The Magic Mike Phenomenon: A Repackaging of Sexist Garbage That's Making Millions

Within the last few years, a new type of mid-budget film has risen like a Kraken from the depths. Many hail it the feminist revolution in the trashy cheap film arena. It is, of course, a seemingly new breed of film, a breath of fresh air - one which displays female sexuality in it's own right, that objectifies men, that ultimately flips the sexist status-quo on it's head. The Magic Mike films fit this new film niche the best, but the likes of box-office topping, horror-inducing 50 Shades of Grey also join it's exclusive "girl club" in it's appeal to women's sexuality.

Whilst these films champion their 'feminist' street-cred in a bid to attract a female audience, something very insidious is happening: these films do not disrupt, break or end the typical sexist parameters of mainstream cinema, but rather reaffirm it within it's cunning (and oily...so oily) disguise. 

When I was dragged to the cinema a few weeks ago by a dear friend to see Magic Mike XXL, I didn't expect to leave the cinema with any real thoughts whatsoever. Instead, I had my brain totally warped. Between the convoluted layers of the gaze (male, female, male, male, male?), the token representation and flagrant lack thereof and the constant bombardment of masculine performance for masculine pleasure, I didn't leave the cinema excited but rather confused. 

Though I'm glad women are enjoying this film and all it represents for them, this film, and those films like it, was, essentially, one big jerk off at the expense of women. 

The Male Gaze is not Usurped from its Throne

Given that the movie industry is flooded with men - men are the directors, the actors, the characters, the producers, the heads of the studio - when a woman sees any given "must-see" blockbuster, she pretty much always gears herself up for sexism (implicit or explicit) and for relating to a character (or characters) that do not in any way align with her sense of self, her experiences or her way of looking at the world on any level. The popularity of Magic Mike amongst women comes from this massive shortage of women in cinema. Women are tired of being objectified and omitted from the screen. For some, Magic Mike appears to be a departure from this, something it really could have been if its objectification of men had been treated so radically different from the objectification of women. In layman's terms, when it comes to objectification, women are degraded because of their femininity and men are uplifted because of their masculinity. 

The best example of this is to consider the difference between the characters with agency and the characters subjected to voyeurism. In Magic Mike, men choose to perform, to be "degraded" (this never really happens) and to be seen as sexual objects. Women in this film are used by Mike and his stripping bro-mies to perform their own male sexuality, and there's never much in the way of consent being given (more on this aspect later). Most of all though, throughout cinematic history, women have always performed for the eyes of men, even in the most mundane of actions. The potential for Magic Mike to subvert this, or to even the scales is there - it just isn't used.


Below we see Mike going about his (joinery? cabinet making? ship building?) business without an audience and with no acknowledgement of a camera. Yet he still looks pretty fine while he does something with some metal that makes sparks happen (don't ask me what, it's not the point). Despite lacking any "audience" within the film's world, Mike is still performing sexually for a voyeuristic off-screen audience instead. This was one moment that actually showed any true potential because this is what female characters do on-screen all the time and it's incredibly alienating. This could have flipped the script and shown audiences the reality of sexism on stage, in sex work and in cinema. Unfortunately, it didn't. The lure of the objectification of women was just too much.

Welding made sexy: a moment for audiences to become voyeurs

So while the film's marketing and general hype promises that 'women will feel liberated watching this!! the men are objects and so degraded!!! women enacting their sexuality!!!' they are lying. Big time. Rather than invert or examine the status quo, the film just enables the sexism in cinema to continue. The performances within the film all occur with agency and the men dance to prove their sexual prowess to women, who fawn over them both emotionally and financially. As such, these performances aren't of degradation or of subservience, but rather of male superiority in every sense of the word. Women are still subservient to men. They still make the money, get the attention, and maintain other aspects of themselves (every character, to a degree, is shown to have interests beyond dancing). 

No one even asked this guy to dance. The girl working the
register just wants to work, man. 

Additionally, the women amongst the on-screen audience are used by Mike and the other dancers as props for their dancing. Whilst this is all well and good (and certainly to be expected) as an opportunity for women to enact a sexual fantasy, this isn't what happens. Rather, the dancers use the girls as objects (lift 'em, flip 'em, gyrate all up on 'em) with no attempts to gratify anyone but themselves. Instead of offering an instance of active female sexuality, women are still relegated to passivity and objectification.

Case in point

This film is, then, not a case of inverting objectification. It is a case of maintaining the power balances that already exist, and not even in a self-reflexive way. Rather, this is a film "for women" still lacks everything women want and need in the cinema. They need to see themselves reflected on-screen, empowered, important and central to the story rather than excluded, subservient and sexualised. In this regard, Magic Mike does not deliver. 

The Heterosexual Olympics 

With a face this eerily symmetrical,
could he have been called anything
else?

For a film about male strippers that claims to appeal to a gay audience there are very few gay men. In a film where male strippers go to a male stripping convention (is this a real thing??? google says yes), it's surprising that there is not one gay man in the whole on-screen audience. Bomer plays one particularly ambiguous stripper called Ken, but this ambiguity stems from the character's understanding of his own emotions and subsequent 'otherness' to his more masculine counterparts. One man being mocked for being in touch with his emotions is about as good as it gets.

Aside from this slightly worrying bit of characterisation, the characters also have a go at voguing, a historically touchy subject in LGBT culture, as it has been stolen not just from LGBT movements, but also from people of colour since the style of dancing was born in Harlem. The cast of the film don't respectfully decline, nor do they throw themselves into it 100% in an attempt to produce maximum ridiculousness and poke fun at themselves. Rather this becomes another opportunity to perform and reaffirm their sense of self rather than respectfully learn about a culture or let anyone else take the stage.

Magic Mike claims to appeal to a gay audience, but significantly misses the mark, with no representation, followed by all the dancer bros taking a shit on ball culture. Nice.

"The MALE Stripper Movie"
A big problem for me with this film is the way it's marketed (by distribution and by media outlets) and the way people on the street talk about it. This isn't just a film about strippers. It's a film about MALE strippers (bolded and underlined several times). This raises an issue: the default for female strippers is a stripper, because we assume only women take off their clothes for cash, that only women could sink so low. But it further speaks to a level of cruel misogyny, not just standard, gendered thinking and assumption. Women are by default stripper, but men can't just join them in that category. Rather they have to be separated, othered and removed from that context.

When women tell me they can't wait to see that film with the "male strippers" (looking at you, Gran), they're telling me that "it's ok, it's not those dirty WOMEN stripping, it's MEN. So it's ok". You're saying that stripping for women is low, dirty and seedy, but this is okay, because it's men - who are, in this film, framed as great dancers, well-rounded, fun people and borderline therapists for their audiences.

Whilst this isn't necessarily the problem or fault of the film, it bears thinking about. The film doesn't acknowledge this gap, it doesn't mention the struggles of their female counterparts (who are underpaid, overworked and treated terribly by both general opinion and individual clients). This phenomena further points to an issue of film on the whole: in film, women stripping is seedy, for a male gaze, dirty etc, but for men it's fun, silly and a good laugh.

Technically, this is just a bad film

If the above still hasn't convinced you not to see or endorse this film then the following statement may help: don't see this film because it is not a good film at all. The film swings wildly between a comedic romp with over-the-top dancing and an array of barely covered crotches to weirdly serious and incredibly dry. The script is hollow, the acting cardboard and the plot is threadbare. One choice bit of dialogue goes:

Inspired

KEN: What are we?
ANDRE: We're like healers or somethin'.
KEN: Yes, man.

Aside from how dry it is without high-octane gyrating, the pacing feels off. Dance numbers speed up the tempo too much when compared to how long the film spends in that one older woman's house with all her upper class girlfriends drinking wine (no stripping, just wine). The romantic subplot is drawn out, and the "one last ride" plot (you know, the main plot of the film) doesn't really start until about 70 minutes in (but it felt an awful lot longer).

To top it all off, there's a weird abundance of trying-too-hard-to-be-cool cinematography and yellow tinting. The combination of the two contrast weirdly with the dark nights, bright lights look of other parts of the film and have me wondering what we're actually watching:

is it Magic Mike, The OC or True Detective? 

In all, this is a film that can only try to cobble together its parts. It isn't sure if it has a plot or not, it doesn't really do anything for its characters, it doesn't examine anything and there's only so much that stripping and thinly veiled misogyny can do for a movie. It can't tie together its night life and Florida beaches to make much visual sense - it neither homogenises them as part of a whole nor strikes a discordant note.

Overall
Magic Mike is a new way for Hollywood & Co to sell us sexism (and other associated forms of hatred - it's a true package deal in the movies) in newer, cheaper packages to make massive profit. The excitement over these films will no doubt bring about an endless supply of similar films to usher us into an immortal loop of sexist film. Again. Or moreso than before. The worst part of this film is that it's not good at anything except selling sexism.

The money for a ticket only endorses sexism, bad cinematography and atrociously dry dialogue.