Saturday, February 6, 2016

Gender Roles Flipped?


While reading, The Gender Politics of Magic Mike XXL I realized that this film is in fact quite feminine but in an extremely good way, mainly because it shows the roles between men and women flipped in favor of the women’s perspective.
            This film shows how men are the feminine ones in a relationship and how they search for love comes to a standstill in the cases of Mike, Ken, and Tarzan which are all searching for a love that continues to elude them. This happens to Mike where his girlfriend rejects his engagement ring and Ken, where his girl just could not remain faithful. What are the odds of this happening, because normally men do not want to get married, and cannot be faithful? Which is where I get to my main point where this is a good film because it shows flipped gender roles in favor of the women’s perspective.
            Although Magic Mike XXL may seem almost a bit comical, all of the best jokes contain facts. Not all men don’t want to get married or cannot remain faithful perhaps sometimes it is the women who mess up or mess around. Which gets to my second point where Magic Mike XXL has a much deeper meaning than males stripping and pleasing women in the movie and audience enjoying the movie. Perhaps the meaning could be the fact that men do want all of the same things women want, and that in time come to terms that they do need to settle down and find someone they would like to spend their later years with.
            Although many of us may interpret this article and movie differently there are always two sides to every story and maybe Magic Mike XXL is telling the unheard voice of men or perhaps it is just showing how men should not treat women as objects. After all Mike does say, “My God is a woman.”

2 comments:

  1. Good blog, but I just felt people over-analyzed the whole movie trying to think of ways feminism, patriarchy, etc., could be include. I agree with Sophie Gilbert's interpretation about MMXXL being a movie where people are continually obliged to dissect things. It's literally just a movie about attractive guys getting naked for promiscious girls. The guys genuinely wanted to make the girls happy while not looking like self-absorbed conceited men. Ken even told a married woman that she is enormously desirable and deserved to be made love with the lights on, focusing on making her happy. I find it super annoying when peole try to over-analyze books and movies trying to find a deeper meaning behind a simple theme. The movie was not about empowering females or men or degrading anyone; it was a movie that cared about the dreams of all the characters. It is supposed to be a movie for people to go watch and laugh at; not a textbook for pseudo intellectuals to poke holes through. Sophia Gilbert's interpretation made the most logical sense to me without causing any confusion to the readers. At the end of the day, it's just a funny movie not intented to cause controversy.

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  2. I definitely agree with Fernando on this topic, just because the men in this movie are stripping and what not, doesn’t mean you have to search to find a meaning towards the movie. It simply was a sexual movie made to be funny. I particularly don’t think that this movie specifically shows that men are the feminine in the relationship, I think that it was a comedy and that the men were just having a good time with this production. In the film, it shows a particular group of men that want to settle down, I agree with you in the fact that these type of men are hard to come by, and usually it’s the women that want to settle down, and the women have to persuade the men. This movie, was a bit of a fake reality, considering almost every guy had a 6 pack or even and 8 pack, and was very handsome. I thought it was a bit ironic, considering we just talked about Dadbods, and how those are now coming in to style. Overall this movie was definitely not suppose to be taken seriously, it was something mainly to get the women riled up, and to have a laugh.

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