Overanalyzing Cutthroat Island
Ordinarily, I really dislike pirate/sinbad/adventure-on-the-high-seas movies. I'm not sure why, because if you take the same stories and put them in outer space, I like them. Go figure. Just to enhance this peculiarity, the one pirate movie I really do like is Cutthroat Island.
I watched it when it first came out, then forgot about its existence until I happened to see it on the shelf at my ex's house. I promptly borrowed it, watched it, and loved it all over again. I suppose it helps that I think Geena Davis is Da Hotsa, and Geena Davis asdominatrixass-kicking pirate drives me wild. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this movie was a box-office disaster, and a great many people hate it very much.
I was talking with Irene (my ex) about this later, and wondered what made people react against the movie so much. Granted, it's a fairly shallow action movie, but I always thought people liked that, and the action sequences are very well done.
"It's sexism," Irene said. "people can't handle a female pirate antihero." I'm not the type to immediately leap to conclusions like that, so I grilled her a little more. "What about Lara Croft?" I asked.
"But Lara is all woman. She just happens to kick ass. She's designed to embody the sexual fantasy of every pubescent boy -- complete with ridiculously oversized tits. She acts like a woman, walks like a woman, and talks like a woman. Morgan Adams acts like a man, walks like a man, and talks like a man. The very first scene in the movie even shows that she fucks like a man. That's what people can't handle. If they made Cutthroat Island exactly the same, but with a male lead character, it would have been a hit."
The more I think about this, the more I think she might be right. The kicker for me is what seems to be the chief complaint about the movie: the action sequences are so extreme as to be physically impossible. This is an odd assertion, as the exact same thing is true of, oh, just about every action movie ever made. Perhaps what people find impossible is not the sequences themselves, but that a male avatar in a female body is performing them.
I watched it when it first came out, then forgot about its existence until I happened to see it on the shelf at my ex's house. I promptly borrowed it, watched it, and loved it all over again. I suppose it helps that I think Geena Davis is Da Hotsa, and Geena Davis as
I was talking with Irene (my ex) about this later, and wondered what made people react against the movie so much. Granted, it's a fairly shallow action movie, but I always thought people liked that, and the action sequences are very well done.
"It's sexism," Irene said. "people can't handle a female pirate antihero." I'm not the type to immediately leap to conclusions like that, so I grilled her a little more. "What about Lara Croft?" I asked.
"But Lara is all woman. She just happens to kick ass. She's designed to embody the sexual fantasy of every pubescent boy -- complete with ridiculously oversized tits. She acts like a woman, walks like a woman, and talks like a woman. Morgan Adams acts like a man, walks like a man, and talks like a man. The very first scene in the movie even shows that she fucks like a man. That's what people can't handle. If they made Cutthroat Island exactly the same, but with a male lead character, it would have been a hit."
The more I think about this, the more I think she might be right. The kicker for me is what seems to be the chief complaint about the movie: the action sequences are so extreme as to be physically impossible. This is an odd assertion, as the exact same thing is true of, oh, just about every action movie ever made. Perhaps what people find impossible is not the sequences themselves, but that a male avatar in a female body is performing them.
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