Where's the MAGIC, MIKE?

Channing Tatum, aka Mike, knows how to move his hips. Seriously, this guy can dance, and every hetero woman knows the importance of rhythm as a skill set (not so much a "method"). I had a girlfriend visiting me this weekend, and in a moment of silliness, we decided to go to the movies on a weekend night for the 9:50pm showing of Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike. Since I never go to see films on the weekend, I was expecting a bunch of raucous drunk women cheering on the male strippers, talking throughout the whole screening, and basically going nuts.  Sorry, ladies. I misjudged your propriety.  Indeed, the audience was largely women, but they were well behaved, although there's not a lot to get all CRAZY about here. Soderbergh was duly respectful toward his male actors, which made this film an interminable and crushing BORE. Yes, a movie about men taking off their clothes was boring as hell and barely sexy. Sigh.

One of the chief problems with Magic Mike is its uncertain tone. The film has moments where it seems to be sensitively dealing with the United States unemployment crisis. Mike legitimately struggles, while working several jobs--construction, automobile detailing, stripping--to save for his dream of running his own custom furniture business. He tries to get a small business bank loan, but he has neither the credit rating, nor the start-up funds, to do so (even though he has a spiffy, spiral bound business plan). Building furniture is Mike's dream, although one does not get any sense that he has any talent or skills whatsoever beyond shaking his booty. (He has a photo in his "business plan" of a custom table--it's a piece of glass perched atop a bunch of fire hydrants, or fire extinguishers--I'm not sure which, but both equally stupid-looking). So Soderbergh's working the aspirational "American Dream" narrative.

Meanwhile, Adam (Alex Pettyfer) is a nineteen-year-old guy looking for work, who meets Mike on a construction site. He lives with his "uptight" sister, Brooke (Cody Horn), who is some kind of medical professional-in-training. All these people are looking for happiness in Tampa (good luck finding anything but crazy trouble in the F-state). By some film structured narrative "accident," Mike ends up introducing Adam to the stripping world, and he takes to it like a stripper takes to, an, erm, pole. So now there's a coming of age, mentoring relationship, possible love interest for Mike (with Brooke) thrown into the mix.

Then we come to the important part: the stripping. I'm sorry, but that's what all the women in the theater came to see. Not Mike struggling to make ends meet. Not a possible romance with some uptight woman. Not the corruption of a young guy struggling to find himself.  NAKED GUYS GYRATING!

The Village People 2012

See where the camera sits in the above shot? The audience is kept at quite a distance from the action.  Then look again at the gifs that I posted above.  That's it.  No close-ups of glistening skin, jutting hip bones, eyes closed in ecstasy.  Sure there were images of these guys interacting with women, giving them lap dances and grinding up against them, but always, always from a distance. The camerawork was purposely untitillating, often showing the bodies of the sexual women in the film far more than the men.  Amazing and disappointing.

I was so incredibly struck by how differently the stripping scenes were shot from ANY OTHER film representing female nudity and/or strippers. WTF?! Was there some kind of clause in the contracts of these actors stating that they refuse to be "exploited" through the use of close-ups?? Both Flashdance and Striptease had more to offer in sexiness than this tepid enterprise, even though all three films share some narrative similarities (character w/dream and financial problems strips to get closer to said dream).

Alas, most of the stripping scenes were played for laughs rather than for eroticism's sake. Scenes were shot in rapid montage, with no camera time spent exploring bodies or a character's sensuality.  This attitude confused the film's tone, since Tatum's scenes were really actually QUITE hot for being brief and from far away. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the other actors in the Xquisite Male Revue, who cannot dance "for shit" as Matthew McConaughey's character Dallas reminds us. Frankly, he can't either, but I appreciate his willingness to strut around like a greased monkey with ass-less chaps and a thong for extended portions of the film. Now I've got to see Killer Joe so I can wipe this portrayal out of my mind.

Granted, in our culture male sexual objectification is not some simple reversal of roles, but one would think that Soderbergh would at least TRY. He had no problem shooting Porn Star Sasha Grey in numerous close-ups for The Girlfriend Experience (2009).  Articulating what a hetero female gaze might entail is no simple matter, but at least an attempt to manipulate some of the visual codes used in sexual or sensual materials would be a step in the right direction. Ultimately, on the sexual front, the film's parade of images are few and far between, and more time is spent on Mike's existential angst.

I believe that the film's confused tone ultimately leads to its failure. The camp moments are there, but are tempered by scenes where the audience is supposed to sympathize with Mike's plight.  Tatum's got a great body and he can really move, but I'm sorry, after watching this guy, I really do not understand why anyone ever complained about Keanu Reeves.

Tatum's pouty lips and furrowed brow convey high levels of blankness, and his line delivery...well, if they wanted him to come off like an illiterate doofus, his portrayal is actually kind of spot on in its "nobody at home up there" duh cadences.

This film is not a playful "romp." In fact, the film devolves into a rather moralistic and judgmental look at male strippers and their world--one riddled with narcissism, drug and alcohol addiction, oodles of meaningless sex and greed. Actually, the film's moral tone reminded me of Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, which starts out suggesting that drugs are kind of fun, and then devolves into the worst "Just Say NO" commercial ever. One ends up feeling bludgeoned into "stripping is bad" mode by film's end.

**For an excellent take on how problematic this moral tone is, check out Anne Helene Peterson's site on the film's marketing toward women audiences. Also, be sure to read some of her articles on Tatum for an alternative and sophisticated take on his acting.

The only way for Mike to actually experience "magic," is for him to **SPOILER** turn his back on stripping, and come up with a new "game plan" with Brooke, who would only give him the time of day in the film's last moments when he gives up his stripper ways. This change happens, literally, in the last 30 seconds of the film. Ugh. Eye roll. 

Now I'm definitely someone who often rails against the idea that stripping is ultimately "empowering" for women.  Perhaps it is empowering for individual women who are able, through genetics or surgical means, to replicate the beauty ideal that is required in order to make a decent living as a stripper or sex worker. But when it comes to women as a GROUP, this vocation is far from empowering since it replicates some of the same sexist structural problems that have been encroaching on women for centuries. Making a film that stars popular male actors, and deals with the business from a masculine standpoint, could make for some really smart commentary on sex work and gender.

This shot is strictly promotional and not even in the film

Magic Mike's visual representations, narrative construction, and moral tone do nothing to undermine or unpack any of the gender stereotypes regarding sexual images and sexy bodies. One might be able to excuse this kind of failure if the film was just dumb fun, full of gratuitous nudity and sexy guys taking their clothes off.  Unfortunately, the film's bait and switch is just another rip-off, as at least an hour of the film is spent exploring Mike's problems, as if anyone went to see the film for THAT reason.  It feels like Soderbergh was still concerned about the straight male audience, of which he is a member, and so the film flops just like a giant limp dick.  Boo.

**Oops, almost forgot. This article with Tatum gyrating in a gif everywhere is freakin' hilarious.