Channing Tatum – Bitch Flicks

Please Look Now: The Female Gaze in ‘Magic Mike XXL’

The trailer offers a kind of meta-advertisement, recognising the very marketing strategies that attracted people, including women, to the previous film. Cutting between clips of the men performing various routines, the trailer includes the line, “We didn’t want to show the best parts of the movie in this trailer but it was very very hard to resist,” before inviting the audience to #comeagain this summer.

“Are you ready to be worshipped? Are you ready to be exalted?”

Oh boy, are we!

Magic Mike XXL, this summer’s sequel to the surprise hit of 2012, Magic Mike, is a celebration of (heterosexual) female sexual desire. Centred on male stripping, Magic Mike XXL thoroughly recognises and foregrounds the pleasure of women within the film and within the audience; women are (finally) recognised as having sexual desire, and of gleefully and ravenously pursuing. In this piece, I will discuss how this celebration of heterosexual female desire creates a new space for the female gaze within cinema. Although exciting and radical, I will also flesh out why this conceptualisation is also difficult and slippery. However, ultimately, I suggest that truly productive message of Magic Mike XXL is in the way in which it creates a masculine image, a male spectacle, to be looked at, affording (heterosexual) women the privilege – and the permission – to look.

Magic Mike followed young and unemployed Adam (Alex Pettyfer) who enters the seedy world of male stripping after being introduced by Mike (Channing Tatum). Although the film contained many blatant strip scenes to be used for the audience’s entertainment, it also attempted to be something other than a gratuitous stripping movie. Directed by Academy Award-winning Steven Soderberg, the film was a Serious Picture, all washed-out colours, mumbled dialogue, and loose camera work. The sequel, however, offers a much more conventional (and sexually entertaining) story. We are reunited with Mike who, after leaving stripping to work full-time on his furniture business, is dissatisfied with his new lifestyle. He decides to rejoin his fellow strippers including Matt Bomer’s Ken and Joe Manganiello’s rather subtly named, Big Dick Richie for one last hurrah. After some quick and unimportant narrative exposition to explain the loss of Pettyfer and Matthew McConaughey (in the first film, he played club owner, Dallas), the boys hit the road to perform one last time at a stripping convention (yes, this is apparently a thing).

More explicitly than its predecessor, Magic Mike XXL is aware of the sexual pleasures to be had from male stripping. The trailer offers a kind of meta-advertisement, recognising the very marketing strategies that attracted people, including women, to the previous film. Cutting between clips of the men performing various routines, the trailer includes the line, “We didn’t want to show the best parts of the movie in this trailer but it was very very hard to resist,” before inviting the audience to #comeagain this summer. The previous film may not have been an explicit piece of erotic entertainment, but, for this film, the marketers are clear that Magic Mike XXL is to be enjoyed, to be devoured and, most radically, to be looked at.

In Laura Mulvey’s famous account of the male gaze, she posits that, in traditional Hollywood cinema, men are the active bearers of the look whereas women are the passive objects of the look. She argues,

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female… In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”

Positioning the audience’s look with that of the (traditionally male) protagonist, the internal and external male gaze constructs the sexualized and objectified image of woman. In this way, the female gaze is dismissed; female sexual desire and the act of female looking do not exist.

In traditional Hollywood cinema, the man is the possessor of the look whereas the woman is the object of the look

Considering the ways in which the female gaze is privileged in the film, Magic Mike XXL productively breaks down oppressive phallocentric structures within cinema. The men perform strip teases and erotic dances several times throughout the film both for the pleasure of the women in the film and for the women in the audience. Their final show is constructed under a flurry of excitement and anticipation, making the final release of their performance all the more satisfying. Most radically, women are actually depicted as in charge of their sexual desires and pleasures. The film introduces a new character, Rome, played brilliantly by Jada Pinkett-Smith. Rome owns a strip club where the majority if not all of the audience are Black women (side note: Has there been a mainstream film in recent years that so explicitly portrayed sexual desire within women who are not white? That alone is worth celebrating). Mike asks Rome to accompany them to the convention as their MC, and Rome commands the entirety of the performance. She calls the women in the audience queens and goddesses; she asks the audience what they want; she is effectively a Black woman in charge of white men. For the sexual pleasures it affords women, and for the autonomy it gives women over these pleasures, Magic Mike XXL offers a radical construction of the female gaze.

However, as much as we can praise Magic Mike XXL for this construction, the conceptualization of the female gaze problematically works within a heteronormative framework. Queer men and women as well as non-binary genders complicate this construction. Are women the only group of people afforded the space to look Magic Mike XXL? Interestingly, the trailer does not exclusively aim its erotic spectacle at women, creating instead a gender-neutral invitation to look at these men. However, the clips in the trailer and, indeed, scenes in the film, locate this primarily within the realm of heterosexual female desire. The people who attend the shows are women, the people who the men talk about entertaining are women, and the people who are invited to look are women. This is not to say that Magic Mike XXL isn’t aware of a possible homoerotic or even homosexual appeal. In one scene, the men attend a drag show where they also participate in a voguing competition. Developed out of queer African American communities in Harlem, the men’s voguing situates them within the framework of queer male spectacles. Also, as part of the film’s promotional campaign, the cast of Magic Mike XXL attended the 2015 LGBT pride parade in Los Angeles. The cynical may say they did so simply for the free publicity. But their willingness to embrace their sexualised roles in queer communities recognises a step forward in traditional ideas of masculinity, and a more fluid construction of the gaze.

But let’s be clear. The film primarily operates in a heteronormative framework whereby heterosexual women desire the men. Perhaps we should turn our attention not to who is afforded the look, but how the look is set up in the first place. In cinema, men are not to be looked at. To do so risks being feminised or homoeroticised; both run the risk of emasculation that traditional conceptualizations of masculinity cannot handle. Yet, here, the men offer up their bodies as spectacle, as something to be looked at. Of course, the men don’t embody the level of objectification conventionally embodied by women. For one, their bodies – all pecs, arms and abs – display the traits of the traditionally successful masculine body. As Richard Dyer claims in his essay, “Don’t Look Now,” “Muscularity is the sign of power-natural, achieved, phallic.” It is this, then, that even as we look, reminds us that these men are not passive objects, but hard, active, and, most crucially, masculine. For another, this passivity also refuses to extend to the narrative. As Mulvey claims, when objectified in cinema, woman “tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.” As the active protagonists on-screen and with key roles off-screen (the story is based on Tatum’s own life, and he has production roles in both movies), the men refuse to be simply passive objects of erotic contemplation.

But Magic Mike XXL is more subversive than it seems. Even as these seemingly traditional images of masculinity are renewed within the film, they are undercut by the free way in which the men offer their bodies as spectacle, as something to be looked at. As Tatum says in an interview, “We’re definitely trying to make [our stripping movie] a little different and a little bit less misogynistic. I’m not trying to get very meta about it all because at the end of the day, it’s just for fun.” And, ultimately, isn’t this what feminism is about? Sex is not sinful. When there’s mutual consent, enjoying it visually, aesthetically, and physically, is not sinful. Magic Mike XXL finally offers heterosexual women, if not anyone else, the space to enjoy this kind of sex and, if, as Tatum says, you can have fun while you’re at it, well, then that truly is a pleasure.

No, You Can’t Watch: The Queer Female Gaze on Screen

The desire to show a complex version of yourself seen with male characters in the Male Gaze, alongside a desire for a complex version of your partner seen with male recipients of desire in the Female Gaze, combines in the Queer Female Gaze to produce sexual and romantic relationships often rooted in friendship.

This guest post by Rowan Ellis appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

The Female Gaze, and scathing criticism of it, has come bursting into the world recently through Channing Tatum’s pecs. And not in an Aliens face-hugger way either (Magic Mike III anyone? No?). Magic Mike and its extra extra large sequel have been talked about as both a rare movie celebrating female sexuality, and as a prime example of feminist double standards. How can you complain about objectifying women’s bodies and then not criticise a film which seems to do the same to men? The whole debate was fascinating to me as a insider-outsider; sure I’m female, but I’m also a lesbian and so have very little interest in any part of Channing Tatum apart from his underrated comedic timing. I’ve talked before about the strange awkwardness of watching both Magic Mike films as a queer woman in the cinema (what are you doing with that spinning metal wheel of sparking fire, Mike? Do you want to burn your dick off? etc), so when this month’s Bitch Flicks theme was revealed to be the Female Gaze, I was ready and raring to go. But it turns out that the Female Gaze, and particularly the Queer Female Gaze, was a lot harder to pick through than I thought.

But let’s start at the beginning. Although the Male Gaze was a term coined in the 1970s, it was just a concrete name for an age old phenomenon. The Male Gaze is two-fold:

The sexual objectification of passive female characters.
More generally the tendency to default to male protagonists, points of view, and stories.

The Gaze can be seen literally as a gaze, the way the camera interacts with the women it looks on, doing things like introducing female characters by trailing slowly up their bodies rather than establishing them with their face and actions. This differing treatment of men and women can be seen to be both informed by a patriarchal social structure, but also to reinforce it. Women can be on screen in a sexual situation, and not be subject to the Male Gaze, provided it is plot-relevant and that they are not only there to be a one-dimensional character purely put there for men’s pleasure. Alice Eve’s controversial underwear scene in Star Trek Into Darkness would be a perfect example of how, although she was not a one-dimensional character in the film as a whole, she was given a pointlessly objectifying scene which established nothing about her character, and seemed oddly out of place. The scene was also an example of how the sexualisation of women on screen, as opposed to men, is often used to reduce their power or respect in some way, either by playing into the “whore as worthless” idea, or by making them physically vulnerable as happened with Carol in the film.

The Female Gaze, however, is a trickier subject, partly because its a newer phenomenon–as Transparent‘s Jill Soloway said last year, “We’re essentially inventing the female gaze right now.” Both women’s stories and their sexuality are much less likely to be the focus of screen time historically. Definitions, classic camera angles, a checklist of what the Female Gaze might be, are hard to find when only 29 percent of current movies have female protagonists, and all women creative teams are rarer than panda sex. Is The Female Gaze always found in films made by women, for women, or about women? And does that gaze have the same definition as the Male Gaze with the genders switched? Perhaps not. Is it really true that women don’t objectify men? That they always view them as complete and whole human beings? The popularity of the Chippendales suggests otherwise. And our old friend Magic Mike is surely the obvious example of that female sexuality in action, proving women’s sexual desires make them see men as objects just as much as men do to women in films.

However, when we look at the story of Magic Mike and his magic mic, the fact the main characters are strippers means the lack of clothes is plot dependant, and the films revolve around an exploration of the men’s interests, personalities, desires, and dreams. They are sexual, but they are also three-dimensional characters. Moreover, romantic comedies are always an example cited by critics of feminist film theory of movies which reduce men to merely a female fantasy. If that’s the truth, then women’s fantasies of men are a lot more full, positive, and respectful than men’s are of women. Men in romantic comedies aren’t just one-sided sexual beings; the appeal of them is hinged on their personal compatibility and often flawed realness as well. Hugh Grant made a career out of playing the soft-eyed Englishman, who bumbled along and stuttered over his words, hardly a paragon of sexual virility you might expect from the directly switched Male Gaze. Conversely, if women’s sexual pleasure and desire is depicted on screen, it is seen as much less acceptable than a man’s, particularly telling in the differences of age rating given to films that show male vs. female orgasms and oral sex.

If the Female Gaze is hard to pin down, then Queer Female Gaze is near impossible. What I mean specifically with that term is the Gaze we might be able to see in work produced for and about women who are attracted to women. Queer female characters in films made for and by end are almost always either packaged in the same sexually objectified way as straight women, or they are the butt of jokes as “ugly butch lesbians.” So although ostensibly it could be assumed the Queer Female Gaze would be identical or at least hugely similar to its male counterpart, in fact it cannot be mapped directly onto the Male Gaze for a few crucial reasons:

The number of films made for, by and about queer women in mainstream cinema is embarrassingly small, and is not compatible to that male default I mentioned earlier.
The sexual desires of queer women are different to that of straight men.
The male ownership of female bodies is something tied to male behaviour rather than an intrinsic reaction to female bodies by anyone who desires them.
Queer women are interested to see interesting women on film, meaning having women be solely sexual objects is not necessarily going to fly with us.

So maybe it’s something in-between, or something new entirely. Maybe, as I have come to believe over the last few weeks, it isn’t something which has a real definition or direction, simply because it doesn’t have a present or strong enough canonical tradition in media. Instead I’ve tried to look at current examples of media for and containing queer women, to see where it differs or intersects with the Male/Female Gazes.

As a queer woman it might seem to any men who are attracted to women, that I would love images of half naked oiled up women, because they do. But while they may just see the object of their desire, I have to also see myself. So when I see sexualised women on screen who are given no agency, plot or power, I don’t get anything positive from that. It feels unbelievably naive and worrying that someone who is for all intents and purposes a pliant sexual object could be genuinely and maturely desirable. This is the source of a long held observation in the queer world that “lesbian porn” is so obviously and inexplicable made for straight men. It also may be why I have never been able to come out to a male stranger who is trying to chat me up without him immediately asking for a threesome. I am infinitely more interested in women who are allowed to make decisions, tell their stories, control the narrative, in addition to being autonomous sexual beings, because that’s how I see myself, my friends, my partners.

Secondary issues that comes with the Male Gaze are problems like a lack of movies that show meaningful female friendship (as shown most simply through a quick look at how many films don’t pass the Bechdel Test; although films that pass don’t necessarily show female friendship, it’s pretty hard to find a film that fails the test that does). Shows with a focus on queer women, like Orange is the New Black or the web series Carmilla, also have a strong emphasis on female friendship alongside female sexual or romantic relationships. The desire to show a complex version of yourself seen with male characters in the Male Gaze, alongside a desire for a complex version of your partner seen with male recipients of desire in the Female Gaze, combines in the Queer Female Gaze to produce sexual and romantic relationships often rooted in friendship.

This is furthered by the prevalence of narratives in queer cinema about coming out and finding community, which can give a tentative and holistic treatment to attraction. In the quintessential lesbian teen movie But, I’m a Cheerleader, Graham and Megan begin as friends and develop parallel to Megan’s own acceptance of her sexuality. Their relationship is more than just sex, because it is so tied to her understanding of herself, in a way which values Graham far more than the Manic Pixie Dream Girls of the “young straight man finding himself through romance” narratives of the Male Gaze. The showing of intimate, dirty, casual or loving sex in any queer narrative does not remove the possibility of the women participating in this sex being fully imagined characters. The Gaze means female desire, both sexually and the desire to see herself present and whole on screen, and this is even more effective the more women you present for those queer female audience members to align themselves with.

Women can be seen on screen as sexual beings, without being sexual objects. Queer women’s position as both gazer and gazee give a brilliant opportunity to reject the tired reduction of female characters in and out of the fictional sheets. What remains to be see, as we make the slow journey towards mainstream queer media, is whether the defaults of The Male Gaze, with its dehumanising camera shots and need for a male presence on screen, will bleed into the Queer Female Gaze through what we take for granted as “just how cinema is made.”

Rowan Ellis is a British geek using her YouTube videos to critique films, TV, and books from a queer and feminist lens.

‘Jupiter Ascending’: Female-centric Fantasy That’s Not Quite Feminist

So yes, ‘Jupiter Ascending’ provides women and girls the “you’re secretly the most important person in the solar system” narrative that is so often granted to cishet white men, the demographic who already are treated as the most important people by virtue of the kyriarchy. What’s missing, however, is the part where Jupiter taps into her secret set of special skills.

Poster for 'Jupiter Ascending' — Poster for ‘Jupiter Ascending’

If you’re not on Tumblr, you might have entirely missed the existence of The Wachowskis’ space opera Jupiter Ascending. Bumped from last summer to a mercy-kill February release, it was panned by critics and ignored by audiences. Save the fannishly inclined, largely female Tumblr users who happen to populate my dashboard, who completely lost their minds over this movie. I blinked and missed its momentary theatrical release and had to wait for it on video to find out if it met the subculture hype. And I am here to report that Jupiter Ascending is a delightful cheesy sci-fi flick, if you’re into that sort of thing. And while it isn’t a feminist triumph in the way that Mad Max: Fury Road is (and even that movie’s feminism has been called into question), Jupiter Ascending is unusually suited to a female viewership, which is sadly still rather revolutionary, particularly for a genre flick.

Why does this spaceship look like a fancy mechanical fish? Why doesn't yours!? — Why does this spaceship look like a fancy mechanical fish? Why doesn’t yours!?

Gavia Baker-Whitlaw’s Daily Dot piece “Why Women Love Jupiter Ascending“ notes that its story “is the precise gender-flipped equivalent of all those movies where some weak-chinned rando turns out to be the Chosen One” usually with a hyper-competent and hot “Strong Female Character” acting as his guide through his Newly Discovered Destiny. In Jupiter Ascending, Mila Kunis’s Jupiter Jones is a mild-mannered housecleaner who discovers she is actually solar system royalty after Genetically Engineered Space Werewolf Channing Tatum rescues her from an alien attack. Jupiter finds that she is at the center of a war between three royal Jovian siblings (yes I just had to look up the demonym for Jupiter I love my life) who all seek to control Earth and its seven billion harvestable humans so they can rejuvenate their youth by bathing in Soylent Green Espom Salts. She has a claim to Earth because she is the reincarnation of their mother and is also immune to bee stings. Or something. (The intricacies of the plot are not important, I only recount them here because they amuse me.)

Bees don't sting solar system royalty for some reason. — Bees don’t sting solar system royalty for some reason.

So yes, Jupiter Ascending provides women and girls the “you’re secretly the most important person in the solar system” narrative that is so often granted to cishet white men, the demographic who already are treated as the most important people by virtue of the kyriarchy (you really need to be MORE important, cishet white dudes?). What’s missing, however, is the part where Jupiter taps into her secret set of special skills, as we see with our once-mundane male Chosen Ones from The Matrix‘s Neo to The Lego Movie‘s Emmett to Wanted‘s Whatever-James-McAvoy’s-character-was-named. She never eclipses the badassness of her Trinity-equivalent, the aforementioned Genetically-Engineered Space Werewolf, Caine Wise (one of the great joys of the film is when people call him “Wise” while he’s doing foolishly reckless things. I’m not sure if that was intentional). Caine needs to rescue Jupiter throughout the film; his preferred style of rescue is to give her a piggyback ride while he zooms around on his gravity-defying space rollerblades. If all these absurd details haven’t convinced you to watch this movie yet, I’m not sure what will. When she’s on her own, Jupiter’s “action” is largely about contract law.

Jupiter gets a lot of piggyback rides from Caine

Because Jupiter’s secret importance doesn’t come with previously untapped hyper-competence or the unique importance of her particular abilities, it is simply a royal birthright. She’s more along the lines of The Princess Diaries‘ Mia Thermopolis than Neo. And women aren’t really wanting for “you are actually a princess!” narratives. There are 30-odd Disney movies about that. Jupiter Ascending isn’t a power fantasy, it is a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Women already have "you're really a princess!" stories — Women already have “you’re really a princess!” stories

But it is still a fantasy for women in a big-budget sci fi movie, which is incredibly rare. Is that why Jupiter Ascending flopped at the box office, or at least why the studio lost confidence in it as a potential summer release? I suspect it has more to do with the current difficulty selling big movies without source material. If even the Wachowskis’ own Matrix trilogy (which provided the very namesake of Tasha Robinson’s Trinity Syndrome) couldn’t bring in a new era of original sci-fi blockbusters (the only two I can think of are Avatar and Pacific Rim), the failure of Jupiter Ascending seems foretold. So hopefully studios will focus on Jupiter Ascending‘s lack of source material rather than its female protagonist when they try to avoid making other movies that meet its fate. Then again, only basing movies on properties that already exist will perpetuate male-dominated stories. So we’re kinda screwed either way, which isn’t an unfamiliar position for feminist film fans.

Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax (that's the kind of character name you get with 'Jupiter Ascending') — Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax (that’s the kind of character name you get with *Jupiter Ascending*)

Jupiter Ascending might go on to be a cult classic, and if you like bizarre scifi you should help it get there. I didn’t even get into Academy Award Winner Eddie Redmayne’s astonishingly campy performance as Balem Abrasax, who prefers the cape-but-no-shirt look and only speaks in whispers and screams (in the alternate universe where Jupiter Ascending was released in Summer 2014, Michael Keaton gazes lovingly upon his Best Actor Oscar). While Jupiter Ascending deserves accolades for providing female-centric fantasy, it doesn’t go the distance to become a truly feminist film (it is certainly nine or ten notches below Mad Max: Fury Road, which doesn’t even meet the bar for some people). But while I can’t recommend Jupiter Ascending as a feminist film, I do recommend it as a fun film. They can’t all have Furiosa.

Robin Hitchcock is a Pittsburgh-based writer who sadly has been stung by bees.

Does Hating ‘Foxcatcher’ Mean I Hate Men?

‘Foxcatcher’ is very serious meditation on men and masculinities, male relationships, and the white male experience of the class system in America. And I am so fucking bored with those subjects, even when they aren’t presented with a deliberately slow pace, sterile tone, and distracting amounts of face putty.

Channing Tatum and Steve Carell in 'Foxcatcher' — Channing Tatum and Steve Carell in *Foxcatcher*

Have you heard of “misandry”? If you read un-moderated comments on feminist websites you probably have. Misandry is the theoretical inverse of misogyny, so a systematic prejudice against and hatred of men. In a world chock full of systematic prejudices and hatreds, this is maybe the ONE form of oppression that doesn’t exist. Misandry is the unicorn of the kyriarchy: it isn’t real, but people still won’t shut up about it.

Because misandry is bogus, I know I can’t be a misandrist. But I really, really didn’t like Foxcatcher, a widely acclaimed film, and in my efforts to articulate why, the best I’ve really got is, “Ugh, men.”

Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo in 'Foxcatcher' — Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo having dudely emotions in *Foxcatcher*

Foxcatcher is very serious meditation on men and masculinities, male relationships, and the white male experience of the class system in America. And I am so fucking bored with those subjects, even when they aren’t presented with a deliberately slow pace, sterile tone, and distracting amounts of face putty.

And I KNOW that masculinity is a feminist issue, and that the narrative of male greatness that shapes the neuroses of Steve Carell’s John Du Pont and Channing Tatum’s Mark Schultz is a byproduct of the patriarchy. I also feel that as a feminist I should also have some interest in whatever this movie was trying to say about the psychosexual component to their relationship. (Have you ever noticed that a lot of wrestling holds look like sex positions? Because Foxcatcher would like to make sure you are aware of this. Really, absolutely, 100 percent clear. WRESTLING LOOKS LIKE BONING, YOU GUYS. DUDES BONING. IN A GAY WAY.)

Just to be clear: wrestling at times presents images that resemble those of two men having sexual intercourse.

But I’m just so boooooooored by it. I’m tired of movies that are all about dudes, and movies that act like their characters’ very dudehood is the most interesting possible thing about them. I wasn’t planning on commenting on the controversy regarding Foxcatcher‘s departures from the facts of its true crime story, but I do think it is worth noting that John Du Pont’s schizophrenia was not included in the film. Maybe they were just trying to avoid the hoary cliche of mental illness as a catalyst for murder? (So they went with the incredibly novel repressed homosexuality motive instead… hm.) Or was mental illness just not MANLY enough of a subject for Foxcatcher?

John Du Pont's paranoid schizophrenia gets edited out of the story but that NOSE is VITAL to who the man really and truly was. — John Du Pont’s paranoid schizophrenia gets edited out of the story, but that nose is VITAL to who the man really and truly was.

One of the first movies I reviewed for Bitch Flicks was Moneyball, also from Foxcatcher director Bennett Miller. It is another movie that is almost entirely about dudes. And at that time, I said:

Which is fine! There are stories, stories worth telling, that are just about men. (Likewise, there are stories worth telling that only involve women, but it’s hard to get Hollywood to bankroll those.) Telling a story about men in a men’s world isn’t inherently sexist.

Hmm, 2012 Robin sounds a lot mellower than 2015 Robin.

But I ALSO said in my Moneyball review that “I think it is fair to subject whatever scraps of portrayal of women we get in these male-dominated films to a slightly higher scrutiny.”

John Du Pont's mommy didn't hug him enough. — John Du Pont’s mommy didn’t hug him enough.

Well, this will be impossible with Foxcatcher, because it has exactly three female characters: 1) Vanessa Redgrave as Du Pont’s Ice Queen Mom (another example of the cutting-edge psychology Foxcatcher prefers to exploring the actual diagnosed condition Du Pont had), 2) Sienna Miller as Mom Jeans, and 3) The Maid.

Wait, I misspoke when I said there were three female characters (and not because one of Dave Schultz’s kids was a girl). There are three women (and one girl) in Foxcatcher. There are no female characters.

Which, like 2012 Robin said, is maybe OK. And maybe 2015 Robin IS a misandrist for finding Foxcatcher’s fascination with masculinity boring at best and annoying at worst. (No, I’m not. Misandry isn’t real.) But I need a movie by and about women STAT as a palette cleanser. Please offer suggestions in the comments!

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who does not actually hate men. In fact, she lives with a man, works with men, and even allows men to ride in the same elevator car as her.

’22 Jump Street’ is That Awkward Moment When You Want to be Progressive and Don’t Know How

’22 Jump Street’ alternately endorses and makes fun of the idea that we should be sensitive, tolerant people, but it isn’t mean-spirited or offensive – it’s just sort of harmlessly dumb.

Written by Katherine Murray.

22 Jump Street alternately endorses and makes fun of the idea that we should be sensitive, tolerant people, but it isn’t mean-spirited or offensive – it’s just sort of harmlessly dumb.

The premise of 22 Jump Street is that the characters from 21 Jump Street — two undercover cops played by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill – have to do the exact same thing they did in the first movie, but with a bigger budget, and in a slightly different setting. I’m not being sarcastic – that’s actually the brief they get from their Captain at the start of the movie, because 22 Jump Street is one long, self-referential joke about making a half-assed sequel.

In this particular case, the cops, who went undercover as high school students in 21 Jump Street, are now undercover as college students. There are jokes about college, jokes about movies, and jokes about how the characters look really old, but the dominant theme in the movie is that it, and its characters, try really hard to be not homophobic, not sexist, not racist… and don’t always figure out how.

The most obvious example of this, and the one that’s been discussed the most often in reviews, is that the friendship between Tatum and Hill’s characters – Jenko and Schmidt – plays out as if it’s a romance. Jenko becomes friends with a football player, making Schmidt jealous, and leading them to fight about whether they should split up and “investigate different people.” There’s a sad musical montage while they think about how much they miss each other, before they agree to team up again as “a one-time thing.” When they reconcile, in the end, Jenko’s football player friend looks on with a mixture of joy and regret, declaring, “That’s who he should be with!”

Despite their cover story being that they’re brothers, and the fact that Schmidt starts dating a woman, other people mistake them for a couple, too. A school counselor makes them hold hands and attend couple’s therapy; some drug dealers think they’re having oral sex during a bust.

The movie is trying hard to be not homophobic – there’s even a part where Jenko, who’s forced to take a seminar on human sexuality, explains why you can’t use gay slurs – but, when you boil it down, the joke is still, “They seem gay, but they’re not!”

After a long period of time where movies couldn’t allude to homosexuality at all, and a shorter period of time where they could only do it in a derogatory or pejorative way, we’re now in a place where mainstream movies are totally cool with joking that their leading men are gay… as long as it’s clear that they don’t have gay sex. It’s a step forward, for sure, and you can argue that 22 Jump Street is just making fun of the homoerotic subtext that’s already present in buddy cop movies, but the joke is still based on the idea that actually being gay is a bridge that can never be crossed.

This kind of humor has gotten more and more prevalent as public acceptance toward the LGBT community has increased. Homosexuality is no longer something so taboo that we can’t even talk about it – and it’s no longer a career killer for heterosexual actors to play a gay character, or to joke about their masculinity. “They seem gay, but they’re not!” has shown up in R-rated comedies, and most of the recent Sherlock Holmes adaptations – including the Robert Downey Jr. movies, House, and, most notably, BBC’s Sherlock – and the punch line is always the same: “Ha ha ha. This looks gay, and we’re fine with looking gay – and doesn’t it reflect well on us, that we’re not afraid to look gay – but, just so you know, we’re not gay.”

If you were watching a movie or TV show about a man and woman who really, really acted like a couple, and people mistook them for a couple, and there were constantly jokes introducing the idea that they should be a couple, chances are they’d end up as a couple. Usually, the point of making those sorts of observations in the early part of a movie or series is to plant the idea in the audience’s mind that the characters should get together, and introduce tension about whether or not they will. It’s the same principle as We’re the Millers, where Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis pretend to be married as part of con, but end up falling in love. Or the second season of Orange is the New Black, where Larry and Polly are mistaken for a couple, and it makes them realize that they should be one. Or even the later seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy and her mortal enemy, Spike, fall under a spell that makes them act like they’re in love, which leads to them actually falling in love.

With 22 Jump Street and its contemporaries, we’re under no illusion that the story will resolve itself that way. In fact, part of the point of the joke is that we take for granted that it won’t. That’s what makes it a “safe” joke to tell. That doesn’t offend me, and I understand that joking about things in a non-judgemental way can be a step toward acceptance. The movie just isn’t as progressive as it seems to want to be.

Speaking of things that aren’t as progressive as they seem to want to be, 22 Jump Street, intentionally or not, dramatizes the same type of struggle in Schmidt. While the movie is awkwardly trying to avoid homophobia without being sure what to do, Schmidt awkwardly tries to avoid being sexist or racist, with mixed and confusing results.

There’s a running joke in the film where he tries to suck up to the Captain (played by Ice Cube) by saying what he clearly thinks are appropriately sensitive things about race. When the Captain flips out and starts yelling for the waiter in a restaurant, Schmidt defends him by saying, “He’s black! He’s been through a lot!” When the case is initially explained to him – that a black woman died after taking drugs sold to her by a white man – Schmidt comments that’s it’s refreshing to have a black victim, and that the fact that she’s black makes him care so much more. Jenko corrects him that he means to say he cares equally, but Schmidt’s adamant that he cares more.

In both cases, everyone else in the scene is confused or annoyed by his comments, and the joke seems to be that he’s trying too hard to seem sensitive without knowing how to go about it. (In the second case, the joke might also be that people who criticize casting decisions in movies are similarly misguided about it).

Schmidt’s also confused about how to relate to women. One of the antagonists in the movie is his girlfriend’s roommate, Mercedes (played by Jillian Bell). Her idea of conversation is to crack deadpan jokes about his age, even when they’re in life or death situations (which is funny), and, at one point, they get into a fistfight, where he’s not sure if it’s okay to hit her. She yells at him that, if he saw her as a person, he’d punch her in the face, and he does it, but he feels really awkward and uncomfortable. (There’s also an improvised moment where they become confused about whether they’re going to kiss during the fight.)

The fistfight scene stands out as one that captures Schmidt and 22 Jump Street’s dilemma pretty clearly – as a reasonably progressive straight, white guy, he wants to do the right thing and not be racist, sexist, or homophobic, but he has no idea what he is and isn’t supposed to do and say. The absurdity of a situation where, in order to be feminist, you have to punch a woman in the face sums up the conflict pretty clearly – in this brave new world we live in, well-meaning people still get confused about how they’re supposed to behave.

The film also has less thoughtful sequences. Schmidt hooks up with a woman named Maya, and we’re supposed to laugh at the idea that he wants to have a relationship while she’s looking for a one night stand (because women are supposed to want relationships, and men are supposed to want one night stands, get it?). He does the walk of shame in the morning, where it appears that he’s the only man among a group of women, and a later scene in the movie follows this up by showing us that Schmidt is now on a first name basis with the same women (implicitly because he’s done this so often that they’ve all gotten to know each other).

The joke “Schmidt makes friends with the other people doing the walk of shame, because he does it all the time” is funny in itself, but Jonah Hill, for some reason, adopts a more effeminate posture and delivery during those scenes, making the joke more like, “Schmidt’s become one of the girls!” Which is funny because… it’s emasculating? Like being gay?

I honestly don’t know.

22 Jump Street exists in a sort of no-man’s-land where we don’t want to be bigoted or hateful, but where even the least homophobic person in the world can reach for a gay slur in anger, and where, even a movie that’s trying to be progressive can reach for jokes that tacitly confirm the same stereotypes it’s opposing. It’s a snapshot of where mainstream culture is, now, where we want to be better, and thoughtful, and kind, but we haven’t dismantled the language that came before. We’re in a transitional stage between the generations that would find this movie offensively tolerant, and those that will find it offensively backward.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

Women in Sports Week: Bend It Like Bynes: Ambivalent Empowerment in ‘She’s the Man’

Everybody has a secret …

This is a guest post by Caitlin Moran.

The first time I saw She’s the Man, I was in the middle of a 23-hour band trip bus ride, and probably in the first stages of delirium. I had low expectations for the movie, and even lower expectations for what remained of my sanity—and yet, when one of the chaperones popped in the She’s the Man DVD, I found myself loving it. I was sitting next to my best friend and varsity soccer teammate, and we were both loopy enough from extended time on the road to enjoy the goofier moments of the movie while still reveling in the extended soccer scenes. Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I returned to the movie seven years later to examine its depiction of high school sports—watching Amanda Bynes change clothes and genders on a Spin the Apple carnival ride can only be funny so many times, right? (Wrong—I will never not laugh at that scene.) But whether the rest of the movie would uphold the integrity of the female athlete was a different story altogether.

Justin and the rest of the Cornwall boys. You’re gonna regret this, bro.

Like that other perennial high school favorite set on an unbelievably beautiful campus, She’s the Man is based loosely—loosely—on Shakespeare, in this case Twelfth Night. Bynes plays Viola Hastings, a high school soccer star, living out the last days of summer playing the beautiful game with beautiful people, including her boyfriend Justin (Robert Hoffman), on the beach. But the start of school brings unwelcome surprises: in the first ten minutes of the movie, Viola and her teammates discover that their school, Cornwall Prep, has eliminated the girls soccer team, leaving them without a way to showcase their skills for prospective college scouts. (Viola harbors dreams of wearing the Carolina blue at UNC Chapel Hill, no doubt a nod to the women’s soccer legends like Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly, among others, who played there.) If this were a very different movie, Viola would have brought a Title IX claim against Cornwall, and we would have been treated to courtroom montages instead of training scenes. But Viola takes a different route: after Justin laughs in her face at the idea of the girls trying out for the boys’ team—and gets himself epically dumped—Viola hatches a plan to impersonate her twin brother Sebastian (secretly in London with his bandmates) at rival high school Illyria, make the boys’ soccer team there, and beat Justin at his own game. Literally.

Hell hath no fury like a girls soccer team scorned

Complications ensue, as they must. Viola-as-Sebastian finds herself in the middle of a messy love triangle between her hunky roommate Duke (Channing Tatum, at his most bro-with-a-heart-of-gold) and Duke’s object of affection, Olivia (Laura Ramsey), who begins falling for “Sebastian” during intimate chats over dissected animals in science lab. Circling this sticky wicket are Monique (Alexandra Breckinridge), the real Sebastian’s horrid girlfriend who refuses to be dumped, and Viola’s mother (Lynda Byrd), who cherishes dreams of seeing her little tomboy walk across the stage as a debutante. Oh, and there’s a tarantula.

Even in the midst of all the hullabaloo, the movie does manage to devote a fair amount of time to soccer. Viola tries out for the boys’ team and makes second string, after informing Coach Dinklage, played by real-life footballer/testicle-grabber Vinnie Jones, that she is unable to play on the “skins” team in shirts v. skins because she is “allergic to the sun”—and yes, you can buy that phrase on a hoodie. Second string, however, isn’t good enough to get Viola on the field against Cornwall, so she strikes a bargain with Duke: he’ll help her up her game enough to make first string in time for the Cornwall game, and she’ll convince Olivia to give Duke a date. They both succeed, but when the real Sebastian returns from London the night before the big game, Viola’s tangled web begins to unravel. But still—I’m sure you can guess where this is going, in the end, right down to the final game-deciding penalty kick awarded to Viola against—surprise!—Cornwall goalie Justin.

Who is that handsome fellow?

Viola’s conquest of her gross ex is facilitated through this penalty kick, on a pitch where the winners and losers are clearly delineated. This isn’t a symbolic victory: Viola literally puts the winning point on the board. Unlike the weak, intolerable Monique, who is destined to storm in and out of scenes in a constant state of prissy frustration, Viola uses soccer to transcend her status as a girl, which otherwise would mark her as an idolized object of desire (Olivia), a walking punchline (her unfortunately headgeared classmate Eunice), or tokens of sexual conquest (her former teammates Kia and Yvonne, who pretend to be her desperate exes to increase her cred with the Illyria boys). Through her athletic talent, Viola gets to vanquish the boy who insulted and belittled her on a playing field where the subsequent victors are easily recognizable.

Amanda Bynes as Viola in She’s the Man

Interestingly, although Justin almost immediately becomes the villain who Viola must overcome, it didn’t start out that way. In fact, the first lines of the movie are Justin’s, emphatically celebrating Viola’s goal during the beach soccer game, before telling her that she’s better than half the guys on his team. Here is a perfect example of the affirming boyfriend that sunny, sassy Viola deserves. It’s only when Viola threatens to encroach on Justin’s (literal) turf that he changes his tune, agreeing with Cornwall coach Pistonek that girls can’t play sports at the same level as boys. Obviously we’re meant to revel in the downfall caused by his misogyny, and I certainly did, but we’re also meant to celebrate the willingness of Duke—and Coach Dinklage—to give Viola a spot on the team despite her gender once she’s found out. Yet I find myself unable to believe that the eminently “no homo” Duke we met in the first half hour of the movie would have reacted any differently than Justin did, if he knew that “Sebastian” was a girl all along.

In the end, She’s the Man is ambivalent about the role of soccer in Viola’s life. On one hand, Viola does prove that she can play with the boys, and at times even exceed them. She conquers Justin and Coach Pistonek, who doubted and mocked her. But everything about her soccer career is irreparably tangled up with her relationships with boys. When she decides to impersonate her brother, she’s doing it just to stick it to Justin—no UNC Chapel Hill scouts will come to see her as a boy. Even the side volley she uses to score on Justin in the final game wouldn’t have been possible without a setup from Duke (who taught her the move in the first place).

Viola (aka Sebastian) hanging with the guys

The last shot of the movie shows Viola and Duke together on the field in Illyria red, seemingly bearing out Coach Dinklage’s rather touching commitment to equality on the pitch. But whether this equality can be sustained long term—especially on a team of guys who were so impressed when Viola-as-Sebastian cruelly humiliated Monique in front of an entire restaurant—remains to be seen. And even if it can be, what happens to the rest of Viola’s former teammates, still stuck at Cornwall without a team or a twin brother to impersonate? Don’t they deserve a revenge penalty kick as well? For real-life Violas—and Kias and Yvonnes—the importance of Title IX protection can’t be overstated. What the movie could have done was show that all female athletes—not just the ones good enough to play with the boys—deserve their day on the pitch. Perhaps there will be a sequel—She’s the Man: Title IX Lawsuit. Now that’s a sports movie I would pay to see.

Caitlin Moran is a textbook editor with a penchant for sassy footnotes. After spending many years battling Western New York winters, she now lives in Queens with a cat and too many books for her apartment. Her work has appeared in Post Road, Pleiades, Pure Francis, and the Women’s Media Center blog.

"Would You Have Treated Her Differently If She Was a Man?": A Review of ‘Side Effects’

Movie poster for Side Effects

Written by Stephanie Rogers. Includes massive spoilers. Massive.

When I saw Side Effects about a month ago, I found myself eye-rolling my way through the entire second half of the film. I liked the first half, mostly because I like looking at Channing Tatum, but when he left the film, so did my desire to stay. As is almost always the case with me, if I spend too much time thinking about a movie, I usually decide that I 50% loved it and 50% hated it and could really go either way in my review of it. Since (I think) I mostly hated this one, allow me to illustrate those reasons first.

First, am I really supposed to take seriously an indictment of Big Pharma when Rolling Rock product placement shows up every five seconds? Honestly, if Jude Law had turned out to be a scheming Big Alcohol Lobbyist instead of a super likeable psychiatrist, I would’ve thought, “What a not-that-surprising twist!” I was just waiting for Jude Law to smile his Jude Law smile into the camera and say, “Why take Ablixa when you can numb your psychological pain with Rolling Rock!”

In addition to undercutting its attempt to take down the American Corporation Shitshow, the film manages to also undercut its initial critique of Rich White Dudes Ruining the Universe. How? The old-fashioned way: by throwing a couple of manipulative bitches in there to make Rich White Dudes sympathetic.

Oh no, Martin, what have you done?!

If you hate spoilers, for real stop reading now; I’m about to ruin EVERYTHING.

So, Rooney Mara plays Emily Taylor and fakes her suicidal depression so convincingly that I felt horrified when I realized the scam. I spent a significant part of that first half of the film identifying with Emily—her search for the right medications and dealing with their inevitable shitty side effects; her public crying jags, her complete lack of self-care, the desire to set up shop under the fucking covers forever—I mean, major depressive episodes are serious business. And her depression makes sense. Side Effects shows in flashbacks how her once Rich White Dude husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), ended up in prison for five years because of an insider trading scandal. The juxtaposition of their old life together—a giant mansion-esque home, expensive cars, 2000-dollar bottles of wine poured into diamond-coated glasses while Emily and Martin play doubles tennis in slow motion (not really)—makes their new tiny apartment and that whole scraping-by-for-cash thing that happens in the rest of Amurica look absolutely mortifying by comparison. I felt pretty bad for her.

SINGLE TEAR

But then Jude Law (Dr. Banks) rolls in to save the day! I seriously couldn’t get over the niceness of this dude. He first meets Emily when he’s the on-call doctor in the ER after she deliberately drives her car into a fucking parking garage wall. They talk for a minute, and he eventually agrees to see her again on an outpatient basis instead of sending her to a mental hospital for her suicide attempt. He then prescribes a few medications that unsuccessfully treat her “depression” before settling on a newly developed drug, Ablixa, which comes with an unmentioned sleepwalking side effect. (Hi, Ambien lawsuits!) Of course murder ensues because SIDE EFFECTS, and shit gets real.

I hated pretty much everything after this.

Rich White Dude being all sympathetic and nice

In general, I enjoy watching the (albeit rare) punishment of Rich White Dudes onscreen, especially given that this film takes place during one of the worst economic downturns in Amurican History, and I hope we can all agree that Rich White Dudes caused it and never suffered any actual real-life consequences. Unfortunately, Side Effects wants us to feel bad for these Rich White Dudes and successfully accomplishes that. Because these are the NICEST RICH WHITE DUDES EVAR. Like, Channing Tatum paid his dues. He went to prison and got out and spent the rest of his five minutes in the film apologizing incessantly for ruining his wife’s life. He took her to the doctor and tried to understand her depression and how best to care for her. By the time Emily pretended to sleepwalk a knife through his kidneys, I FUCKING LIKED HIM.

And poor Jude Law! Seriously, this bro made about zero questionable decisions in the first half of the film—other than being reasonably shitfaced on Rolling Rock during all his interactions—so he deserves about zero of the bad things that happen to him at the hands of Emily and her partner in crime (and previous psychiatrist) Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones). I mean, look at him:

Why are they doing this to Jude Law?!

SERIOUSLY WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS TO JUDE LAW?! Turns out, Dr. Siebert and Emily wanted to get White-Dude Rich themselves! And in order to make that happen, they bought a shitload of stock in the Ablixa competitor, then tanked the Ablixa stock by blaming it for causing murder and mayhem. SIDE EFFECTS. Or something along those lines—my stock situation consists of a 401K from a job I lost in 1999, and I just keep letting it sit there because I’m not an adult yet. They did somethin’ real bad with stocks & stuff, is what I’m sayin’.

So, to recap my recap, in the process of Getting Rich or Dying Trying, these two ladies—in addition to, you know, committing murder, doing some questionable stock market shit, perjuring themselves in court, making a mockery of actual mental illness, and mind-fucking every person they come in contact with—ruin poor Jude Law’s life for no reason. He prescribed the Ablixa, after all. Does it matter that when Emily first “complained” of sleepwalking side effects he immediately said STOP TAKING IT? Nope. Does it matter that he dropped everything to console Emily every time she needed his help, even when she showed up looking like a stalker during his lunch date with his girlfriend-wife? Nope. Does it matter that he remained a staunch ally on her behalf throughout her entire murder trial? Nope. His medical practice crumbles; he loses patients; and his girlfriend-wife leaves him. Now all we’ve got is Jude in his apartment with the Rolling Rock, you know? I’ve never seen a more sympathetic character onscreen.

Dr. Banks in the process of unraveling the tricky scheme

Luckily he’s a Nice Guy™ so he eventually unravels the tricky scheme and of course manages to outsmart the ladies, who, in addition to being total assholes also happen to be—wait for it—LOVERS. So much duh right now, right? Like, could this film have worked at all if Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rooney Mara didn’t have a hot make out scene for no reason? FUCK NO IT COULDN’T HAVE.

Emily seducing Dr. Seibert because … ?

Now, let me take a step back and talk about the one part I managed to not hate.

Once the Dr. Banks/Jude Law medical practice begins its downward spiral, one of his colleagues asks to speak with him. It’s a Rich White Dude, too! He and Dr. Banks and the audience have yet to figure out that this entire situation is a hilarious-suicidal-depression-not-really scheme. His colleague, concerned for how this Ablixa sleepwalking murder incident will impact him, looks at Dr. Banks and says, “Would you have treated her differently if she was a man?” Dr. Banks, appalled, refutes this and maintains his stance that he prescribed Ablixa only when other medications failed to effectively treat Emily’s depression. It’s convincing enough, but it got me wondering.

Catherine Zeta-Jones as The Evil Dr. Siebert

Is there any way in hell a man could’ve pulled this off the way Emily did? The success of this scheme relies mainly on one thing: believability. Dr. Banks needs to believe her. He needs to believe she’s suicidal. He needs to believe the medications he initially prescribed for her didn’t work. He needs to believe her depression is severe enough to warrant prescribing an experimental drug. Most importantly, he needs to believe Emily doesn’t require hospitalization while somehow also believing she isn’t a danger to others. Essentially, the success of this scheme relies on what is commonly referred to in feminism and in other intelligent –ism groups as Medical Sexism.

Dr. Banks knows what’s up. Finally.

BOOM—I guess I don’t entirely hate you, Side Effects.

Medical Sexism exists because doctors and other members of the medical community often dismiss women’s very real physical symptoms as psychological. For instance, a woman experiencing shortness of breath is more likely to receive an anxiety diagnosis than a man with similar symptoms, who might be referred for more tests to rule out stuff like, oh I don’t know, SERIOUS HEART PROBLEMS. This is some documented shit—with statistics to back it up and everything—and it has a lot to do with that whole HYSTERIA and Bitches Be Crazy thing still hanging around from the 19th century.

So, when Rich White Dude colleague asks Dr. Banks, “Would you have treated her differently if she was a man?” the correct answer, Dr. Banks, is “FUCK YUS I WOULD HAVE.” The reality is that Emily looked like a drugged, mopey, fragile, broken little girl, and Dr. Banks wanted to swoop in and touch her tiny hand and look into her watery eyes and say, “I can help you.” I dare a dude to throw his Honda Civic in drive and smash into a fucking cement wall. How long do you think it would take for Dr. Banks to personally roll Ol’ Dude’s ass up to the Bellevue Psychiatric Ward strapped to a fucking gurney?

Dr. Banks didn’t do that with Emily because, in his eyes, she looked like a sopping, hysterical lady-mess that The Lord Our God placed on this earth for him to fix all by hisself! And as a result, he accidentally glossed over Emily’s I’mma Murder My Husband situation. And you just know if it had been Ol’ Dude in the Honda Civic instead of Emily, he’d be failing the fuck out of The Dr. Banks “Is This Bro a Homicidal Maniac?” Test.

Okay, maybe THIS was a questionable decision, Dr. Banks

So should I call this a cautionary tale? Like, maybe Soderbergh’s all, “Listen. You should never let a woman’s supposed suicidal depression mask that bitch’s killing instinct.” Or maybe he’s all, “Listen. Stop Medical Sexism Now! Or Else!” I don’t know. But the simple fact that the Rich White Dude colleague spoke up about Emily’s gender, and how it might’ve impacted Dr. Banks’ treatment decisions, gives Side Effects a touch of complexity that it most certainly lacks otherwise.

Of course, thinking so much about the correct answer to “Would you have treated her differently if she was a man?” got me thinking about the correct answer to “Would you have hated this movie if it were about two men?” And then I laughed for ten minutes and choked from not breathing because this ludicrous shit became the plot of my new movie:

A man named Tommy Bronson reunites with his wife after her five-year stint in prison for insider trading. He becomes depressed and attempts suicide; after all, his wife lost their life savings and forced him to move into a small apartment where he struggled to make ends meet. He begins seeing a psychiatrist—Dr. Sheila Nori—after his first suicide attempt, and Dr. Nori agrees to see him as an outpatient, even though he’s clearly a danger to himself and possibly others. She puts him on an experimental new drug that causes Tommy to sleepwalk. He mentions it to Dr. Nori who immediately says, “You should stop taking the drug.” When he refuses—because his sex life is so much better now!—Dr. Nori drops the subject. Little does Dr. Nori know that Tommy is planning to revenge-murder his wife in a Sleepwalking While Stabbing Event.

Dr. Nori stands by Tommy after the murder, but soon, Dr. Nori’s life starts to crumble. Her medical practice loses business; her colleagues question her ethics; her boyfriend-husband leaves her and takes the kid, too. She sits in her apartment alone, drinking Rolling Rock in the dark. Eventually, she puts some clues together and discovers that Tommy and his past psychiatrist, Dr. John Lerner, had planned the whole thing! And also, they’re lovers! She finds a way to ruin both their lives by having Tommy seduce John in the hopes that John will spill the beans because—get this—Tommy is wearing a wire! They get jail time and/or life in an asylum. Tommy and John fucked with the wrong shrink. (That’s the tagline.)

The end.