If you were alive in 1995 (which I wasn’t) and remember that year’s Oscars (which you probably don’t), then you’ll recall that Forrest Gump won not one, not two, but six awards. As the fifth highest grossing movie of its decade and, according to a quick google search, the most quoted movie of all time, the film easily won over the hearts of many Americans. People find the characters, most notably Forrest, to be lovable and the many events of the film to be both heart-wrenching and heartwarming. But if creating a successful movie is as easy as making a charming character and throwing in a few emotional twists, then what is stopping every other film in Hollywood from winning six academy awards?

The obvious place to start is with Forrest himself. If you were to describe the movie to someone who had never seen it, Forrest’s character would likely come across as a slightly less intelligent version of a stereotypical male character; he’s an athletic guy who is in love with his childhood best friend, he’s a war hero, and he starts a business that becomes successful. Sure, he had to deal with some bullies, but what relatable male character doesn’t? Anyone who has seen the movie, though, knows that he isn’t every other male in film. In fact, his masculinity, the very thing that defines many of Hollywood’s best-known characters, is shaky at best.

His intelligence, or better said, his lack of intelligence, is one of the first places we start to see his masculinity wobble. Historically, males have been seen as more capable and more fit for intellectual discourse. And beyond that, until recently it has been the case that girls, not boys, have been denied the ability to receive an education and have struggled to obtain this opportunity. But Forrest, a boy, gets turned away from school. And his mother fights to get him enrolled. So right off the bat, we watch Forrest become feminized.

Moreover, throughout the movie, we see Forrest open up about his emotions—a characteristic associated with being feminine—rather than keeping them locked up and trying to remain stoic. When he’s on the shrimping boat with Lieutenant Dan, his superior in the Vietnam war, and the storm hits, he tells us, “now me, I was scared”. Lieutenant Dan, on the other hand is the epitome of masculinity. He’s shirtless, he’s pumping his fists, and he’s got an American Flag waving behind him. And the no legs thing? No problem. He’s positioned himself so that he’s taller than anybody within miles and miles. But who do we relate to? Not Lieutenant Dan. He’s being reckless and irresponsible. Forrest, though, who is being cautious and has been feminized? We find comfort in him.

And when Forrest finds Jenny, the said childhood friend he’s pining over, at the strip club, he tells her he loves her. Again, he’s revealing his emotions. And despite being a woman, Jenny actually takes on many of the more masculine traits that Forrest lacks. Her response to his declaration is not only to brush away his emotions, as might be expected of a stereotypical male, but to actually explain that because he doesn’t “know what love is” he is wrong. Jenny is telling Forrest that he doesn’t know enough to even merit a conversation. Sound familiar, ladies? I would put money on it that essentially every woman has been told at some point or another that she is wrong just because a man doesn’t see something the same way as her and “she doesn’t know what she is talking about”.

Jenny and Forrest’s characters are constantly crossing (and uncrossing) the gender line. Sabine Moller discusses how discusses how “Jenny symbolizes ‘drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll’, whereas Forrest’s character is oriented towards ‘Mom, God & apple pie’”. And it doesn’t require too much explaining to say that society tends to associate “drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll”, which are adventurous and bold, with men and “Mom, God & apple pie”, which immediately evoke images of domestic life, with women. The characteristics of men that are often viewed negatively are put onto Jenny, while those of women that are seen positively (the tenderness and faithfulness) are given to Forrest.

This idea of “Mom, God, & apple pie” is especially prominent at the end of the movie once Jenny has passed away. As a single parent, Forrest is left with the responsibility of being the child’s caretaker, and thus he becomes the mother figure. In fact, the film urges you to notice the parallel between Forrest having a single mother and then taking on the role of a single mother himself. At the beginning, Forrest, as a child, sits in bed with his mother reading Curious George. Fast forward to the end of the film and once again Forrest is sitting in the same room, in the same house, with the same book, and with a child who has the same name. The implication is that Forrest has taken on the role of his mother.

But don’t let this fool you into thinking Forrest is entirely feminized. Thomas B. Byers reminds us that “at the same time Forrest is, by turns, an All-American football star, a Medal-of-Honor-winning war hero, a wildly successful entrepreneur, a spiritual leader held in awe and reverence, and a fertile and wise father”. Forrest is feminized, but at the same time he embodies the idealized version of American masculinity. While he does take on the role of a motherly figure, in the scenes directly following him reading a book with little Forrest we see the two of them playing ping pong and fishing and sitting on a stump talking. Because that’s what fathers and sons do. Because we (the viewers) can’t forget that he is still a man.

Along these lines, Forrest is at once both more feminine than Jenny and the male hero to her damsel in distress. He fights the boy in the car who she was hooking up with. He fights the guy in the strip club who throws his drink on her. He fights her boyfriend who slaps her in the middle of the Black Panther Party headquarters. Forrest is, without fail, Jenny’s protector, as is the role of a true man (or so our culture says). But all the while he possesses the feminine qualities of innocence (both in the sense of being unaware of much of the bad in the world and in the sense that the first time he has sex we can assume that he is in his thirties), faithfulness (we can conclude that the only person he ever has sex with is Jenny), and compassion (he cares deeply about the people in his life and goes out of his way to help them). It is, after all, Jenny who successfully asks Forrest to marry her, and not the other way around, as gender roles would dictate. The film employs the volatile nature of gender to pick and choose the best traits of each gender and bundles them up into the lovable Forrest Gump.

It isn’t just Forrest and Jenny, though, that are subject to an unstable gender, it’s us too. We (quite obviously) experience much of the story through Forrest’s narration. He is telling us his memory of the many events. He is inviting us to see through his eyes. But those eyes, as I have established, aren’t so straightforwardly male. And if they aren’t consistently male, then neither are we. We are straddling the gender line right along with Forrest.

But it is just as important to note that we aren’t always in his point of view. In one scene, Forrest says that he thought about Jenny all the time, and then (unknown to him) we see her wiping away cocaine and standing on the ledge of a building. It is during this shot that our gaze is most voyeuristic and most masculine in that it “builds the way she is to be looked at into the spectacle itself” (Mulvey). The camera pans parts of her body and focuses on her face in a way that is distinctively male. But in this moment, we are most unhappy. We, as the viewers, are watching Jenny struggle with her cocaine addiction and potentially commit suicide. It is one of the more unsettling and dejected scenes in the movie. Certainly, the later death of Jenny and that of Forrest’s mother are both sad, but they are portrayed peacefully, and Forrest seems to come to terms with them. Here, we are thrown into an unexpected scene of drugs and danger. The purely masculine perspective is created such that viewers feel most uncomfortable in it. The scene is admitting that there are indeed issues with the traditional masculine experience.

Our perspective at the end of the movie changes again. Once Forrest goes to Jenny’s apartment where he meets their son, we are no longer listening to Forrest tell us the story. Now, while we still sometimes associate with Forrest, we are not bound to his perspective. We often find ourselves in Jenny’s point of view too. But not the “drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll” Jenny that we knew before. Oh no, this Jenny is entirely feminine. She takes on the role of a typical woman with a son and a husband, she’s a waitress (a very common job for a woman), and she dresses in the mainstream feminine way. No more hippie outfits or sequin tops with platform heels. She wears her uniform and sweaters and turtlenecks. And with her transformation comes the accepting of her love for Forrest. We watch affectionately from Jenny’s position as Forrest goes to meet his son. And after her death, Forrest is looking directly at the camera when he addresses Jenny’s grave and tells her about how things are going. In this way, he tells us how much he loves us and we are inclined to reciprocate that feeling. Now that Jenny has learned to accept her love for Forrest, we get to experience that love for him through her.

Not putting us in Jenny’s point of view until she has reached a place where she is a “normal” female and has embraced her love of Forrest is very intentional. Up until this time, we want something more for Jenny, but do not identify with her. In making Jenny more masculine, we learn to dislike women who don’t fit the normal gender roles. Then, when she does fit our desired mold, through her perspective we feel loved and content that we are back to being completely feminine. By throwing the audience around in our gender role, the movie allows us to experience the good and bad of many different perspectives. And we find that we desire to be the perfect female.

Now Forrest on the other hand, we like that he isn’t entirely masculine. By projecting some feminine traits onto him and ridding him of the unpleasant male qualities, he becomes an idealized version of a man. But he is still just that. A man. He is, though, a man that we love, especially once we are in the point of view of a feminine woman. So the movie is telling us that women should be perfectly feminine, which by definition means being inferior to men. But it makes this desire easy to swallow because it implies that if a woman becomes perfectly feminine, she won’t actually need to worry about being completely dominated by a man because he will be a feminized man—one who will still be her Prince Charming, but will also lighten the burden of the feminine role. The film admits that the most masculine of men have flaws, and in doing so gets the female to accept the better version of a man. This, I would argue, is what makes the film so impressively popular—women feel as though there is a better solution for them, while at the same time men feel comfortable that they aren’t stripped of their dominant role in society.

To make things even more complicated, Steven D. Scott argues that because of his honesty, bravery, and loyalty, “Gump, in effect, becomes America in this movie”. Thus, the idealized version of a male is also the idealized version of America. And if this is true, then being entirely feminine is equivalent to being the nation’s subject—a devoted American. The film encourages us to want to stay in line and be the perfect American because it says the country will love us back in return. All of this is not possible without the fractured nature of gender roles. It is these transgressive gender roles that tell us to accept (and thus not stand against) the problems we see in our nation. So if you are one of the millions of Americans who love this movie, then you are admitting that you love the idea of embracing every action of the government and every aspect of culture, including the racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia that comes along with it.

Kenny Powers, former baseball phenom, favorite son of Shelby, North Carolina, returns to his hometown after flaming out of the major leagues in humiliating fashion; this is the premise of the first season of Eastbound & Down, a show that tells the story of the complex and fragile racial position of lower-class whites in the American South. Its protagonist, Powers, is a mulleted, swaggering redneck with a proclivity for dramatic monologues, a sort of Dixie Hamlet possessed of the prince’s sense of self-importance but with his ambivalence replaced by absolute certainty of his own greatness. His deeds and utterances drive the show, which may at first seem to be a collection of cheap laughs at the expense of some hicks but is actually rather nuanced – as you’re chuckling at the racist antics of Powers you’re also feeling empathy with him, forcing you to reevaluate the moral judgements you made freely only minutes before. The point is nothing in Eastbound & Down is as simple as it seems, not even whiteness in the heart of the former Confederacy, and that to fully understand it (the whiteness) requires the viewer to be seized by some uncomfortable associations. To understand the Southern racist, you must drive a mile in his pickup truck.

The show does not deceive its viewer as to Kenny’s beliefs. To the contrary, they are nearly the first things you learn about him, and they are unpleasant: prejudices against black people, jewish people, gay people, all forthrightly expressed during interviews in various pro baseball locker rooms. He’s knocked out of baseball, and is shown driving back into Shelby finishing beers and tossing them out his window. Eastbound aired on HBO, and it’s fair to say declaring proudly one’s bigotry and littering the casualties of domestic brews swallowed while operating a motor vehicle are outside the milieu of most people who subscribe to an expensive channel to see complex characters’ nihilistic ruminations on the banality of evil as well as tastefully shot sex scenes. To that audience, Kenny is an oddity to be gawked at, a confirmation of their worst fears: the U.S South is an alien land full of unreachable bigots with whom they have nothing in common.

But there is a trick here. The viewer will quickly come to identify with Kenny Powers. Not because his views are secretly less repulsive than they appear, but because empathy is possible despite them. Soon after he bumps back into town, he goes to a training session for substitute teachers, where the other attendees recognize him and chuckle about his professional downfall. On his first day of work, his boss, Terrence Cutler, the school’s principal, jokes about how the once-mighty Kenny Powers now works beneath him at a middle school; to add insult to injury, Culter is engaged to Kenny’s high school sweetheart, April, for whom Kenny still has romantic feelings. These and other sundry humiliations – having to move in with his brother Dustin, getting made fun of by his students – earn Kenny the sympathy of the viewer. It’s hard not to see a guy in an ill-fitting school polo shirt and a mullet be repeatedly embarrassed and not feel bad for him, and to remember moments where you might have been similarly disrespected; here, empathy blossoms. This identification is fostered by Kenny’s placement as the protagonist of the story, the hero who provides the “primary point of view” (Cohen 257). The camera is deployed so the viewer sees from Kenny’s perspective, and his monologues describe both the action and the feelings it engenders in him; it’s difficult to avoid seeing the story through his eyes.

This of course presents a contradiction. How can well-meaning viewers with an egalitarian racial spirit see themselves in an inveterate racist who has no qualms about sharing his beliefs? Eastbound slyly evades this question by taking aim at whiteness, trying to pull back the curtain on the idea of it as a monolithic identity and reveal its internal tensions and contradictions. One of the show’s main antagonists, Cutler, is a white person of a very different sort than Kenny. His sport is triathlon, and the show delights in showing him in form-fitting bicycle outfits and swimming gettups to reveal his thin-yet-gelatinous physique. His copulation with April involves rickety thrusting and awkward banter. He’s feckless in dealing with students, and communicates awkwardly with his staff. But, despite his weaknesses, he can embarrass Kenny. At a backyard barbeque thrown by him and April, Cutler drunkenly mocks Powers for being a baseball has-been, a failure now condemned to the humiliation of teaching gym at a middle school taking orders from people who once watched him on television. Notably, Cutler speaks sans southern accent. It’s this detail that reveals the point of Cutler’s diatribe. Cutler is strange and sad, yet he has power enough to crush a former World Series champion emotionally and marry his love to boot; in making this possible, the show argues that the most feeble northerner has the power to humiliate a successful embodiment of the rural south. The viewers’ identification with Kenny means they see this verbal attack as an injustice, and absorb the intended message: poor southerners are frequently slighted by a culture that prioritizes northern notions of white identity.

It’s not just the north that attacks Kenny’s rural whiteness. Ashley Schaeffer, Kenny’s other primary foe, owns a BMW dealership, lives in a plantation house passed down from his ancestors, has white hair, wears white suits, and speaks with an exaggerated patrician drawl; he is the very embodiment of the Southern landed gentry. Schaeffer, knowing Kenny is back in Shelby, offers him meager sums – sometimes paid out in coupons to local businesses – to put on, at Ashley Schaeffer BMW, exhibitions of a fastball he can no longer throw. It’s essentially his humiliation displayed and exchanged for cash, and Kenny loathes it so much he decides on a petty form of revenge. He returns at night and drunkenly tosses a cinder block through the window of a dealership BMW and then drives away. This act heightens rather than underscores the embarrassment the viewer feels for Powers. He cannot stand up to his tormentor to his face – he looks like a fool when he tries – so he must return to defile one car in a lot full of them; this act is captured on film and used to blackmail him later. Again, the divisions between the types of white people are stark: the wealthy, upper-class southerner can exploit his redneck counterpart to sell pre-owned vehicles and the latter has no recourse.

This sense of abuse, having been beaten down, wears on a person. Kenny decides to swallow his pride and become a glasses-wearing teacher who takes his responsibilities seriously, polo shirt tucked into zipper-sided sweatpants; he turns down an offer for a pitch-off at Ashley Schaeffer BMW between himself and his nemesis from his pro baseball days, Reg Mackworthy. He also helps his brother out with his contracting business, where the two of them are subject to further belittling, this time from a rich professional house flipper for whom they’re constructing a sunroom. She berates the two at length, a verbal bludgeoning they endure until Dustin, pushed to the brink, declares that they’re done working for the day, and that he and Kenny are headed to the BMW dealership so his pro baseball-playing brother can prove himself again in a pitch-off. It’s a moment of triumph, not only for Dustin and Kenny, but also for the lower-class white trash group to which they belong, a victory the show underscores with dialogue; as they depart, Kenny calls the house-flipper a “city bitch” while she mutters “rednecks” under her breath. In emphasizing the intra-racial conflict present in both the sunroom scene and the subsequent pitch-off, the stakes are raised – the fight is no longer about Kenny trying to prove himself to the people of Shelby, but instead of a southern white redneck identity fighting to stay respected in a world that is hostile to it.

And in this battle the rednecks win. April hears on the radio the announcement of the upcoming pitch-off while lubing up Cutler before a triathlon; she breaks her promise to see him at the finish line to watch Kenny try to return to former glory. Her presence spurs him on, and he delivers a blazing fastball that knocks Mackworthy’s eye out. It’s a victory over Cutler, whose fiance leaves him for Kenny, and over Schaeffer, whose promotion intended to humiliate Kenny ends with an eye on his dealership floor and Powers’s fastball velocity back in the triple digits. Kenny celebrates by smashing BMW windows with hurled baseballs, an act once done at night as proof of his cultural impotence redone in the daylight as proof of triumph. In having Kenny symbolically defeat both the condescending northerner and the wealthy southern plantation owner, the show celebrates the redneck identity of its protagonist and argues against its cultural demonization.

But Eastbound does not savor the pleasure of Kenny’s symbolic victory. It punishes the viewers for their identification with Kenny by reminding them of his racism. In no sense is he a changed man. This is evident in his confrontations with Mackworthy when he feels the need to point out his rival’s blackness as a knock against him. Even more egregious is his chat with a pro executive for Tampa who informs him that, after seeing the return of his fastball, the team is looking to sign him, that they need a “shot of personality”, and asks if the racism and homophobia that once made him famous are beliefs he still holds. Kenny cheerfully informs him that his prejudices are the same, and the pro scout reacts positively – inflammatory comments brings fans to the stadium. The audience, rooting for Kenny’s success, have been duped into supporting a racist who succeeds not despite his bigotry but because of it. In building Powers up to be a hero who represents a group of people, promoting audience identification with him, and then rewarding him for holding the stereotypical prejudices of that group, the show can be seen as a tacit endorsement of those values. Never change, and society will reward you eventually.

This analysis would hold true if Eastbound & Down concluded with a victorious Kenny returning to the major leagues. It does not. He receives a call as he’s about to leave Shelby for Tampa saying the offer has been revoked, that no team in the big leagues wants to sign him. The idea that racism would end up a benefit for him is shown to be a fiction. This reversal changes the meaning of his previous triumphs. When he knocked out Mackworthy’s eye, showed up Schaeffer, and won back April from Cutler, the expectation was for future success – that defeating his foes meant a demonstrably better life ahead for him. Instead, he is humiliated once more. The racism for which he was once rewarded is shown to be an anachronism, the remnant of a system used to suture together an alliance between whites of the upper and lower class; see Kenny facing off against Mackworthy, both of them being exploited by Schaeffer for profit, but opposed nonetheless (Mahoney 133). But that system of white alliance is fraying at the seams. The divisions between whites are sharper than ever, the conflict playing out on lines of identity: north versus south, rich versus poor, city versus country. Eastbound & Down reveals and plays out those conflicts, only to say that they do not matter. While being the most talented or favored white person might have once meant automatic success, it does not now. You, the redneck, can win, see your ideological foes bested, and be left with nothing in the end. Whiteness doesn’t mean as much as it once did. It’s this author’s opinion that this change means a better, fairer society, but realizing it is going to leave Kenny Powers and many others like him crying in the front seat of their cars. It’s a harsh reality, but one we’re going to have to acclimate ourselves to as a culture. The alternatives are too unpleasant to bear.

 

Good luck had just stung me

To the race track I did go

She bet on one horse to win

And I bet on another to show

Odds were in my favor

I had him five to one

When that nag came around the track

Sure enough we had won

-Up on Cripple Creek, The Band

Thank god for Bob Dylan. I’m sure that’s something that is said daily, but my reasoning is probably different than most. Instead of being in awe of Dylan for the music he has brought to this world (“Mr. Tambourine Man” is one of my favorites), and the way he has changed rock music, I’m in awe because without him there’s a good chance the Band wouldn’t be a band. Yes, they would have been known for their stint as the Hawks, and as Dylan’s backup band, but we wouldn’t have songs like “The Weight” or “Acadian Driftwood” or “Up on Cripple Creek”.

Soon after leaving Ronnie Hawkins–the musician who initially brought the Band (previously known as the Hawks) together–the Canadian-American band was stung by good luck because they were sought after by Bob Dylan. The Band went on Bob Dylan’s 1965-66 world tour excluding Levon Helm who was at Dylan’s Forest Hills, New York, concert in 1965 where they got booed by the crowd: Helm was quoted saying “I wasn’t made to be booed”. In 1966, though, Helm rejoined the Band and Bob Dylan in West Saugerties, New York, after Dylan got in his famous motorcycle crash. The Band rented a house, well-known as Big Pink, to be closer to Dylan while he was out of the public eye for a little bit. The motorcycle crash ended up having a positive outcome for both Dylan and the Band as they went on to record over 100 tracks together in Big Pink. A number of those tracks went on to be known as The Basement Tapes, arguably some of the best songs written by the two parties.

The story of how and why these tapes were made is one that should be an inspiration to all musicians. They created a little studio in the basement of Big Pink, and sang/composed for themselves: not for a crowd, a studio, or for fame. Robbie Robertson reminisced, “We went in with a sense of humor. It was all a goof. We were playing with absolute freedom; we weren’t doing anything we thought anybody else would ever hear, as long as we lived. But what started in that basement, what came out of it—and the Band came out of it, anthems, people holding hands and rocking back and forth all over the world singing ‘I Shall Be Released,’ the distance that all of this went—came out of this little conspiracy, of us amusing ourselves. Killing time” (Old, Weird America). Their way of killing time led to what some critics say was a stylistic transformation for rock music: you can see this transformation in Dylan’s music as well. He went from albums like Highway 61 Revisited to songs that were more rooted in traditional American music like “I Shall be Released”.  As for the Band, well, they became the Band with their debut album Music from Big Pink. They obviously did not spend a lot of creative energy on the name of their band, or the name of their first album, but it’s okay because it’s quite obvious that they spent a lot of it on their music.

In 1968, “The Weight”, from Music from Big Pink, hit its peak at #63 in US charts-a deplorable rank as Aretha Franklin’s cover of the song hit #19 in 1969. I use the word deplorable because the Band’s version is much more pleasurable to hear. No offense to Aretha Franklin, she has a great voice, but the best part of the original version is the chorus where you can hear up to three different voices all coming together to pitch the perfect imperfect harmony.

This imperfectness is what makes the band so unique; other bands with multiple lead singers–most notably the Beatles with Lennon, McCartney and the occasional Harrison–harmonize so beautifully as though their voices become one. The Band does the exact opposite by providing a different type of harmony: ragged, throaty, asperous, and broken. Musicians harmonize because it sounds better than individually singing/playing-the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The Band does indeed do this this, but it does it in a way that both the whole and the parts are both equally as good: you’re able to hear the individual voices in the harmony as it goes in and out throughout lines, but you’re able to enjoy the voices together as well. This abnormal harmony is seen in most of their songs: “Acadian Driftwood”, “Atlantic City”, “Up on Cripple Creek”, etc.

The Band was able to create songs that were both meaningful, and meaningless, but both equally gratifying to their audience. Contrary to popular belief, “The Weight” is not meant to be taken as a serious song. Critics have spent years analyzing the song and its biblical references, but Robbie Robertson has said that this song was influenced by the director Luis Bunuel and the characters in his movies. This song was written in Big Pink when they were just fooling around and having fun with music. On the other hand, in 1970, Robertson wrote the song, “The Shape I’m In” which is about the rough spot they were all in after fame started to take its toll on the musicians, especially Richard Manuel. Manuel was an alcoholic in despair which made it hard for the band to keep going as they did before: it took them 4 more years to release a new album, Northern Lights — Southern Cross. 

Unlike Music from Big Pink, Northern Lights—Southern Cross, does having a meaningful background behind the name. It has Northern Lights because of the four Canadians in the band: Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, and Rick Danko. And Southern Cross because of the one southerner, Levon Helm. This album was especially significant because it marked the first time Robertson wrote about his home land in “Acadian Driftwood”. “Acadian Driftwood” is about the banishment of the Acadians during the French and Indian war: something that could resemble Robertson’s early life. His music career prompted him to travel  from Toronto to the south, an unknown land: even when he lived in Toronto he didn’t exactly feel like a native because he was of Jewish and Mohawk descent. The history behind this song isn’t exactly something that would amuse pop music listeners, and it didn’t as the song didn’t crack the top 100: a shame because it’s one of the more significant songs written by the Band with some of the best vocals.

In 1969, Greil Marcus, a well-respected rock critic, praised the band on sticking together: “It’s something else to found a group that lasts. It’s not a matter of “I-Was-There-When,” though that’s part of it; with so many bands falling apart or kicking out members or just calling it quits, The Band has stuck together” (Review). This was something that Marcus loved about the band, but was unfortunately something that did not last: the Band called it quits after a Thanksgiving Day concert in 1976 after 16 years of being together. Although this would have been a fine ending to their career together as most bands eventually come to an end, the aftermath of the Band was not pleasant. After part of the band regrouped in 1983, Manuel hung himself with a belt in his hotel room after a concert in Winter Park, Florida: he had traces of cocaine and alcohol in his body. Levon Helm, the one American in the group, declined an offer to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after the Band was inducted into it because he was not happy with how Robertson took sole credit for songs that were written as a collaborative effort. Danko was found guilty of trying to smuggle heroin into Japan in 1996, and then later passed away at 56 in his home in Woodstock, New York. The band member whose life most closely resembles a perfect ending to a movie is Levon Helm. He returned to his house near Woodstock (where the Band’s career kicked off), after developing throat cancer. He could barely speak, but in order to pay for the mounting debts he was incurring he started hosting Midnight Rambles at his barn. His voice miraculously started to strengthen and, in 2004, he was able to belt out classics from the Band. If I were to write a movie on the Band, I would make it so that the ending to the Band was just as good as the beginning, but that just isn’t the shape they were in.

I’m gonna go down by the water

But I ain’t gonna jump in, no, no

I’ll just be looking for my maker

And I hear that that’s where she’s been? Oh!

Out of nine lives, I spent seven

Now, how in the world do you get to Heaven

Oh, you don’t know the shape I’m in

-The Shape I’m In, The Band

 

Perhaps one of the best, most popular comedies of 2013, We’re the Millers stars, most namely, Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston as they serve as parents in a thrown together ‘family’ that travels across the US-Mexico border to retrieve what is originally referred to in the film as “a smidge of weed”, but later turns out to be of a greater capacity. The film progresses further even, as this dysfunctional, diverse ‘family’ later discovers that they were in fact stealing this weed from a Mexican drug lord, who will be mentioned a bit later. Now I don’t know much about the director of the film, let alone his name off the top of my head. All that I remember is that he is male, in fact, but any significant details past that are merely an internet search away. The details don’t seem to matter for the sake of this essay, however, and that lone detail that I can recall (of the director being male), I have come to think, seems to be enough at this point.

Getting back to the film, the different pieces of the family, I think, are worth briefly touching upon, just to get a sense of their dynamic and our perspective on them as viewers. David, played by Jason Sudeikis, is a single-man, yet more importantly, a local drug dealer in Denver. That seems to be his main source of income, until all of his money and weed is stolen by thugs. In contrast, Rose, or who later comes to be known as Sarah, played by Jennifer Aniston, is a stripper in the Denver area in much need of cash and housing, due to the actions of her ex-boyfriend. Kenny, an uptight, nerdy teenager who lives in the same building as David and Sarah, frankly just seems to be a kid who is in seek of company, as his mother hasn’t returned to the apartment in days, even weeks. And lastly is Casey, a runaway kid, who is portrayed as living on the streets and in desperate need of money. These four join together and become the Millers, all just so David can receive a major payday from a much larger, wealthier drug lord in the area.

The humor and personalities that each and every individual brings to this film varies between them, and ultimately, helps structure the obscure dynamic that the Millers create. There’s a little more to this film, however, that is, hidden through this humor and the distraction that each and every individual in the film proposes, a strict and imposing male lens and mindset behind the camera and in the production and editing throughout the entirety of the film.

Right from the beginning we are led to see Rose as a stripper, that is part of our first impression of her. Yes, we do see her expression of her own disappointment in her occupation, yet she still continues to use her body, for male pleasure, in order to receive some degree of income; in fact, it isn’t until she is asked to have sex with the clients that she actually gives up the job. And that’s just the beginning. David, well aware of Rose and her occupation, goes to the strip club in seek of bringing Rose with him, and the others, to make this trip down to Mexico, a trip that she originally denies, until she recognizes her desperate need for finances. Suiting to the male eye, while receiving a lap dance, as if Rose is not being objectified enough, David literally says that he is asking to “rent” her for this trip, as if there is no problem with that, that it is perfectly acceptable, especially using the terminology in which he chooses. David takes her occupation as a stripper and shoves its reputation back into her face, merely acting as if it defines her own self-worth, while further reinforcing a scene that accepts male dominance and female subjugation.

Switching gears, Kenny provides us a bit of a different personality and different viewpoint than that of Rose. Kenny meets a girl on their return trip home, Melissa, whom he’s interested in; but he’s initially inhibited by his lack of experience kissing women. However, the ‘family’ helps resolve that lack of experience. The scene eventually arrives at Kenny trading off makeouts with Casey and Rose, practicing; all the while David is looking on while eating a bag of chips, as if an innocent bystander looking in on the spectacle and taking in its full effects. I mean, he even takes a picture of Kenny and Casey kissing. Aside from the fact that these two women are kissing Kenny back and forth, the fact that David looks onto the scene in the interested and encouraged way that he does makes it almost seem pornographic in a sense, as if he’s looking in on some kind of incestuous sexual scene in a voyeuristic fashion, just as Melissa sees it (not voyeuristically, of course, but rather disturbing) as she enters through the door of the RV. To make matters even more obscure, as Melissa runs out the door, David slams his chip bag down on the counter and says a frustrated “fuck”, almost as if he’s irritated by her disruption of the scene, rather than his concern for Kenny. But, we don’t initially come to see the scene (in its entirety) as improper or frankly even that crude, we just take it as justified for the improvement and betterment of a man, so that he can further intrigue another woman, which nearly serves as a reinforcement for male influence, and further normalizes a male perspective in the film.

Coming back to Rose, the pinnacle of the male lens is displayed in times of desperate measure for the Millers. Trapped by Pablo Chacon, the drug lord whom they stole the weed from, Rose offers to “show her worth” by captivating him, by stripping. Yes, she makes one final return to her prior occupation, exposing her body to the pleasure of male eyes. The scene itself, at times, attempts to even make it seem glamorous, with assistance of the sunlight, a shower, and sparks. You can nearly sense the intention of a male gaze as David looks directly into the camera and shrugs, raising his eyebrows, almost as if the mere exposure of Rose is not only invaluable to him, but acceptable as long as they are safe, not to mention the fact that it may be visually pleasurable to him, as well as Kenny, as he adjusts his pants in what looks to be a nearly unbreakable captivation. All this is displayed in the scene as if it is simply not enough that Rose is showing that she’s valuable by the use and spectacle of body. Does the film do anything to show this to us as viewers, to show that Rose is more than a stripping teaseful distraction in order for everyone to be safe, to escape? Not really. The assistance of the music, editing, and lighting further draw the viewer in to the movements and body of Rose, as the cuts and focus of the camera shift between the spectators (watching intently) and Rose’s body (in some cases, in close-up fashion).

One scholar argues that “It’s when filmmakers run out of or run from creativity that they retreat to the economic safe haven of sex, violence, car crashes, and jiggling bodies” and that is the exact case in this film. The action and sexual displays appeal to the male eye, and they don’t seem inappropriate, or even unnecessary, in the film, but pivotal to us in maintaining that gaze and level of captivation in what we are seeing (just like the men in the film during Rose’s strip scene).

Aside from these moments that either objectify women or reinforce male dominance and influence, David tends to make comments that either result in women being furtherly objectified or that would be seen as disrespectful towards women in any usual circumstance throughout the entirety of the film. But the film creates something different for us. The movie normalizes these jokes and it allows and guides us to accept them through our laughter, no matter how wrong, crooked, and disrespectful that they may be. Due to that normalization, a male perspective is built up further, as males are practically given a more dominant role, due to the subjugation of women. Also, another scholar argues that “film has become a mirror of society’s view of the female body”, but rather, that view may be inflicted upon us as individuals, just as it is inflicted upon the viewers of this film. It is not necessarily generated through the viewer, but rather through the way the viewer is led to see and interpret the film. We come to recognize the strip teases and near nudity as almost acceptable and necessary, nearly against our own will; it’s practically imposed through the lens of the camera and editing of the scenes in which we see close-ups of the female body.

In the end, David does, in fact, grow to care and respect these people, but that may be laid out to us to keep viewers on his side, to let him off and reside with him, as we begin to realize his selfishness. We easily forgive him. The somewhat crooked way of seeing the ending of this film, as the four of them move into a home together, under a witness protection program, is that David ends up actually changing the lives of those who came with him (maybe even for the better). David, the, at one time, self-concerned, money-seeking individual, comes to change the lives of Sarah (now ‘stripped’ of the name Rose), Casey, and Kenny. He gives them a home, whether it’s in the most literal sense, for Sarah, the most figurative sense, for Kenny, or in both, for Casey.

All the visual matters and jokes that support male empowerment and female objectification, are really somewhat trivial, they only support the true major source that is the problem with the whole male lens in its own right. The biggest problem is that the male lens of these films makes the objectification and subjugation of these women appear normal, it makes it appear okay and acceptable. The views of women exposing themselves normalizes that scene to us as the viewers, we come to see it, maybe even expect it. The film provides us that belief, we don’t have to work to find it, or, for that matter, feel too guilty for seeing it. The true danger is when these false beliefs can carry over into the real world, when people accidentally, or subconsciously, forget that some of these things are unacceptable, that women shouldn’t, in fact, be objectified; and that has become a problem in Hollywood today, not only in films, but in the actual tangible world.

 

An earlier draft of this essay was read by Cory Lund.

I have written this essay in the style of Chuck Klosterman.

Main proposition influenced by Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

Works Cited

Durham, Meenakshi Gigi, and Douglas M Kellner (ed.). Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.

Thurber, Rawson Marshall, director. We’re the Millers. Warner Bros, 2013.

When I was in fourth grade, a girl in my Hebrew School class announced to all in the room that she didn’t want her Blackberry anymore and wanted an iPhone instead, so she had dropped her Blackberry in the toilet. She proceeded to pull out an iPhone, saying “look at my new phone!” This was one of the many reasons why I disliked going to Hebrew School. However, experiences like these did make it so that, four years later, when I stumbled upon all six seasons of  Gossip Girl conveniently ready for my watching on Netflix, I already had an insight into that world. My peers and I immediately became enthralled with the series. We wanted to be Blair Waldorf, we wanted to be anyone but Serena van der Woodsen, and we wanted, more than anything, for Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass to be together in the end. For me, the appeal was the sense of familiarity it provided me. As I watched the show, I recognized the streets the characters walked on as ones around the corner from my old building or down the block from my temple. The appeal also lay in the glimpse it gave me into this other part of life in New York City — one to which I was close enough to know it existed (my Hebrew School experiences made sure of that), but also far enough away that I did not know exactly what it consisted of.

Recently, I rewatched an episode of this show; I had some free time and I wanted to see if I could remember why I had loved it so much. While watching, I slowly came to the disappointing realization that this show was not even close to what I had built it up to be. I still loved it, but the experience I had watching it was different than the one that “middle school me” had while watching it. I could not quite put my finger on it, but the editing seemed a little off, and the derogatory jokes that had flown over my head as a middle schooler now had a bit more of a punch-in-the-gut quality to them. Nevertheless, by the end of the episode, I was again enthralled.

The problem that I could not quite put my finger on a few months ago, has now become quite clear: the show is entirely based on the concept of the male gaze, and this male gaze is perpetuated throughout the entirety of each episode in a way that is sickening once it is spotted. However, since the theory behind the male gaze is partly that it remains under the radar, actually spotting it in the first place is difficult. Thus, too many people — many of them teenagers — have become obsessed with this show without realizing its more serious implications.

Gossip Girl has extended the male gaze perhaps as far as it can go (or at least I hope that no one tries to push it any farther). The camera takes on the male’s perspective, as is typical in most popular culture, but the male perspective is also emphasized throughout the show by each of the male characters. Even the plot line, although narrated in a female’s voice, is actually narrated from the male’s point of view (in the end we find out that Dan is the one who has been running the gossip girl blog). The male’s gaze is pervasive; today, especially, the reality of the male gaze in popular culture is an even more important phenomenon than many realize, as an increasing number of victims of sexual assaults perpetrated within the Hollywood apparatus come to the surface. To focus on the male gaze in film without analyzing the potential of a connection between it and all that is currently coming to the surface would be a disservice.

I never thought about the influence of editing on a show before. It is always satisfying to point out when details of shows do not remain consistent throughout — Gossip Girl’s editors seemed to struggle a lot with this type of editing. But, Gossip Girl’s editors did not seem to struggle with using editing to successfully portray the male gaze. In the first episode (“Pilot”), there are countless instances of the camera forcing viewers to adapt a male point of view without realizing they are doing so. Within the first two minutes of the episode, the camera pans up and down an unknowing Serena as Dan looks at her from a distance. The editors are setting up the show to be portrayed from a male point of view even before viewers have become acquainted with any of the characters. In the twenty-first minute of the first episode, the camera makes a slow progression up Blair’s body and then pans over to Nate as he walks through the door. Through this cinematography,  as well as through dialogue about how Nate has a right to Blair’s body (Chuck says to Nate, “you’re also entitled to tap that ass”) the scene implies that Blair’s body belongs to Nate; it is there as something for Nate’s eyes to consume, and for him to have at his choosing. These are certainly not the only instances of the male gaze in Gossip Girl, but listing them all would be excessive since the male gaze occurs in countless similar circumstances throughout the series.

Gossip Girl pushes beyond just the camera and editing in its portrayal of the male gaze; it created a character that embodies the gaze. Dan Humphrey is one of the main male characters of the show. He is the “poor” boy from Brooklyn, an outcast who has his big break into inner society when he begins dating Serena — a beautiful, rich, popular girl.  The show is premised on an anonymous gossip blogger who receives tips and posts about the inner workings of New York City’s elite teenage society. This itself should set off alarm bells ringing as an indication of the expansion of the male gaze; this blogger is looking into others’ private lives without any permission to do so. To make matters worse, in the last episode the series reveals that it was Dan all along who was the anonymous blogger. This means that the entirety of the show is seen through, first the eyes of the tip-givers, but ultimately through Dan’s eyes. All (the tip-senders, blog-readers, and Dan himself) are watching others’ private interactions, and inserting themselves into the private lives of people whom they have no right to observe. Dan is ultimately the one who has the final say in how others’ private lives are presented to the world and the ways in which the blog’s readers will peer into the private lives of the show’s characters. In the context that “the knowledge that is gained from gazing at others’ lives may provide [the gazer] with a sense of power and control in our own lives,” Dan as the embodiment of the male gaze makes sense. Dan lacks power and control over his own life because he is the outcast. The way for him to reclaim some agency lies in the blog, subjecting the private lives of his peers and those around him to his own portrayal of them. The blog also provides an escape from his own problems into the more luxurious world of the elite who surround him, but with whom he feels he will never be equal. The male gaze has extended from just the camera allowing viewers to peer into the character’s lives. It now vindicates the concept of the male gaze and its use by viewers through the sanctioning of its extensive use by Dan, one of the show’s beloved characters — the “good guy”.

The male gaze is a type of voyeurism. The use of this word is often dreaded because it rarely says anything good about that to which it refers. Gossip Girl is full of voyeurism, which means that the audience (comprised mostly of teenage girls) accepts its use, and the actors embrace its use in a way that can only be expected to transfer into real life for impressionistic viewers. Voyeurism in popular culture is usually first associated with reality television, but Gossip Girl has made it clear that it is not limited to reality television. Voyeurism in shows like Gossip Girl is dangerous, because not only is the audience participating in its perpetuation, but so are the characters that they learn to admire. In this way, the use of voyeurism in real life is validated, and without even realizing it, all who watch are recognizing voyeurism as an admirable act. Mainly, this means that the teenage girls girls watching the show accept the objectification of women like themselves. The first episode provides yet another perfect example when it shows Nate and Serena’s sex scene in the bar through a lens that is blurred around the edges. In this moment, all viewers become voyeurs, finding enjoyment in watching a private moment that is not their own. This theory is often applied to books by saying, “unless a book directly addresses ‘you,’ then theoretically you have no place to be looking at and reading the pages.” Television shows are the same, and since they seldom directly address viewers, one generally has no right to be watching. In the same scene as above, the camera pans to Chuck watching Nate and Serena having sex from a balcony above. This is weird and should make most viewers feel uncomfortable, but instead it is presented as an intriguing plot twist that will later cause interesting drama. In viewers’ minds it is nothing more than that, and this is a problem.

This problem has presented itself recently in the form of the stream of sexual assault allegations being made public. Almost every day, my phone dings to alert me that another public figure has been accused of sexual misconduct. This should not surprise me or anyone else; the male gaze and voyeurism are phenomena that have overtaken popular culture and Hollywood. If it is acceptable on screen, it is not that far to assume that it is also acceptable in real life. Thus, actors like Ed Westwick, who portrayed characters that were beloved despite their illustrating the omnipotence of the male gaze, might find that it is not so difficult to think that they could get away with similarly grotesque actions in real life. Chuck Bass was an awful character who objectified women both through his actions and his words, and in the first episode tried to sexually assault two leading female characters. Yet he goes on to become one the shows best characters. I can vouch for that — I was rooting for him all along, no matter the bad things that he did. Actors must learn to embody their characters as if they were actually them; it is not too far of a jump for them to begin to adopt some of their actions in real life, believing that they can get away with them. This could be a reason why Hollywood is at the center of the sexual assault epidemic.

This idea that everyone learns to inhabit the male point of view is not an idea that most would like accept about themselves. In an attempt not to, many have come up with ways to claim that the male gaze does not exist or that the male gaze is not a negative phenomenon. For example, some women claim that the male gaze makes them feel empowered. Others claim that the female gaze also exists, and this existence validates the existence of the male gaze. First, there is a difference between appreciating respectful attention from men and just being looked at as an object there for anyone’s pleasing. It is sad to imagine that women feel empowered by anyone inhabiting the male gaze and looking at them through that lens. This points at a deeper problem of internalized sexism in society, and does not invalidate the existence of the male gaze. In terms of there also being a female gaze, there is not much proof that points to that fact. In using Gossip Girl as an example, there were countless examples of the male gaze, but no examples of the female gaze. Even if there is a female gaze, that does not make the male gaze something that should be accepted when presented as a sole viewpoint — two wrongs do not make a right.

Gossip Girl is much more than the superficial portrayal of New York City’s elite society that I originally thought it was. The realization that this show perpetuates such a harmful convention is upsetting because I really enjoy watching this show. At the same time, this does not mean I will stop watching or enjoying the show, which is exactly the problem with popular culture and the male gaze: Despite its presence and influence, we want to keep watching.

Written in the style of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Edited by Sarah Tully.

Sources:

Bartlett, Jennifer. “Longing for the Male Gaze.” The New York Times. September 21, 2016.
Accessed December 08, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/opinion/longing-for-the-male-gaze.html?_r=0.

Calvert, Clay. Voyeur nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture. Boulder:
Westview Press, 2004. 69.

Garcia, Antero. Critical Foundations in Young Adult Literature Challenging Genres. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2013. 104.

“Male gaze.” Oxford Reference. April 19, 2016. Accessed December 08, 2017.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199568758.001.0001/acref-97
80199568758-e-1594.

Metzl, Jonathan. “From Scopophilia to Survivor: A Brief History of Voyeurism.” Textual Practice 18, no. 3 (2004): 415-34. doi:10.1080/09502360410001732935.