Are We Living in the Golden Age of Male Objectification? -- Vulture - 0 views
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As revolutions go, the movie industry learning to exploit their male movie stars is more a matter of fairness than real upheaval. It's not like women are suddenly not being objectified; now it's just objectification for all. But if the upshot is a slight widening of the traditional Hollywood gaze, a recognition that all sorts of audiences are looking for tawdry thrills at the movies — not to mention, more movies about male strippers with hearts, and asses, of gold — how is that not progress?
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For decades, while film and television have gotten progressively racier, the objects of the camera's increasingly lurid gaze had largely been women. The reasons for this are so unofficially official they're like unwritten laws, habits that have been codified into "common sense" even if they don't make much sense: Hollywood's a boys' club and male audiences want sex and violence, while women want hearts and flowers. So women are lusted after by the cameras, while audiences looking for a little bit of dude to ogle had to be content with tame rom-coms, subtext, and the dreaded Comedy Penis (see: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Observe and Report, Bruno etc.).
But no more! The Summer of 2011 officially became the summer that the male gaze was reflected back at itself - and with enthusiasm! In the summer's superhero movies, a supremely buff body became part of what made these heroes so super. The Captain America trailer had Dominic Cooper doing the old look-over-the-top-of-my-sunglasses move to get a load of the newly pumped up Chris Evans. In Thor, Kat Dennings's audience-surrogate character spends half the movie talking about how nutso everything is and the other half pointing out that this blond god from the heavens is massively pumped. Fourteen years ago, America lost it when Batman's costume included rubber nipples. Now we've got a Spider-Man whose costume lifts and separates.
