The Paradox of Low Expectations: Case Study
Because there is more to say about Kingsman.
On Wednesday, Will at Something Short and Snappy posted a dissection of the many, many problems this movie ported over from the Bond films and their ilk while apparently trying to distance itself from those problems. The white cast versus the PoC villains, the princess offering sexual favors for saving the world, the casual violence in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, the ambivalent attitude toward money and class.... all present, and not good.
Two years ago, I posted about how having low expectations doesn't let me enjoy crappy entertainment more forever, but sets me up for a greater disappointment in the long run when a movie turns out to be less terrible than I expected, thus raising my expectations. Kingsman is almost certainly going to be a perfect example of this dynamic.
See, my expectations are so rock-bottom low that Eggsy going through the entire movie without skeevily hitting on Roxy or backhandedly insulting her for being female so pleasantly surprised me that the movie earned a couple of positive points from me. (How sad is that, that "not following that one terrible cliche" isn't just the expectation, but a happy bonus?) I mean, you know James Bond wouldn't have managed that. You can't even be a post-menopausal female boss in that franchise without getting accused of being the locus of spies' mommy issues and then replaced by a younger manly man so the men can feel all grown up. And I expect female characters in spy movies to be ultimately useless to the plot, so I cling to the scraps if they're at least allowed to be competent and we can imagine fanfic where they do stuff that matters.
My expectations were so low that even the movie's restraint in not shoving heteronormativity into our faces until the very, very end, leaving almost as much possibility for most of the characters to be not-straight as to be straight (as pointed out in "Kingsman vs. Heteronormativity"), feels like a positive relief. I expect spy heroes like Eggsy to spend the entire movie declaring how extremely macho and straight they are at every opportunity, not drawing parallels between themselves and Eliza in My Fair Lady, avoiding talking about sex basically ever until five minutes from the end, and talking to their female coworkers about actual work.
And I expect spy movies to feature white people fighting PoC villains, so the fact that this movie's PoC villains (a) took their ideas from one older white dude, Professor Mark Hamill, and (b) enlisted a bunch of rich old white people, because it was exactly the kind of plan that should appeal to that demographic in a movie with supervillain plots like this, ever so slightly dilutes that poisonous dichotomy. It allows you to view it not as "evil PoC" but as "PoC who have adopted the toxic ideas of rich old white dudes in order to gain money and power." As an example of how merely adding a token black man to the ruling class doesn't change anything if he adopts their views and methods, and real change would mean destroying those ideas.
The movie leaves just enough room for me to imagine that it meant to lay all the problems of the Kingsman organization at Arther et al.'s feet--that it's because of the ingrained classism and racism and sexism he and his pals have built into the organization all these years that they are running around torturing random Middle Eastern guys and ignoring rich Western terrorists, that they only make bulletproof bespoke suits and not bulletproof motorcyle jackets and sherwanis and a whole variety of other clothing styles as well. The movie basically straight-up says that the organization's all-white, nearly all-male demographic is because of Arthur's prejudices and probably the other members' recruiting criteria, both implicit and explicit (mostly they recruit people they know, people they're familiar with--other Oxbridge graduates).
We can imagine that Galahad was meant to be a severely limited and flawed mentor who had better intentions than Arthur but was too caught up in his system to think anything more was needed but a couple of tokens from outside the traditional recruiting grounds, nothing major--that all they needed was their own Valentine, essentially. There's room to hope that with Arthur both discredited and dead and Eggsy and Roxy in higher positions of authority, they can bring some genuine change: not just be the tokens who adopt the ruling class's ideology, like Valentine did, but use it and the snazzy suits as camouflage when necessary while changing some of the fundamentals. We can hope that the Kingsmen two years from now will actually reflect the population around them. We can hope that their organizational goals and targets will change.
This almost certainly won't happen in the sequel. It will almost certainly be another Star Trek Into Darkness of dashed expectations. But right now, there is just enough room to hope. Enough that it's something I can watch and mostly enjoy, compared to 95% of the other stuff available to me.
This paradox of low expectations is a cruel, cruel bind to be in.
On Wednesday, Will at Something Short and Snappy posted a dissection of the many, many problems this movie ported over from the Bond films and their ilk while apparently trying to distance itself from those problems. The white cast versus the PoC villains, the princess offering sexual favors for saving the world, the casual violence in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, the ambivalent attitude toward money and class.... all present, and not good.
Two years ago, I posted about how having low expectations doesn't let me enjoy crappy entertainment more forever, but sets me up for a greater disappointment in the long run when a movie turns out to be less terrible than I expected, thus raising my expectations. Kingsman is almost certainly going to be a perfect example of this dynamic.
See, my expectations are so rock-bottom low that Eggsy going through the entire movie without skeevily hitting on Roxy or backhandedly insulting her for being female so pleasantly surprised me that the movie earned a couple of positive points from me. (How sad is that, that "not following that one terrible cliche" isn't just the expectation, but a happy bonus?) I mean, you know James Bond wouldn't have managed that. You can't even be a post-menopausal female boss in that franchise without getting accused of being the locus of spies' mommy issues and then replaced by a younger manly man so the men can feel all grown up. And I expect female characters in spy movies to be ultimately useless to the plot, so I cling to the scraps if they're at least allowed to be competent and we can imagine fanfic where they do stuff that matters.
My expectations were so low that even the movie's restraint in not shoving heteronormativity into our faces until the very, very end, leaving almost as much possibility for most of the characters to be not-straight as to be straight (as pointed out in "Kingsman vs. Heteronormativity"), feels like a positive relief. I expect spy heroes like Eggsy to spend the entire movie declaring how extremely macho and straight they are at every opportunity, not drawing parallels between themselves and Eliza in My Fair Lady, avoiding talking about sex basically ever until five minutes from the end, and talking to their female coworkers about actual work.
And I expect spy movies to feature white people fighting PoC villains, so the fact that this movie's PoC villains (a) took their ideas from one older white dude, Professor Mark Hamill, and (b) enlisted a bunch of rich old white people, because it was exactly the kind of plan that should appeal to that demographic in a movie with supervillain plots like this, ever so slightly dilutes that poisonous dichotomy. It allows you to view it not as "evil PoC" but as "PoC who have adopted the toxic ideas of rich old white dudes in order to gain money and power." As an example of how merely adding a token black man to the ruling class doesn't change anything if he adopts their views and methods, and real change would mean destroying those ideas.
The movie leaves just enough room for me to imagine that it meant to lay all the problems of the Kingsman organization at Arther et al.'s feet--that it's because of the ingrained classism and racism and sexism he and his pals have built into the organization all these years that they are running around torturing random Middle Eastern guys and ignoring rich Western terrorists, that they only make bulletproof bespoke suits and not bulletproof motorcyle jackets and sherwanis and a whole variety of other clothing styles as well. The movie basically straight-up says that the organization's all-white, nearly all-male demographic is because of Arthur's prejudices and probably the other members' recruiting criteria, both implicit and explicit (mostly they recruit people they know, people they're familiar with--other Oxbridge graduates).
We can imagine that Galahad was meant to be a severely limited and flawed mentor who had better intentions than Arthur but was too caught up in his system to think anything more was needed but a couple of tokens from outside the traditional recruiting grounds, nothing major--that all they needed was their own Valentine, essentially. There's room to hope that with Arthur both discredited and dead and Eggsy and Roxy in higher positions of authority, they can bring some genuine change: not just be the tokens who adopt the ruling class's ideology, like Valentine did, but use it and the snazzy suits as camouflage when necessary while changing some of the fundamentals. We can hope that the Kingsmen two years from now will actually reflect the population around them. We can hope that their organizational goals and targets will change.
This almost certainly won't happen in the sequel. It will almost certainly be another Star Trek Into Darkness of dashed expectations. But right now, there is just enough room to hope. Enough that it's something I can watch and mostly enjoy, compared to 95% of the other stuff available to me.
This paradox of low expectations is a cruel, cruel bind to be in.