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Jul. 25th, 2012 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWe already knew I was gonna see Magic Mike because, well, yeah. I've done so.
Magic Mike hit my radar because there have been several articles about how weird it was to see the camera ogle men as if they were women, how utterly strange it was to see the world from a "female gaze" perspective. The camera's gonna ogle the men? Right on! I am a fan of dudes-as-visual-candy. I am such a fan of that. Let me get right on that. But... no. Reviwers and article-writers to the contrary, what we got was "Not exactly".
Now, as you probably know from the previews, Mike is a stripper. He gets Responsible Joanna's dipshit little brother Andy to start stripping, too. Mike and Andy work for a club run by Dallas. That's enough plot to have the rest of this discussion. In the movie, we get to see dudes stripping, insofar as they strip to g strings and dance around at work. That's as naked as they get -- as naked as you'd see on a European beach. I'm still pretty OK with that, honestly. That's plenty naked enough for ogling purposes, in much the same way that girls in bikinis is plenty naked enough for dudes to ogle.
The filming, despite articles going on about the female gaze and being set up to ogle dudes for enjoyment purposes, was not what it could have been, but it was better than we usually get. I'll give them a B for making the effort. But honestly, if what you want is to let us look at (actor)'s ass, abs, whatever, spend a little time lingering. And for fuck's sake, if you are presenting the dudes as Things To Look At, please don't just try to do this when they're half-naked and on stage. Do it the rest of the time, when they're trying to talk to their buddies or to the girl or driving around or looking for the remote or whatever. Let the camera ogle them all the times, not just when they are Being The Sexy. I suspect that I went into this movie hoping for female gaze as presented in that delightful classic 星の館 (now available online and totally scanlated, if you don't mind the endless Free (invariably female) Strippers for your Desktop and 4" of cock growth instantly advertisements. Someone should let the hosting site (No, I am not linking. Use google.) know that hardcore yaoi manga readers are probably not the target audience for those sorts of advertisements...) and thus was disappointed. I did think it was better camera work than NOTHING but I do not have high hopes for Hollywood, given that they do shit like let Loki call the Black Widow awhining cunt mewling quim and all.
Despite media buzz promoting Magic Mike as a movie that caters to the female gaze, the most interesting thing I've run across here lately on that front is the delightful music video for I Hate My Job by JbDubs. The guy in the middle with the awesome legs is a dancer for the Boston Ballet (hence the awesome legs) as well as the singer for the song. And it's... kind of queer, but not entirely because, yo, HUGE debt owed to Beyonce's Single Ladies.
I did not find I Hate My Job to be straight-up queer. If it was straight-up queer, it would not be all made out of Beyonce's moves and visual aesthetic and such like it is. Queer (and I am So Totally the last word on what is and is not queer, right?) should aspire to be more than simply subtract chicks, add dudes and then rebrand the same setup straight men have been using for the last, oh, forever. Substituting dudes for chicks is totally half-assing it. I simply cannot believe that gay dudes would pass on the opportunity to own a visual, sexual aesthetic of their very own.
But I did think it was delightfully subversive and fun to see dudes filmed and dancing and being like as if they were chicks in a Beyonce music video, albeit one with less hip wiggling. It was just not quite there, not quite enough. And still, not the female gaze (damn it all) because putting dudes in where the chicks were and then filming the result like a Beyonce music video is not what it takes to display female gaze. It was nicely dissonant to watch, though, so two thumbs up there.
When I get to female gaze, for realz, I will let you know. Until then, well, dudes in red high heels is not bad.
Magic Mike hit my radar because there have been several articles about how weird it was to see the camera ogle men as if they were women, how utterly strange it was to see the world from a "female gaze" perspective. The camera's gonna ogle the men? Right on! I am a fan of dudes-as-visual-candy. I am such a fan of that. Let me get right on that. But... no. Reviwers and article-writers to the contrary, what we got was "Not exactly".
Now, as you probably know from the previews, Mike is a stripper. He gets Responsible Joanna's dipshit little brother Andy to start stripping, too. Mike and Andy work for a club run by Dallas. That's enough plot to have the rest of this discussion. In the movie, we get to see dudes stripping, insofar as they strip to g strings and dance around at work. That's as naked as they get -- as naked as you'd see on a European beach. I'm still pretty OK with that, honestly. That's plenty naked enough for ogling purposes, in much the same way that girls in bikinis is plenty naked enough for dudes to ogle.
The filming, despite articles going on about the female gaze and being set up to ogle dudes for enjoyment purposes, was not what it could have been, but it was better than we usually get. I'll give them a B for making the effort. But honestly, if what you want is to let us look at (actor)'s ass, abs, whatever, spend a little time lingering. And for fuck's sake, if you are presenting the dudes as Things To Look At, please don't just try to do this when they're half-naked and on stage. Do it the rest of the time, when they're trying to talk to their buddies or to the girl or driving around or looking for the remote or whatever. Let the camera ogle them all the times, not just when they are Being The Sexy. I suspect that I went into this movie hoping for female gaze as presented in that delightful classic 星の館 (now available online and totally scanlated, if you don't mind the endless Free (invariably female) Strippers for your Desktop and 4" of cock growth instantly advertisements. Someone should let the hosting site (No, I am not linking. Use google.) know that hardcore yaoi manga readers are probably not the target audience for those sorts of advertisements...) and thus was disappointed. I did think it was better camera work than NOTHING but I do not have high hopes for Hollywood, given that they do shit like let Loki call the Black Widow a
Despite media buzz promoting Magic Mike as a movie that caters to the female gaze, the most interesting thing I've run across here lately on that front is the delightful music video for I Hate My Job by JbDubs. The guy in the middle with the awesome legs is a dancer for the Boston Ballet (hence the awesome legs) as well as the singer for the song. And it's... kind of queer, but not entirely because, yo, HUGE debt owed to Beyonce's Single Ladies.
I did not find I Hate My Job to be straight-up queer. If it was straight-up queer, it would not be all made out of Beyonce's moves and visual aesthetic and such like it is. Queer (and I am So Totally the last word on what is and is not queer, right?) should aspire to be more than simply subtract chicks, add dudes and then rebrand the same setup straight men have been using for the last, oh, forever. Substituting dudes for chicks is totally half-assing it. I simply cannot believe that gay dudes would pass on the opportunity to own a visual, sexual aesthetic of their very own.
But I did think it was delightfully subversive and fun to see dudes filmed and dancing and being like as if they were chicks in a Beyonce music video, albeit one with less hip wiggling. It was just not quite there, not quite enough. And still, not the female gaze (damn it all) because putting dudes in where the chicks were and then filming the result like a Beyonce music video is not what it takes to display female gaze. It was nicely dissonant to watch, though, so two thumbs up there.
When I get to female gaze, for realz, I will let you know. Until then, well, dudes in red high heels is not bad.
