Magic Mike
MAGIC. MIKE.
I need a moment, because that was the greatest fucking movie. It was just so FUCKING EPICALLY UNBELIEVABLY GOOD, I was completely blown away. There’s not even a story in it for me to write, because THAT WAS IT, THAT WAS THE STORY I would have written, so I’m replete.
Here’s the deal: I saw The Avengers and it was good, very enjoyable, Bruce Banner’s Face, Coulson, Loki, I get it. The Avengers was good like clicking through on a long, slow-building, canon-based story written by writer who always writes super good and delightful stories and will take care of you and show you an amazing time. This is a wonderful feeling and I enjoy those stories very much.
But Magic Mike. OH HO HO HO HO.
OH HOH.
OH MAN.
I NEED ANOTHER MOMENT. DEEP BREATHS. BRING ME MY HYPERVENTILATION SACK. FAN MY BROW.
Magic Mike is like that story by someone you’ve never heard of that you click through because whatever, you’re bored, and you get in there and the person’s all “Oh yeah, and this is a 3659157560 word AU about textile manufacturing and also macaroni salad.” And you think “Macaroni…blankets…the fuck is this? These people aren’t even my fandom! I bet there are seven typos in the first paragraph.”
But you read the first paragraph and…you know, it’s pretty good. No typos. The next thing you know, 3am, face down in the fandom gutter, sobbing incoherently about merino wool, texting your friends all TOO MUCH MAYONNAIIIIIISE IN THE SALAD, THERE WAS TOO MUCH, and then you can never think about blankets or macaroni salad without laughing or bursting into tears of joy.
TORTURE PORN: I would like to be all sex positive and say that I don’t judge people who enjoy brutal torture porn, but I do judge them and get kind of freaked out by all the violence against women as entertainment, just, YUCK, and of course I am a fucking hypocrite because this movie was primarily composed of scene after scene of crushing emotional torture & humiliation porn, waves just crashing over me and and naturally I could not get enough of it and thought it was fantastic.
I mean, POOR CHANNING POTATOES, YOU GUYS, here are just a few of the things that happen to him:
- Humiliatingly denied a small business loan (FOR HIS FOUND-ART FURNITURE BUSINESS) because his credit is terrible and he is just sitting there in his real businessman suit and fake serious-businessman glasses and his stacks of stripper money and it’s sort of like that scene in Pretty Woman when no one will sell Julia Roberts clothes except instead of Richard Gere rubbing their faces in it, there is NO ONE TO SAVE HIM. He’s just out there by himself, hands shaking, stuffing his stripper money back in the shoebox he keeps under his bed oh, sorry, his serious businessman briefcase.
- Discovers that the kid he’s taken under his wing in whom he obviously sees his younger self (hard working go-getter destined for bigger things) is instead an egotistical selfish terrible person who makes horrible, callous choices and cares about no one but himself.
- Discovers that the people he loves, his CHOSEN FUCKING FAMILY, do not actually care about him at all, and that he is, in fact, completely replaceable and nothing more than a means to an end.
- Also treated like a whore by really almost everyone in the movie
To boil it down, he finds out that every emotional connection he thought he had is a lie and also that his hopes and dreams are stupid and impossible and pathetic, culminating in a scene where he dresses up in this John-Sheppard-military-corset outfit and does a stripper dance full of ARTISTRY and DESPERATION and INTENSITY sort of like in What’s Love Got to Do With It when Tina Turner is getting divorced from Ike and they’re all, well, you’re going to be left with nothing, and Angela Basset is all “EXCEPT MY NAME,”
(sorry, this is the best I can find:)
and she’s just so full of dignity and, obviously, goes on to SHOW THE FUCK OUT OF EVERYONE by being Tina Turner and having an international recording career and being awesome.
Except--and obviously, this is a big surprise--in Magic Mike, what happens is that the stripper audience doesn’t particularly notice or care or respond in any way differently to said artistry and desperation and it’s clear that it doesn’t matter, it never mattered, it could be ANYONE taking off their clothes in pretty much any way, and although Channing Tatum has been talking for the whole movie (and, by the way, also extra-textually, if you wanted to get into the meta aspects of this) about how it’s just dumb man stripping, ha ha, it’s pretty ridiculous, who cares, you gotta do what you have to do to make money to finance your real dreams….it is clear that some part of him believes that if he just really DANCES HIS HEART he will be able to finally emotionally connect with someone in a real and beautiful way.
BUT NO.
EVERYONE STILL TREATS HIM LIKE A WORTHLESS WHORE, AND EVEN THE FACT THAT HE HAS DREAMS IS HELD UP FOR RIDICULE AND DISDAIN.
Holy Fuck you guys, I was dying the whole time at how perfect and amazing it was. It was some real LET ME WALK INTO THE OCEAN caliber shit.
Also, the details in this movie! THE DETAILS. Let’s be real: if you phone it in on the Channing Tatum stripper movie, does anyone notice? Is your invitation to Matthew McConaughey’s barbecue rescinded? NO! But no one phoned it in at all, I mean, to harken back to the fanfiction story metaphor above, what really makes those crazy stories good is COMMITMENT. You know what I mean - no one wants to read some story where the person cops out or apologizes! I only want to read stories where the person is all “YEAH, I made them all cardboard boxes and YEAH I spent 457 hours researching UPS routes and barcoding! YEAHHHHHHH BOXES!!!!”
THE DETAILS IN THIS MOVIE inspired actual GUT-WRENCHING ENVY in me at their perfection.
LIKE OKAY,
1. CHANNING POTATOES AND HIS TRUCK OF ASPIRATIONS AND BAD FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
Guy has a big black truck and he’s left all the plastic on the inside (you know, on the dashboard, over the radio buttons, whatever) so that he can peel it off right before he sells it and get more money for it.
LET’S UNPACK THIS:
1. If you want to save money on your car, you get some super old cheap-ass car and drive it into the ground OR you get a slightly newer (but still used) and sensible/reliable car (Toyota, Honda, whatever) and drive it forever. Your kids learn to drive in it. You don’t: a.) buy a big giant truck (unless you need to haul things around, which Channing Tatum never, ever does within the confines of the movie) or b.) plan to sell it at all, ever, until it’s a total beater and you sell it to a kid for $300 bucks.
2. This happens m-a-y-b-e ten minutes into the movie and it’s just such a economical, two-line exchange that instantaneously communicates almost everything you need to know about this character--that he thinks hard about saving money and comes up with these sort of convoluted and difficult solutions because he clearly doesn’t come from any kind of background where this behavior has been modeled or explicitly taught to him*, so he’s just floundering around having to do everything on his own, and making a lot of beginner mistakes that will really cost him down the line.
*You could also read this as a searing indictment of the American idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to success, and how Channing Potatoes (AMERICA/the 99%) has been sold a bill of goods so that when he fails, he thinks it’s a personal failure rather than a failure of a system that’s created in such a way that it’s virtually impossible to succeed unless you have connections/cash/insider knowledge.
Speaking of which:
3. CHANNING POTATOES’ LIFE SAVINGS IS: $13,000
Such a perfect number (DETAILSSS!) because it initially seems like one hell of a lot of money, and when he ultimately loses all of it (sorry, spoilers, but you knew it was going to happen, COME ON), it’s PAINFUL, like I was holding onto my head and rocking back and forth in agony because THAT IS ONE HELL OF A LOT OF ONE DOLLAR BILLS STUFFED INTO A THONG, ONE AT A TIME.
At the same time, it’s almost nothing - six years of stripping, not to mention that he also does roofing, and the books for the stripper club, and hustles for customers at clubs (and the found art furniture). I’d estimate that he’s working for 80-90% of his screen time, BUSTIN’ ASS, and he’s saved….180 bucks a month.
DEPRESSING. AMAZING. It’s just enough money that it’s really troublesome when it’s taken away, but it’s so little when you really stop think about it, and barely anything in the context of what he gives up to get it. I mean, GOD DAMN IT IS BLEAK and the movie would never ever work with $3000 or $130,000.
Also Matthew McConaughey was super good, role he was born to play, just give him an Oscar.
And now let's all take a deep breath and relax with some topical videos:
I need a moment, because that was the greatest fucking movie. It was just so FUCKING EPICALLY UNBELIEVABLY GOOD, I was completely blown away. There’s not even a story in it for me to write, because THAT WAS IT, THAT WAS THE STORY I would have written, so I’m replete.
Here’s the deal: I saw The Avengers and it was good, very enjoyable, Bruce Banner’s Face, Coulson, Loki, I get it. The Avengers was good like clicking through on a long, slow-building, canon-based story written by writer who always writes super good and delightful stories and will take care of you and show you an amazing time. This is a wonderful feeling and I enjoy those stories very much.
But Magic Mike. OH HO HO HO HO.
OH HOH.
OH MAN.
I NEED ANOTHER MOMENT. DEEP BREATHS. BRING ME MY HYPERVENTILATION SACK. FAN MY BROW.
Magic Mike is like that story by someone you’ve never heard of that you click through because whatever, you’re bored, and you get in there and the person’s all “Oh yeah, and this is a 3659157560 word AU about textile manufacturing and also macaroni salad.” And you think “Macaroni…blankets…the fuck is this? These people aren’t even my fandom! I bet there are seven typos in the first paragraph.”
But you read the first paragraph and…you know, it’s pretty good. No typos. The next thing you know, 3am, face down in the fandom gutter, sobbing incoherently about merino wool, texting your friends all TOO MUCH MAYONNAIIIIIISE IN THE SALAD, THERE WAS TOO MUCH, and then you can never think about blankets or macaroni salad without laughing or bursting into tears of joy.
TORTURE PORN: I would like to be all sex positive and say that I don’t judge people who enjoy brutal torture porn, but I do judge them and get kind of freaked out by all the violence against women as entertainment, just, YUCK, and of course I am a fucking hypocrite because this movie was primarily composed of scene after scene of crushing emotional torture & humiliation porn, waves just crashing over me and and naturally I could not get enough of it and thought it was fantastic.
I mean, POOR CHANNING POTATOES, YOU GUYS, here are just a few of the things that happen to him:
- Humiliatingly denied a small business loan (FOR HIS FOUND-ART FURNITURE BUSINESS) because his credit is terrible and he is just sitting there in his real businessman suit and fake serious-businessman glasses and his stacks of stripper money and it’s sort of like that scene in Pretty Woman when no one will sell Julia Roberts clothes except instead of Richard Gere rubbing their faces in it, there is NO ONE TO SAVE HIM. He’s just out there by himself, hands shaking, stuffing his stripper money back in the shoebox he keeps under his bed oh, sorry, his serious businessman briefcase.
- Discovers that the kid he’s taken under his wing in whom he obviously sees his younger self (hard working go-getter destined for bigger things) is instead an egotistical selfish terrible person who makes horrible, callous choices and cares about no one but himself.
- Discovers that the people he loves, his CHOSEN FUCKING FAMILY, do not actually care about him at all, and that he is, in fact, completely replaceable and nothing more than a means to an end.
- Also treated like a whore by really almost everyone in the movie
To boil it down, he finds out that every emotional connection he thought he had is a lie and also that his hopes and dreams are stupid and impossible and pathetic, culminating in a scene where he dresses up in this John-Sheppard-military-corset outfit and does a stripper dance full of ARTISTRY and DESPERATION and INTENSITY sort of like in What’s Love Got to Do With It when Tina Turner is getting divorced from Ike and they’re all, well, you’re going to be left with nothing, and Angela Basset is all “EXCEPT MY NAME,”
(sorry, this is the best I can find:)
Click to viewand she’s just so full of dignity and, obviously, goes on to SHOW THE FUCK OUT OF EVERYONE by being Tina Turner and having an international recording career and being awesome.
Except--and obviously, this is a big surprise--in Magic Mike, what happens is that the stripper audience doesn’t particularly notice or care or respond in any way differently to said artistry and desperation and it’s clear that it doesn’t matter, it never mattered, it could be ANYONE taking off their clothes in pretty much any way, and although Channing Tatum has been talking for the whole movie (and, by the way, also extra-textually, if you wanted to get into the meta aspects of this) about how it’s just dumb man stripping, ha ha, it’s pretty ridiculous, who cares, you gotta do what you have to do to make money to finance your real dreams….it is clear that some part of him believes that if he just really DANCES HIS HEART he will be able to finally emotionally connect with someone in a real and beautiful way.
BUT NO.
EVERYONE STILL TREATS HIM LIKE A WORTHLESS WHORE, AND EVEN THE FACT THAT HE HAS DREAMS IS HELD UP FOR RIDICULE AND DISDAIN.
Holy Fuck you guys, I was dying the whole time at how perfect and amazing it was. It was some real LET ME WALK INTO THE OCEAN caliber shit.
Also, the details in this movie! THE DETAILS. Let’s be real: if you phone it in on the Channing Tatum stripper movie, does anyone notice? Is your invitation to Matthew McConaughey’s barbecue rescinded? NO! But no one phoned it in at all, I mean, to harken back to the fanfiction story metaphor above, what really makes those crazy stories good is COMMITMENT. You know what I mean - no one wants to read some story where the person cops out or apologizes! I only want to read stories where the person is all “YEAH, I made them all cardboard boxes and YEAH I spent 457 hours researching UPS routes and barcoding! YEAHHHHHHH BOXES!!!!”
THE DETAILS IN THIS MOVIE inspired actual GUT-WRENCHING ENVY in me at their perfection.
LIKE OKAY,
1. CHANNING POTATOES AND HIS TRUCK OF ASPIRATIONS AND BAD FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
Guy has a big black truck and he’s left all the plastic on the inside (you know, on the dashboard, over the radio buttons, whatever) so that he can peel it off right before he sells it and get more money for it.
LET’S UNPACK THIS:
1. If you want to save money on your car, you get some super old cheap-ass car and drive it into the ground OR you get a slightly newer (but still used) and sensible/reliable car (Toyota, Honda, whatever) and drive it forever. Your kids learn to drive in it. You don’t: a.) buy a big giant truck (unless you need to haul things around, which Channing Tatum never, ever does within the confines of the movie) or b.) plan to sell it at all, ever, until it’s a total beater and you sell it to a kid for $300 bucks.
2. This happens m-a-y-b-e ten minutes into the movie and it’s just such a economical, two-line exchange that instantaneously communicates almost everything you need to know about this character--that he thinks hard about saving money and comes up with these sort of convoluted and difficult solutions because he clearly doesn’t come from any kind of background where this behavior has been modeled or explicitly taught to him*, so he’s just floundering around having to do everything on his own, and making a lot of beginner mistakes that will really cost him down the line.
*You could also read this as a searing indictment of the American idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to success, and how Channing Potatoes (AMERICA/the 99%) has been sold a bill of goods so that when he fails, he thinks it’s a personal failure rather than a failure of a system that’s created in such a way that it’s virtually impossible to succeed unless you have connections/cash/insider knowledge.
Speaking of which:
3. CHANNING POTATOES’ LIFE SAVINGS IS: $13,000
Such a perfect number (DETAILSSS!) because it initially seems like one hell of a lot of money, and when he ultimately loses all of it (sorry, spoilers, but you knew it was going to happen, COME ON), it’s PAINFUL, like I was holding onto my head and rocking back and forth in agony because THAT IS ONE HELL OF A LOT OF ONE DOLLAR BILLS STUFFED INTO A THONG, ONE AT A TIME.
At the same time, it’s almost nothing - six years of stripping, not to mention that he also does roofing, and the books for the stripper club, and hustles for customers at clubs (and the found art furniture). I’d estimate that he’s working for 80-90% of his screen time, BUSTIN’ ASS, and he’s saved….180 bucks a month.
DEPRESSING. AMAZING. It’s just enough money that it’s really troublesome when it’s taken away, but it’s so little when you really stop think about it, and barely anything in the context of what he gives up to get it. I mean, GOD DAMN IT IS BLEAK and the movie would never ever work with $3000 or $130,000.
Also Matthew McConaughey was super good, role he was born to play, just give him an Oscar.
And now let's all take a deep breath and relax with some topical videos: