FAVES POST! New favorites, let me show you them.
*clears throat, channels Maria*
Lovable sensates belting out karaoke
How does the ice not melt from Sid's hot hockey?
Feminist bros dancing in G-strings
These are a few of my favorite things!
....AHEM. Look, I had 11 hours of sleep yesterday, and the best food truck in NYC (Snowday maple grilled cheese!!!) was in my 'hood for lunch = my Sunday could not be more exuberant if I'd magically turned into a golden retriever. So, LET'S SQUEE A BIT. :)
***
Starting with Sense8: oh, Netflix, if you don't buy 4 more seasons of this IMMEDIATELY, you'll break my fucking heart. This is the show uniquely tailored for marathon-viewing, because any network airing one ep per week would have canceled them within a month. That's because the entire first half of the season takes its time to let us get to know the characters, until we're so thoroughly in love with them that, when shit finally starts to go down in the second half, WE FEEL INVESTED. And it's all so, so worth it. ♥
Anyway. Behind the somewhat messy plot, pretty delightful culturally specific narrative styles, and pure indulgence in some amazing character work, the driving idea behind Sense8 is that empathy is the greatest human ability. This sort of cheesy earnestness should not be surprising if you remember that in The Matrix, the Wachowski siblings brought Neo back to life by having Trinity tell him she loves him; so their scripts are fundamentally Love Conquers All stories - romances at the heart of everything from Bound to Jupiter Ascending - which in turn require a certain openness and vulnerability from the viewer (much like singing 4 Non Blondes at karaoke, for example).
Sense8 finds its strength in this celebration of joy, curiosity, diversity, communication, and shared experiences in the connections happening among characters across many time zones; and, symbolically, it also taps into the best of fannish experience by its very design - especially given the way fandom uses social media technology to forge connections with like-minded people around the world. (On a more personal note, I fell completely in love with the show when one character questions why she got connected to people who are so different from her, and her GF's mother replies that we evolve only through change and learning and yes, even displacement; and if you're an immigrant like me, this unexpected reaffirmation of your life choices might make you cry a little, too.)
The show is not perfect: there are plot holes, shortcuts, some rather nonsensical developments, certain lines that made me cringe, and an extended scene seemingly trying to normalize the imagery of human birth (which I actually liked, but you might just walk away wishing you'd never seen that much placenta in your entire life). There is also death, violence (campy to realistic to noir, again depending on the narrative viewpoint that frames it), and several examples of truly amazing sex. (No, seriously, I give the sex scenes an A+++++ and all the stars. It is GLORIOUS.) But most of all, it's a story about people, connected to each other via both "sensate" and regular human relationships, and the beauty and strength and challenges and revelations that come from forging those relationships, which may be cheesy as hell but hey - I am a fangirl, and that hopeful, celebratory, vulnerable state of joy is WHERE I LIVE. (See song at the top of this post. I mean... come on.)
P.S. There is also a great hot mess of a character who HAS to be a stand-in for slashers in fandom, but is given enough of her own story that she doesn't feel like a nudge-wink caricature. Not surprisingly at all, I LOVE HER. Hell, I love all of them.
I'm planning to do a rewatch at some point and try to catch a few more layers - for example, when sensates interact psychically, whose reality do they seem to inhabit more on screen - and does it depend on what they talk about, how they feel, which one of them wants to escape their own more? There is a ton of careful thought put into the visual language of this show, and I missed much of it during my first viewing while trying to figure out every character's story and the overall plot; but this narrative is far more than just spoken words and summarized sequence of events. I'm really looking forward to seeing it all again at a slower pace.
***
Some months ago, I clicked on a link for a vid set to Hozier's "Take Me To Church" (because I was watching everything set to that song, every cover of that song, every live performance of that song... you get the idea). It was a hockey vid, and it kinda broke my heart although I knew nothing about the people in it, and it also reminded me why I've found the sport itself unwatchable (at least in the US where violence seems to be incorporated into acceptable aggression on the ice). The vid, if you're curious, is Absolution - and I must warn that it includes footage of deliberately caused injuries on the ice, which is why I've only watched it a few times and even then could only squint through certain sequences.
The vid didn't turn me into a Sidney Crosby fan; but it did kinda blow me away with its narrative about him as a guy who loves, lives, and breathes hockey, has worked his whole life to get to a place where he gets to play it for a living, and yet now, at the top of his game, has to accept and live with and SURVIVE the fact that hockey targets its brightest stars in a more gruesome and brutally direct way than fame does most celebrities (as so much RPF has covered already in other fandoms). So, the vid was disturbing and intriguing and compelling as a new-to-me take on the success narrative, and that was...supposed to be that.
Except a few days later I was STILL thinking about the vid, so I did what fangirls do - asked a dear friend for some recs. Of course, because said friend has been trying to lure me into the Penguins fandom for the last year-and-a-half, she also made me a primer, a Prêt-à-Poster (ready-to-ship ...come on, I'm a dork) OTP pitch, and included a video clip which DID, in fact, turn me into a fangirl.
I had zero expectations, btw - I've read plenty of primers without becoming a fan, after all, and this looked like a generic three-and-a-half-minute GoPro video (awkward camera lens and all) in which Crosby talks the usual shop and shows off some moves on the ice - except: 1) he's sort of, um, fantastically, ridiculously good in this super casual way, and 2) about 2:15 minutes in, he's playing against a few guys who eventually start to laugh at the sheer fucking artistry with which he's kicking their ass, AND THEN HE LAUGHS TOO, sort of low and relaxed and hella hot, and it's such a JOYOUS MOMENT OF PURE PLEASURE AND HE'S HAVING SO MUCH FUN AND LOVING HOCKEY EVEN WHEN HE'S FILMING A CHEESY VIDEO ABOUT IT that I pretty much fell head over heels right there and then. Because, while I can occasionally be fond of angst and strife in fictional characters, when it comes to fangirling actual people, I'm ALL ABOUT THE JOY. (Bonus points if doing what you love is sometimes terrible for your health, but you refuse to let the bastards grind you down because you love what you do TOO MUCH. Oh my god, I am SO DOWN FOR THAT.)
...it also helps that he's so hot I could cry. Don't even try to tell me that every song about boys in denim wasn't written about the way he looks in those jeans, because I WILL RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE.
Anyway, now I find myself with a dilemma: I still don't want to watch hockey (my reasons have not changed), and sports interviews kinda bore me to tears (because I... don't watch the sport; I'm sure they're perfectly interesting to other fans!), which means I have extremely limited, uh, CANON as source for my new fannish interest. So I'm going through the rec lists for fic, and a bunch of video links provided by enthusiastic fangirls on twitter (thank you, ladies!), and whatever tumblr posts I see linked around social media, but - god, I wish fandom created a "highlights reel" of every game so I could avoid seeing the shitty violent moves, and just enjoy the skill and the game in user-friendly 3-4 minute installments. (Focused on our faves, because that's what fandom does.) But that is an impossible wish, and for now I'm greatly enjoying the fanworks available, so... I guess I'll have to figure out an approach to canon that I can live with at some point. RP FANDOMS ARE TOUGH.
...but worth it, I'm sure. Seriously, there are certain images and quotes I can't even scroll by on my TL without doing this sigh-and-slow-blink thing EVERY SINGLE TIME, which should be totally embarrassing if, you know, I had any shame. YAY NEW FAVE YAYYYYYY. ♥_♥
***
The best time I've had at the cinema so far in 2015 was watching two (rather different) road trip movies - Mad Max: Fury Road and Magic Mike XXL. Plenty has been written about the feminism of the former, so lemme spend some time celebrating the feminism of the latter...
First of all: our screening was sold out, and we counted only a few men in the audience. This was a ladies' party, many women showing up in groups of 4 or more, which meant that (unlike at Fast & Furious movies) nobody would turn to glare at us for hooting at a scene that guys would not find hoot-worthy. Or if you crack up over excessive manpain, or react in a way that shows you're applying female gaze to a movie that wasn't made with female gaze in mind... well. If you've ever gone to see a slashy movie with fangirls, you know what I'm talking about.
From the first dance number, it was obvious that this was not a typical male stripper movie (i.e. a story about a guy who does it for the money, for the women who love watching it, until he finds romance and a more dignified job or whatever). It's Mike, alone in his workshop, hearing "Pony" on the radio and following an impulse to dance to it... because HE LOVES AND MISSES EROTIC DANCING. Oh, what a difference this simple scene makes, because stripping is not something enjoyed just by the women who get to watch; the dancers enjoy it too.
(Also, the scene sets up the tone of the movie perfectly: you will laugh until your face hurts, because erotic dancing is easiest to enjoy when it's kinda hilarious, and the sexy-funny combo is actually PERFECT. I say this as a person who finds lap dances sort of ridiculous and embarrassing, mainly because it's supposedly an erotic moment witnessed by an audience and enacted by someone who's being paid for it: the more entertaining the spectacle for EVERYBODY IN THE ROOM, the easier it is to have fun with it. And MMXXL gets that in spades.)
While there are several great female characters, the movie is essentially about a bunch of bros on a road trip to a stripper convention. Yet for all the testosterone on the screen, it never takes the cheap shot, never makes the sexist/ageist/homophobic joke you're expecting whenever you see men on the screen, and IT NEVER BETRAYS YOUR TRUST.
• Two guys share a bed on the road, and neither of them makes a "no homo" joke; instead they have a genuinely sweet and open heart-to-heart. You know, like grown up men comfortable with their sexuality and in their friendship. WHY IS THIS SO RARE AND AMAZING?!?!?
• The guys dance with women of all shapes and sizes, and with every single one of them, they're seductive and completely committed - because it's all about how the women FEEL when they're being danced upon/for, and their/our enjoyment has nothing to with body shape or size.
• The guys enter a dance-off at a drag show, and every single one of them tries his best on stage, and nobody dances like it's a mockery of drag performers.
• When two guys get into an argument and have a moment of violence, they actually SPELL IT OUT that the violence didn't solve anything and it just made everybody feel worse. A few minutes later, the guy who called his friend a pussy meets a woman and introduces himself (jokingly) as a drag queen by the name Clitoria Labia. EVEN THAT SINGLE PUSSY-AS-AN-INSULT MENTION GETS CALLED OUT AND REFRAMED WITH REGRET (and hopefully further emotional growth and insight).
• The guy who's known as having the biggest dick in the group tells his friends he hasn't had intercourse in months because most women he meets are not comfortable with penetration of that size - and, I mean, I would expect ANY AND ALL dick jokes in a movie about male strippers, except here we have a scene of ACTUAL DICK MEASURING, and the "winner" is actually miserable because of, well, REALITY.
• The guys are trying to redefine their stripper characters by finding out what they love to do, so they'd find a way to personalize and ENJOY their own performances. Again, this is a pretty radical take on the work that's presumably about making women enjoy the show (except we can always tell when a stripper is skeevy and gross), because the entertainers should get to live out their own fantasies as well. Their starting point is that they're MALE ENTERTAINERS and their mission is to MAKE WOMEN SMILE (!), so they talk Richie (Joe Manganiello) into going into a gas station/convenience store to perform impromptu for the saleswoman (who looks tired, cranky, and totally focused on her phone) until she's sufficiently entertained to smile at him. So he goes in and DANCES FOR HER UNTIL SHE DOES.
(You know how men like to tell women - total strangers - to smile because they'd be prettier? This movie never makes any mention of women's beauty depending on their facial expression, and it defines its stars' mission in life as DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE WOMEN FEEL LIKE SMILING. I don't know about you, but next time some dickhead tells me to smile, I will have a few pointers to give him about how he should entertain me if he's that invested in my feelings.)
• Andie MacDowell's character sleeps with Richie, and in the morning the guys CONGRATULATE HIM on the fairytale happy ending of sorts (he's found a glass slipper that fits, lol). She also lends them a car to get to the convention, and his friends joke about it by ribbing him FOR HIS SEXUAL PERFORMANCE, but not about HER. Let me repeat: the guys in this movie don't make any fun whatsoever of the older rich woman with whom their buddy spent the night.
• Of the FOUR female characters with significant roles in the movie, THREE are either self-identifying or presenting as bisexual (Zoe, Rome, and Paris), and there is not a SINGLE WORD spoken to question or attempt to quantify their sexuality.
• I could write a 20-page essay about Jada (Rome), but suffice it to say that when she addresses the women in the audience - hers or ours - as queens? I totally believe that she fucking MEANS IT.
• ....and I'm not too embarrassed to say that, when Mike tells Zoe that his god is a she, I - kinda have to take him word for it? Because the guy is on a spiritual road to accepting that his VOCATION IN LIFE is to CATER TO THE FEMALE LIBIDO, as joyously as possible. In the gender power structure of male entertainment provided to a female audience, and all the possible discomfort that might entail (and too often does - see above re: skeevy male strippers), this is PURE GOLD.
• There was a moment that felt so real to me, when Ken is singing to a woman at the con and he dances upon her and her dress gets lifted a bit, and we can see her shapewear... and IT'S JUST SO NORMAL. Like, she doesn't act embarrassed or try to cover up, nobody cracks a joke, Ken doesn't pay any more attention to it than he does to any of her other clothing; it's just THERE, and it's FINE, because some of us WEAR THAT KINDA STUFF, and it's totally 100% OK. I can't believe how emotional that made me feel, you guys.
(...we were also passing around a flask, not that I need to be tipsy to get emotional at the movies or anything, but it might have, um, played a part.)
• Still, it's important to note that the movie doesn't exist in any sort of feminist utopia: the divorced women talk about why their marriages fell apart, and we all know those stories. Zoe tells Mike why her NYC internship didn't work out, and we all know that story too. At the convention, when Rome MC's in between performances, she asks her "queens" if it wouldn't be nice for their men to just ASK what they want, and then DO IT for them. Andre (Donald Glover, eeeee!!!) and Ken have an adorable conversation in the car about how much they love just listening to the women they meet when they're working; hearing them out, giving them what they want, making them smile and feel empowered and sexy, and being "healers" (the audience LOLs at this scene, but there's something really touching about how earnestly these guys play it).
This is not an escapist reality; the movie takes place in this 2015, and it doesn't pretend that these issues are a thing of the past. However, it also offers a believable blueprint of a masculinity that can make the coexistence of the sexes HUMANE. And the male characters who get to show this blueprint are not privileged, or educated, or special - they work hard on their bodies and on their dance moves, they try to aim for the typical middle-class American dream, but along the way they learn to listen to and respect both the women in their audience and each other. MARSHMALLOW HEARTS ONE AND ALL.
• The dance acts felt really... physical and immediate. There were several moments when this sense of physicality was really noticeable - at the end of Mike's first dance, when he's on his back on the table in his workshop and he's panting and smiling (because dancing looks pretty, but it also tires you out); in Rome's mansion, when tWitch is doing that very impressive & kinda robotic vibrating dance, and then he CLAPS HIS HANDS and we can HEAR IT, and suddenly he's not just a spectacle but has a new physical dimension, and even in the theater we were given this awareness of A BODY MAKING SOUND IN PERFORMANCE FOR US (and oh my god, that was unexpectedly hot); in the store when Richie dances for the saleswoman, a scene which was filmed with more realism than I thought they'd go for; OH - and when Mike gives the entire room in Rome's mansion a lap dance, and rubs his head all catlike over the larger woman's breasts... holy shit, he looks SO GONE and that was SO SEXY. (Okay, his entire lap dance was amazing, but when he began to stack ladies on either side of him and dance up/on them, my friend whispered to me that he's building furniture and has basically end-tabled them, and then I laughed too much to pay close attention to the rest of that act.)
• Tarzan (Ernest) draws a PERSONALIZED portrait in glitter of the woman he's dancing for! Again, it's such a lovely demonstration of male stripping as in service of worshiping women, rather than expecting women to worship the dancers for their physique. LOVE IT SO MUCH. <3
• Tito's candy shop act ends with the best ejaculation joke ever - seriously, so much porn would be wayyyyyy more, um, palatable if it incorporated whipped cream in place of the money shot. ;)
• Another thing that made the dances more about the EXPERIENCE than about the SPECTACLE: there were all those closeups on the faces of both the guys dancing and the women dancing with them, showing their reactions: thrill, laughter, FUN. While the performances themselves were still impressive, the point was not to just watch what the bodies DO, but how everybody involved in the performance FEELS while doing it. When Ken begins to sing, when Andre raps to the selected lady, when Richie does that FANTASTIC wedding-to-sex-swing performance (which is hands down my favorite act in the movie and I CLAPPED LIKE A SEAL), when Mike and Zoe twirl and slide through that truly impressive mirror dance in the end... and perhaps most iconically, when the guys step out to begin their act and freeze-pose shirtless, and Mike just LAUGHS WITH JOY AND EXCITEMENT - that's a beautiful way of personalizing the performance.
• Mike and Zoe don't even hook up! They chat and flirt, they're both not exactly in the place in their lives to start anything up, but he wants to make her smile, and he DOES, and then she goes off all happy with her girlfriends, and he has that superb Ocean's 11-esque moment watching the 4th of July fireworks with his buddies, and EVERYTHING IS AWESOME, HAPPY ENDING. How unconventional, yet how perfectly fulfilling!
• ...I'm sure I have more thoughts on this movie, but for now, I REALLY WANT ALL THE FIC ABOUT ROME/PARIS. Come on, people. They are SO HOT together. I want their history, I wanna know just how and where Rome taught Paris everything she knows, I want backstories on how each of them picked her professional name (and whether Rome actually named Paris OHMYGOD). Come on, fandom, I know you can bring it!!!
RIGHT. Some links: an interview with Alison Faulk, the movie choreographer. The Hulk reviews MMXXL (I nodded a lot). And finally, Grantland's utterly OMG article with the best last line ever written by a man in a movie review.
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And a few more links, just because...
The Racism Erasing Serena's Dominance
Back in the Day, Lesbian Drag Kings Worked for the Mafia (paging the Agent Carter writing team)
Sherlock Holmes: examining the evidence - in charts (I want to wallpaper my house with these!)
The Weeknd - Can't Feel My Face a.k.a. imagine that Michael Jackson wrote an anthem for Studio 54 which also happens to be an unflinching look at drug addiction. So disco, much hustle. I am COMPLETELY OBSESSED with it.
Now also available on that other site!
Lovable sensates belting out karaoke
How does the ice not melt from Sid's hot hockey?
Feminist bros dancing in G-strings
These are a few of my favorite things!
....AHEM. Look, I had 11 hours of sleep yesterday, and the best food truck in NYC (Snowday maple grilled cheese!!!) was in my 'hood for lunch = my Sunday could not be more exuberant if I'd magically turned into a golden retriever. So, LET'S SQUEE A BIT. :)
***
Starting with Sense8: oh, Netflix, if you don't buy 4 more seasons of this IMMEDIATELY, you'll break my fucking heart. This is the show uniquely tailored for marathon-viewing, because any network airing one ep per week would have canceled them within a month. That's because the entire first half of the season takes its time to let us get to know the characters, until we're so thoroughly in love with them that, when shit finally starts to go down in the second half, WE FEEL INVESTED. And it's all so, so worth it. ♥
Anyway. Behind the somewhat messy plot, pretty delightful culturally specific narrative styles, and pure indulgence in some amazing character work, the driving idea behind Sense8 is that empathy is the greatest human ability. This sort of cheesy earnestness should not be surprising if you remember that in The Matrix, the Wachowski siblings brought Neo back to life by having Trinity tell him she loves him; so their scripts are fundamentally Love Conquers All stories - romances at the heart of everything from Bound to Jupiter Ascending - which in turn require a certain openness and vulnerability from the viewer (much like singing 4 Non Blondes at karaoke, for example).
Sense8 finds its strength in this celebration of joy, curiosity, diversity, communication, and shared experiences in the connections happening among characters across many time zones; and, symbolically, it also taps into the best of fannish experience by its very design - especially given the way fandom uses social media technology to forge connections with like-minded people around the world. (On a more personal note, I fell completely in love with the show when one character questions why she got connected to people who are so different from her, and her GF's mother replies that we evolve only through change and learning and yes, even displacement; and if you're an immigrant like me, this unexpected reaffirmation of your life choices might make you cry a little, too.)
The show is not perfect: there are plot holes, shortcuts, some rather nonsensical developments, certain lines that made me cringe, and an extended scene seemingly trying to normalize the imagery of human birth (which I actually liked, but you might just walk away wishing you'd never seen that much placenta in your entire life). There is also death, violence (campy to realistic to noir, again depending on the narrative viewpoint that frames it), and several examples of truly amazing sex. (No, seriously, I give the sex scenes an A+++++ and all the stars. It is GLORIOUS.) But most of all, it's a story about people, connected to each other via both "sensate" and regular human relationships, and the beauty and strength and challenges and revelations that come from forging those relationships, which may be cheesy as hell but hey - I am a fangirl, and that hopeful, celebratory, vulnerable state of joy is WHERE I LIVE. (See song at the top of this post. I mean... come on.)
P.S. There is also a great hot mess of a character who HAS to be a stand-in for slashers in fandom, but is given enough of her own story that she doesn't feel like a nudge-wink caricature. Not surprisingly at all, I LOVE HER. Hell, I love all of them.
I'm planning to do a rewatch at some point and try to catch a few more layers - for example, when sensates interact psychically, whose reality do they seem to inhabit more on screen - and does it depend on what they talk about, how they feel, which one of them wants to escape their own more? There is a ton of careful thought put into the visual language of this show, and I missed much of it during my first viewing while trying to figure out every character's story and the overall plot; but this narrative is far more than just spoken words and summarized sequence of events. I'm really looking forward to seeing it all again at a slower pace.
***
Some months ago, I clicked on a link for a vid set to Hozier's "Take Me To Church" (because I was watching everything set to that song, every cover of that song, every live performance of that song... you get the idea). It was a hockey vid, and it kinda broke my heart although I knew nothing about the people in it, and it also reminded me why I've found the sport itself unwatchable (at least in the US where violence seems to be incorporated into acceptable aggression on the ice). The vid, if you're curious, is Absolution - and I must warn that it includes footage of deliberately caused injuries on the ice, which is why I've only watched it a few times and even then could only squint through certain sequences.
The vid didn't turn me into a Sidney Crosby fan; but it did kinda blow me away with its narrative about him as a guy who loves, lives, and breathes hockey, has worked his whole life to get to a place where he gets to play it for a living, and yet now, at the top of his game, has to accept and live with and SURVIVE the fact that hockey targets its brightest stars in a more gruesome and brutally direct way than fame does most celebrities (as so much RPF has covered already in other fandoms). So, the vid was disturbing and intriguing and compelling as a new-to-me take on the success narrative, and that was...supposed to be that.
Except a few days later I was STILL thinking about the vid, so I did what fangirls do - asked a dear friend for some recs. Of course, because said friend has been trying to lure me into the Penguins fandom for the last year-and-a-half, she also made me a primer, a Prêt-à-Poster (ready-to-ship ...come on, I'm a dork) OTP pitch, and included a video clip which DID, in fact, turn me into a fangirl.
I had zero expectations, btw - I've read plenty of primers without becoming a fan, after all, and this looked like a generic three-and-a-half-minute GoPro video (awkward camera lens and all) in which Crosby talks the usual shop and shows off some moves on the ice - except: 1) he's sort of, um, fantastically, ridiculously good in this super casual way, and 2) about 2:15 minutes in, he's playing against a few guys who eventually start to laugh at the sheer fucking artistry with which he's kicking their ass, AND THEN HE LAUGHS TOO, sort of low and relaxed and hella hot, and it's such a JOYOUS MOMENT OF PURE PLEASURE AND HE'S HAVING SO MUCH FUN AND LOVING HOCKEY EVEN WHEN HE'S FILMING A CHEESY VIDEO ABOUT IT that I pretty much fell head over heels right there and then. Because, while I can occasionally be fond of angst and strife in fictional characters, when it comes to fangirling actual people, I'm ALL ABOUT THE JOY. (Bonus points if doing what you love is sometimes terrible for your health, but you refuse to let the bastards grind you down because you love what you do TOO MUCH. Oh my god, I am SO DOWN FOR THAT.)
...it also helps that he's so hot I could cry. Don't even try to tell me that every song about boys in denim wasn't written about the way he looks in those jeans, because I WILL RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE.
Anyway, now I find myself with a dilemma: I still don't want to watch hockey (my reasons have not changed), and sports interviews kinda bore me to tears (because I... don't watch the sport; I'm sure they're perfectly interesting to other fans!), which means I have extremely limited, uh, CANON as source for my new fannish interest. So I'm going through the rec lists for fic, and a bunch of video links provided by enthusiastic fangirls on twitter (thank you, ladies!), and whatever tumblr posts I see linked around social media, but - god, I wish fandom created a "highlights reel" of every game so I could avoid seeing the shitty violent moves, and just enjoy the skill and the game in user-friendly 3-4 minute installments. (Focused on our faves, because that's what fandom does.) But that is an impossible wish, and for now I'm greatly enjoying the fanworks available, so... I guess I'll have to figure out an approach to canon that I can live with at some point. RP FANDOMS ARE TOUGH.
...but worth it, I'm sure. Seriously, there are certain images and quotes I can't even scroll by on my TL without doing this sigh-and-slow-blink thing EVERY SINGLE TIME, which should be totally embarrassing if, you know, I had any shame. YAY NEW FAVE YAYYYYYY. ♥_♥
***
The best time I've had at the cinema so far in 2015 was watching two (rather different) road trip movies - Mad Max: Fury Road and Magic Mike XXL. Plenty has been written about the feminism of the former, so lemme spend some time celebrating the feminism of the latter...
First of all: our screening was sold out, and we counted only a few men in the audience. This was a ladies' party, many women showing up in groups of 4 or more, which meant that (unlike at Fast & Furious movies) nobody would turn to glare at us for hooting at a scene that guys would not find hoot-worthy. Or if you crack up over excessive manpain, or react in a way that shows you're applying female gaze to a movie that wasn't made with female gaze in mind... well. If you've ever gone to see a slashy movie with fangirls, you know what I'm talking about.
From the first dance number, it was obvious that this was not a typical male stripper movie (i.e. a story about a guy who does it for the money, for the women who love watching it, until he finds romance and a more dignified job or whatever). It's Mike, alone in his workshop, hearing "Pony" on the radio and following an impulse to dance to it... because HE LOVES AND MISSES EROTIC DANCING. Oh, what a difference this simple scene makes, because stripping is not something enjoyed just by the women who get to watch; the dancers enjoy it too.
(Also, the scene sets up the tone of the movie perfectly: you will laugh until your face hurts, because erotic dancing is easiest to enjoy when it's kinda hilarious, and the sexy-funny combo is actually PERFECT. I say this as a person who finds lap dances sort of ridiculous and embarrassing, mainly because it's supposedly an erotic moment witnessed by an audience and enacted by someone who's being paid for it: the more entertaining the spectacle for EVERYBODY IN THE ROOM, the easier it is to have fun with it. And MMXXL gets that in spades.)
While there are several great female characters, the movie is essentially about a bunch of bros on a road trip to a stripper convention. Yet for all the testosterone on the screen, it never takes the cheap shot, never makes the sexist/ageist/homophobic joke you're expecting whenever you see men on the screen, and IT NEVER BETRAYS YOUR TRUST.
• Two guys share a bed on the road, and neither of them makes a "no homo" joke; instead they have a genuinely sweet and open heart-to-heart. You know, like grown up men comfortable with their sexuality and in their friendship. WHY IS THIS SO RARE AND AMAZING?!?!?
• The guys dance with women of all shapes and sizes, and with every single one of them, they're seductive and completely committed - because it's all about how the women FEEL when they're being danced upon/for, and their/our enjoyment has nothing to with body shape or size.
• The guys enter a dance-off at a drag show, and every single one of them tries his best on stage, and nobody dances like it's a mockery of drag performers.
• When two guys get into an argument and have a moment of violence, they actually SPELL IT OUT that the violence didn't solve anything and it just made everybody feel worse. A few minutes later, the guy who called his friend a pussy meets a woman and introduces himself (jokingly) as a drag queen by the name Clitoria Labia. EVEN THAT SINGLE PUSSY-AS-AN-INSULT MENTION GETS CALLED OUT AND REFRAMED WITH REGRET (and hopefully further emotional growth and insight).
• The guy who's known as having the biggest dick in the group tells his friends he hasn't had intercourse in months because most women he meets are not comfortable with penetration of that size - and, I mean, I would expect ANY AND ALL dick jokes in a movie about male strippers, except here we have a scene of ACTUAL DICK MEASURING, and the "winner" is actually miserable because of, well, REALITY.
• The guys are trying to redefine their stripper characters by finding out what they love to do, so they'd find a way to personalize and ENJOY their own performances. Again, this is a pretty radical take on the work that's presumably about making women enjoy the show (except we can always tell when a stripper is skeevy and gross), because the entertainers should get to live out their own fantasies as well. Their starting point is that they're MALE ENTERTAINERS and their mission is to MAKE WOMEN SMILE (!), so they talk Richie (Joe Manganiello) into going into a gas station/convenience store to perform impromptu for the saleswoman (who looks tired, cranky, and totally focused on her phone) until she's sufficiently entertained to smile at him. So he goes in and DANCES FOR HER UNTIL SHE DOES.
(You know how men like to tell women - total strangers - to smile because they'd be prettier? This movie never makes any mention of women's beauty depending on their facial expression, and it defines its stars' mission in life as DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE WOMEN FEEL LIKE SMILING. I don't know about you, but next time some dickhead tells me to smile, I will have a few pointers to give him about how he should entertain me if he's that invested in my feelings.)
• Andie MacDowell's character sleeps with Richie, and in the morning the guys CONGRATULATE HIM on the fairytale happy ending of sorts (he's found a glass slipper that fits, lol). She also lends them a car to get to the convention, and his friends joke about it by ribbing him FOR HIS SEXUAL PERFORMANCE, but not about HER. Let me repeat: the guys in this movie don't make any fun whatsoever of the older rich woman with whom their buddy spent the night.
• Of the FOUR female characters with significant roles in the movie, THREE are either self-identifying or presenting as bisexual (Zoe, Rome, and Paris), and there is not a SINGLE WORD spoken to question or attempt to quantify their sexuality.
• I could write a 20-page essay about Jada (Rome), but suffice it to say that when she addresses the women in the audience - hers or ours - as queens? I totally believe that she fucking MEANS IT.
• ....and I'm not too embarrassed to say that, when Mike tells Zoe that his god is a she, I - kinda have to take him word for it? Because the guy is on a spiritual road to accepting that his VOCATION IN LIFE is to CATER TO THE FEMALE LIBIDO, as joyously as possible. In the gender power structure of male entertainment provided to a female audience, and all the possible discomfort that might entail (and too often does - see above re: skeevy male strippers), this is PURE GOLD.
• There was a moment that felt so real to me, when Ken is singing to a woman at the con and he dances upon her and her dress gets lifted a bit, and we can see her shapewear... and IT'S JUST SO NORMAL. Like, she doesn't act embarrassed or try to cover up, nobody cracks a joke, Ken doesn't pay any more attention to it than he does to any of her other clothing; it's just THERE, and it's FINE, because some of us WEAR THAT KINDA STUFF, and it's totally 100% OK. I can't believe how emotional that made me feel, you guys.
(...we were also passing around a flask, not that I need to be tipsy to get emotional at the movies or anything, but it might have, um, played a part.)
• Still, it's important to note that the movie doesn't exist in any sort of feminist utopia: the divorced women talk about why their marriages fell apart, and we all know those stories. Zoe tells Mike why her NYC internship didn't work out, and we all know that story too. At the convention, when Rome MC's in between performances, she asks her "queens" if it wouldn't be nice for their men to just ASK what they want, and then DO IT for them. Andre (Donald Glover, eeeee!!!) and Ken have an adorable conversation in the car about how much they love just listening to the women they meet when they're working; hearing them out, giving them what they want, making them smile and feel empowered and sexy, and being "healers" (the audience LOLs at this scene, but there's something really touching about how earnestly these guys play it).
This is not an escapist reality; the movie takes place in this 2015, and it doesn't pretend that these issues are a thing of the past. However, it also offers a believable blueprint of a masculinity that can make the coexistence of the sexes HUMANE. And the male characters who get to show this blueprint are not privileged, or educated, or special - they work hard on their bodies and on their dance moves, they try to aim for the typical middle-class American dream, but along the way they learn to listen to and respect both the women in their audience and each other. MARSHMALLOW HEARTS ONE AND ALL.
• The dance acts felt really... physical and immediate. There were several moments when this sense of physicality was really noticeable - at the end of Mike's first dance, when he's on his back on the table in his workshop and he's panting and smiling (because dancing looks pretty, but it also tires you out); in Rome's mansion, when tWitch is doing that very impressive & kinda robotic vibrating dance, and then he CLAPS HIS HANDS and we can HEAR IT, and suddenly he's not just a spectacle but has a new physical dimension, and even in the theater we were given this awareness of A BODY MAKING SOUND IN PERFORMANCE FOR US (and oh my god, that was unexpectedly hot); in the store when Richie dances for the saleswoman, a scene which was filmed with more realism than I thought they'd go for; OH - and when Mike gives the entire room in Rome's mansion a lap dance, and rubs his head all catlike over the larger woman's breasts... holy shit, he looks SO GONE and that was SO SEXY. (Okay, his entire lap dance was amazing, but when he began to stack ladies on either side of him and dance up/on them, my friend whispered to me that he's building furniture and has basically end-tabled them, and then I laughed too much to pay close attention to the rest of that act.)
• Tarzan (Ernest) draws a PERSONALIZED portrait in glitter of the woman he's dancing for! Again, it's such a lovely demonstration of male stripping as in service of worshiping women, rather than expecting women to worship the dancers for their physique. LOVE IT SO MUCH. <3
• Tito's candy shop act ends with the best ejaculation joke ever - seriously, so much porn would be wayyyyyy more, um, palatable if it incorporated whipped cream in place of the money shot. ;)
• Another thing that made the dances more about the EXPERIENCE than about the SPECTACLE: there were all those closeups on the faces of both the guys dancing and the women dancing with them, showing their reactions: thrill, laughter, FUN. While the performances themselves were still impressive, the point was not to just watch what the bodies DO, but how everybody involved in the performance FEELS while doing it. When Ken begins to sing, when Andre raps to the selected lady, when Richie does that FANTASTIC wedding-to-sex-swing performance (which is hands down my favorite act in the movie and I CLAPPED LIKE A SEAL), when Mike and Zoe twirl and slide through that truly impressive mirror dance in the end... and perhaps most iconically, when the guys step out to begin their act and freeze-pose shirtless, and Mike just LAUGHS WITH JOY AND EXCITEMENT - that's a beautiful way of personalizing the performance.
• Mike and Zoe don't even hook up! They chat and flirt, they're both not exactly in the place in their lives to start anything up, but he wants to make her smile, and he DOES, and then she goes off all happy with her girlfriends, and he has that superb Ocean's 11-esque moment watching the 4th of July fireworks with his buddies, and EVERYTHING IS AWESOME, HAPPY ENDING. How unconventional, yet how perfectly fulfilling!
• ...I'm sure I have more thoughts on this movie, but for now, I REALLY WANT ALL THE FIC ABOUT ROME/PARIS. Come on, people. They are SO HOT together. I want their history, I wanna know just how and where Rome taught Paris everything she knows, I want backstories on how each of them picked her professional name (and whether Rome actually named Paris OHMYGOD). Come on, fandom, I know you can bring it!!!
RIGHT. Some links: an interview with Alison Faulk, the movie choreographer. The Hulk reviews MMXXL (I nodded a lot). And finally, Grantland's utterly OMG article with the best last line ever written by a man in a movie review.
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And a few more links, just because...
The Racism Erasing Serena's Dominance
Back in the Day, Lesbian Drag Kings Worked for the Mafia (paging the Agent Carter writing team)
Sherlock Holmes: examining the evidence - in charts (I want to wallpaper my house with these!)
The Weeknd - Can't Feel My Face a.k.a. imagine that Michael Jackson wrote an anthem for Studio 54 which also happens to be an unflinching look at drug addiction. So disco, much hustle. I am COMPLETELY OBSESSED with it.
Now also available on that other site!