cool with that and even suggests that "there will be three thousand women [some of which will also be queer and you can hook up with]". There is also a scene where the male strippers show up at a male strip club and are asked by the bouncer if they're clients, implying that the establishment does cater to male clients. Nothing is made of these. They are completely casual things and it was really refreshing to see a movie that might have been all het romance all the time take the path of having queer people's existence be completely unremarkable.
I like that the strippers are friends and at no point do any of them feel the need to "no homo" it.
I also liked that the stated goal of their stripping is to make women happy. That's it. That's all there is to it. Making these women smile. There's even one scene where the whole point is to make one specific woman smile (just smile) and it's not the dance routine that does it but the joke just after and it still treated as a major victory.
(Also, I am pretty sure Rome and Paris had a thing in the past.)
(Also also: that queer subtext? Definitely intentional.)
I saw this movie with the fandom folks, one of whom convinced me to make a post on something that had been bothering me for a while, so I am posting here to be accountable to that.
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/88085.html and has
comments over there.
Hear me out.
One of the characters is explicitly non-straight, as she says "I'm not in a Boy Phase". Channing Tatum's character is completely cool with that and even suggests that "there will be three thousand women [some of which will also be queer and you can hook up with]". There is also a scene where the male strippers show up at a male strip club and are asked by the bouncer if they're clients, implying that the establishment does cater to male clients. Nothing is made of these. They are completely casual things and it was really refreshing to see a movie that might have been all het romance all the time take the path of having queer people's existence be completely unremarkable.
I like that the strippers are friends and at no point do any of them feel the need to "no homo" it.
I also liked that the stated goal of their stripping is to make women happy. That's it. That's all there is to it. Making these women smile. There's even one scene where the whole point is to make one specific woman smile (just smile) and it's not the dance routine that does it but the joke just after and it still treated as a major victory.
(Also, I am pretty sure Rome and Paris had a thing in the past.)
(Also also: that queer subtext? Definitely intentional.)
I saw this movie with the fandom folks, one of whom convinced me to make a post on something that had been bothering me for a while, so I am posting here to be accountable to that.
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/88085.html and has
comments over there.