I think in The Gender Politics of Magic Mike XXL, the gender interpretation that I felt had the best claim and support behind it was that in the movie, the men and women's behaviors are somewhat flipped. Women are the ones throwing money at the men taking off their clothes, and the men are the ones being sexually objectified purely for pleasure. However, I agree with the point that this is a good move on the part of the creators of the movie. Because when men objectify women, they do it badly and the women end up feeling used and unappreciated for who they are. But women, when looking at male strippers, actually make the men feel better and more confident about themselves because they appreciate the men's personalities and who they are rather than just their bodies. This not only gives women in the audience a chance to experience what men experience at almost every other film, it also affirms the fact that women are more genuine and compassionate about sex than men are.
The interpretation that I thought was the weakest was that the reversed roles was harmful to women since the movie was written by men and had an all male lead cast. I think it would have been a more accurate portrayal of what women desire in a film, and that it would be good for men to see as well, but I don't think it was necessarily harmful that men wrote the movie about what women want.
I did not finish the whole movie, but based the description of the movie from the article we read and the Blog you guys wrote, I think I have had a got idea about this movie. I do not think that “it was necessarily harmful that men wrote the movie about what women want” is necessarily true even though I am a man and I have no idea what women want indeed. As men, we tried to dictate want women want by what we thought they would want. Even though sometimes what we think women want is not necessarily wrong, some of them may want marriage, some of them may want to be called “queens” and “goddesses”…. However, the point is, what do women want and desire should not be asked and wrote by men, the subject of the sentence is women, and so should women be the one to do that. Though I know that it is a progress that we ask what do women want and it is less harmful to write the movie by men than just ignore this question as all.
ReplyDeleteI do agree though, that the men and women's roles are somewhat flipped is the strongest interpretation of the movie. It seems their behaviors in the movie are kind of different in our daily life and I think that is a strong point that the film want to show to us.