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canardroublard · 5 years

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TMFU, Gaby’s fashion, and some feminist film analysis

Back when I slapped together a reblog post about the men’s fashion in The Man From UNCLE in between physio appointments, which somehow got like way more notes than I ever really expected or even wanted, I didn’t address the fashion of the lead female character, Gaby. It was outside the scope of the OP, and I didn’t feel like I had anything new or interesting to say about Gaby’s fashion, or lack thereof.

(My beta says those earrings are the ugliest thing ever. I disagree. It’s a wonder we’re still friends)

Anyways, we see only one brief scene of Gaby in her own street clothes, and a slightly longer sequence of her in her work clothes. The rest of the film, she is wearing clothes chosen for her by Illya. Saying “we just don’t have enough info” is a perfectly reasonable approach to this. So this was the other reason I had no intention of making this post.

But then people started getting interested. Someone reblogged commenting about Gaby’s fashion, and I discovered that I have very strong opinions about something I’d previously claimed was unknowable, and it made me wonder what was going on in my brain.

Then I talked to some other TMFU friends who all seemed interested in what I assumed was common knowledge/nothing unique. So, they may have been feigning interest out of politeness, but it activated the art history side of my brain, and here we are now!

The boring stuff but please read this

I am not attempting to tell anyone how to interpret this film. I am not even trying to change people’s minds or persuade them to my thinking. All I am doing is sharing my thought process. I wasn’t even going to do this for Gaby until people asked. To this end, please don’t attempt to argue with me about this. I don’t want to argue. I won’t respond to it. If you disagree, then please, just move along.

And I’m going to remind people that I love TMFU. I love this movie so much it hurts. Why am I putting this reminder here? Because I am about to apply some critical analysis to it, and in places this will be cynical, and it will not always look kindly on the film. If you just want to exist in a happy “I love TMFU!” bubble and not hear anything less than 100% positive about the film (which is a totally valid choice, I don’t fault anyone for that), then don’t read. But don’t yell at me for being mean or criticizing the film, because I warned you.

Tldr; or, if I were still being graded for this stuff here’s my thesis statement

When analysing Gaby’s fashion, there exist considerations which don’t apply to the male characters. Namely, she is a woman and the male gaze is a thing. So I am very, very wary about taking at face value any expressions of traditional femininity in the choices made for her outfits, hair, makeup, etc. Therefore, when considering her character, I find it much more useful and informative to give more weight to the aspects of her appearance which do not connote traditional femininity, rather than those that do.

For readers who have studied enough media analysis to follow my thought based on that alone, there’s the thesis statement, y’all can go home (or at least skip to the end where I come to a conclusion). If you’re lost, then read on.

(mobile readers, the cut here might not work, and if so I apologize for what is going to be a very long post. Tumblr’s “keep reading” functionality is inconsistent at best, but I tried)

Context is for kings essential for analysing media in a meaningful way

(Or, some brief background. Stick with me here, we’ll get to the good stuff soon)

So, art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Attempting to analyze any artwork (in this case a film) while disregarding the culture it was created in and the intentions of the creator is...not going to get you very far. Asking “what is art” is a question that quite frankly exhausts me at this point (looking at you, Duchamp) but the closest I’ve ever come to an answer is that the only thing that separates art from everything else is intent. And intention only exists within cultural context. So yes, intent and context don’t just matter peripherally, they are one of the biggest considerations one needs to make when analyzing works of art. The creator in this case being Guy Ritchie et al, the culture being British/American Popular Cinema in The Year of Somebody’s Lord Two-Thousand-And-Fifteen.

Everyone views and creates (if applicable) art through their own distorted, murky, imperfect lens of personal experience. And one of the most persistent Things in western art is that cishet men create art based on their experience of Being A Dude. This is crucial, because this lens of cishet male perspective literally underpins almost all of western culture including popular culture. And thanks to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, we have a name for this.

The male gaze and you

I’m going to quote Wikipedia here, because honestly this intro sentence sums things up rather neatly (with one exception which I will address momentarily).

In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.

What does that all mean? That the Viewer and the Artist are both cishet men by default, and any women are Subjects of art. Women are viewed, never viewers. Men take action, women are subjected to actions. Furthermore, women are supposed to be pleasurable to view. By men. Since the Viewer is male by default.

But I would disagree that the pleasure is inherently based on women being sexual objects. That’s honestly a really damn limited read on the whole theory, and it’s one that Wikipedia itself contradicts later in the article. More broadly, cis men also derive other forms of pleasure from the presentation and viewing of female bodies, including aesthetic pleasure (the enjoyment of looking at beautiful things).

The theory of the male gaze is not without limits. As originally theorized, afaik it’s not particularly intersectional. It doesn’t really address queer perspectives or perspectives of POC. However, these issues are something I just can’t address here, unfortunately. And when looking at popular media, I still find the concept of the male gaze, imperfect as it may be, is a helpful means of analysis, so it’s worth having in your toolbox.

Circling back, the easiest way to sum up the male gaze, if you’re still not super clear on what it is, is with a demonstration.

Ever seen a shot like this in a movie?

And did you immediately roll your eyes? Feel gross? Congrats, you have just perceived and reacted to the male gaze.

Now we actually get back to TMFU

But the male gaze also shows up in many more subtle, insidious ways than fanservice-y boob shots. For this post, let’s focus on the following considerations, which might help everyone follow my thought process more clearly.

Gaby is a woman

She functions as the love interest of Illya in the script (I am not talking from a shipping perspective. What you ship does not matter for this discussion. I am talking about the narrative function of Gaby in the script as written. Put on your “cishet man” goggles for a moment)

Illya is a man who is attracted to women, specifically Gaby (again, I don’t care if your shipping conflicts with this. I am analyzing the film based on a literal reading of it as if I were a cishet man. Why? Because that’s who made the film. That’s who it’s “for”. I am all for queer readings of film--hell, I ship OT3, I myself have chosen a queer reading for how I interact with it, but I’m not critiquing people’s readings, I’m critiquing the film itself and to do that I have to critique its intentions and cultural context.)

Cishet men are traditionally only allowed to be attracted to women who are conventionally attractive. If they were to be attracted to anyone else it would destroy their fragile senses of self and their heads would explode or something. At least I assume that’s what must happen, based on how terrified they are of it.

Therefore, Gaby must be conventionally attractive, because it is literally required of her or otherwise the whole underpinning of western straight malehood crumbles and then where would we get such a pure, vast source of unadulterated toxic masculinity?

(Yes, this is a very cynical read on things. I’ve studied, like, three centuries worth of this bullshit. I’m tired. Let me be cynical.)

Or, to force myself to be less cynical, Gaby has to be pretty because...nope, this is still going to turn out just as cynical.

But what I will say in favour of this movie is that it gives Gaby and Victoria both a lot of agency and general awesomeness, which is quite unusual in this sort of big-budget action film, and it’s one of the big reasons I love it. I’m not saying that the entire film is sexist. On the contrary, there’s a ton of stuff to celebrate about how it portrays its female characters. But these aspects don’t change the cultural context, and we still have to consider the impacts of the male gaze.

Anyways, point being is that as filtered through the male gaze, Gaby is never given the option to, say, wear no makeup (or the appearance of such, as the guys are afforded, this being cinema where “no makeup” still means makeup) because that would look “ugly”. Instead she needs to have a “baseline of pretty” which is way higher than reality because she is not a real human being with her own agency, she is a character created by a cis male writer/director team in a film directed by a cis man in a genre that caters to cishet men.

Gaby doesn’t exist in a vacuum. She exists battling centuries and centuries worth of sexist convention.

Now then, remembering all of that, let’s actually look at her. There are woefully few good pictures so I’m going to have to piece things together a little. Starting with the coveralls.

This is a great look, I love it. And I’m going to give Ritchie a lot of credit here because it would’ve been easy to go for a “Michelle Rodriguez in F&F sexy mechanic lady” look. In case I need to provide a visual:

(Repeat above gif about rolling my eyes)

Now, to be clear, I am not making any judgement about the way any real-life women dress. I’m sure there’s plenty of female mechanics who have their hair down and wear tank tops while working. That doesn’t bother me. I don’t care if real life mechanics choose to do their jobs in a string bikini. Or in cosplay of the bee from Bee Movie. I don’t care (and quite frankly it’s none of my business) because they are real people who can make their own decisions. But what I am talking about here is a fictional character who does not have her own agency. I am critiquing how male creators choose to dress their female characters.

So I personally choose to read much more into the unpretty aspects of Gaby’s outfit, because these are not the “obvious” or “easy” things. Obvious and easy are “of course she wears makeup” and “of course her hair looks good” and “of course she doesn’t look like a swamp witch who bathes in mud and spends her days cursing passing men”. Those things don’t challenge or disrupt the assumption that women must look attractive for male consumption.

Gaby’s introduction to us is with her in a pair of grease-stained, baggy coveralls, not wearing any obvious makeup (again, this is cinema, so she is wearing makeup. For cinema the goal posts around “wearing makeup” always need to be moved from where they’d be irl). There’s very little here that screams ‘pretty’. And that is fascinating to me.

I don’t know how deeply Ritchie thought this through when giving final approval to the costume, hair and makeup. But unpretty is not the default here. It’s a choice

And look at this. This is the stance and dress sense (and socks!) of a woman who does not give a damn about looking good for the male gaze, whether the in-movie gaze of Napoleon, or the implied gaze of the viewer and creator. It’s not ‘pretty’. And this is the only time in the film we see Gaby in her own everyday clothes, as she only escapes East Berlin with the literal clothes on her back.

So how do I think Gaby dresses? I think that for the most part she dresses....like this. Practical. Comfortable. With a few simple touches of things she likes/finds pretty, perhaps, but not with a specific interest in being pretty. She dresses for herself, not for others. And if that isn’t something to aspire to, I don’t know what is.

#gaby teller #tmfu #the man from uncle #meta #costume design #male gaze #fashion #thank you to michael bay for providing me with such a good example of the male gaze

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hellyeahomeland · 6 years

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“Lies, Amplifiers, Fucking Twitter” | Directed by Tucker Gates

After checking in on Carrie and Franny (poor Franny…), we move to the White House. What stands out here is the muted color scheme and lighting. Despite the light streaming in from behind her, the scene overall is dimly lit. In contrast to everyone’s dark suits, the American flag stands out sharply, the battle for power of the country unfolding in front of it. Keane is seated and leaning back casually, while the committee members stand before her, defiant, almost like soldiers.

The choreography of this scene is reminiscent of what we saw in “Species Jump” between Ivan in Yevgeny. Keane stays seated throughout their pitch for her to resign and she only stands later to demonstrate her authority. In close-up here, she’s stoic, almost regal, the American flag (again) in the background. Did Keane become backdoor heroic without us even realizing it?

As Carrie walks into Saul’s growing ops room, it’s hard to miss his own conspiracy-driven bulletin board. As she takes in the information, the camera frames her in the center. We can feel the weight of her realization. She’s not just involved this year, she’s actually in it--the center--as an “active measure.”

There is lots to parse here, but this is a nicely assembled board by the art department! We love the irony of Saul co-opting Carrie’s bulletin board tactics while placing her at the center of his, especially after he found her hidden room last year and beamed, knowing she was still whom he always believed she was. (Do you think he assembled this knowing she’d eventually come into his op and this would help her piece the information together better? He even used the same color post-it notes as she did last year!)

These are just incredible shots. Again, Carrie is in the center things, both physically in this shot and thematically. As the focus shifts to the board, her body becomes blurred, and we instead see the array of information, its lines connecting out from her image like a web.

Sara is obsessed with this shot of Wellington and Keane in light of the revealed romantic feelings between them (or at least from Wellington). The placement of the two characters, Keane staring out the window, blurred behind him, is like something out of a period romance. Obsessed.

And while at first glance it might seem as if she’s turned her back on Wellington, we actually think her body language here reveals just how much she trusts him. When you turn your back on someone like this, in such close proximity to you, you’re indicating a deep, implicit level of trust. It’s a rare moment of vulnerability from her, at one of the most vulnerable moments in her presidency.

The “Q&A” parallels in this episode are pretty blatant, but we’re gonna talk about 'em anyway! First, we have Saul surveying Carrie and Dante, just as he did with Carrie and Brody in season two.

Or what about this shot? That’s the same arrangement as in “Q&A” -- Carrie to the right of the door, Dante to the left, and the barrier behind him. (Sorry guys, but they were making a point.)

On the podcast we talked about Carrie’s failure to crack Dante, and how she assumed the role of both Bad Cop and Good Cop in this episode. Here, she’s playing Bad Cop, and the direction of this scene captures that adversarial nature. Whether it’s positioning them on opposite ends of the table, or above in close-up shot/reverse shot, to heighten the distance and differences between them.

And here is lil’ ol’ David Wellington, on his journey to Fuck Up Everything. A quick note about the set decoration: we think the set decoration is meant not to resemble the Red Room (though of course that is apt for a meeting with the Russian ambassador) but the Roosevelt Room (and, yep, we have another Roosevelt reference. Remember Saul has a portrait in his office too). This was Teddy Roosevelt’s first West Wing office. According to tradition, a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt is meant to hang on the wall during the administration of a Democratic president, and a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt is meant to hang on the wall during a Republican administration. Bill Clinton (whose portrait we also saw… wonder if that possibly foreshadows an impeachment?) was the first President to buck that tradition when he kept Teddy Roosevelt on the wall. Obviously, Keane has opted to do the same.

Back in Mathison land, it’s Good Cop time. Note that they’re not seated anymore and she walks over to him in an attempt to show that they’re on the same side.

Carrie does her best “You’re a good man, Brody” routine with Dante, and for a moment it seems like it might work.

He’s literally backed against a wall when he says he’ll be honest.

After Carrie loses control, Dante walks away and sits back down, and the space between them is again restored. Note that when he sits back down, he’s seated in her former seat. He literally turns the tables on her. (They were being super literal this episode, y’all.)

This is the first of four aerial shots of Carrie in this episode and it comes right after her moment of vulnerability in the interrogation room with Dante. There, she admits, “I know how it happens, how things derail. You think, ‘No, I can manage this.’ But, step by step, somehow, you end up very far from where you ever wanted to be.” This aerial shot, then, coming on the heels of that admission, renders Carrie a small figure in a sea of black. Thematically, like most birds eye views, it asks us to look at the big picture. Where is Carrie now? And where does she want to be?

We just love this scene because Paley is literally stoking the flames. Like we said. Literal af.

OK OK OK Sara has to talk about this moment very quickly. As Carrie enters Maggie’s house, she shuts the door a little too loudly, and this is her wincing at the loud sound (we’ve all been there). I don’t know if this was scripted or improvised but can Claire Danes get an Emmy ASAP? Thanks in advance.

Here’s another shot from above. So we have one of Carrie exiting Saul’s op room (work), and now one in Maggie’s house (home), so we can observe the person (or people?) she is in these two environments. One of the biggest themes of this season--and for the last few actually--for Carrie is her struggle to reconcile these two halves of herself: her work self and her mother self. Are they even compatible? Again, where is Carrie now? And where does she want to be?

The way Carrie’s denial of the situation Maggie lays out before her manifests as her actually shutting her eyes is devastating. If she can’t see it, is it really happening?

And now we’ve got another aerial shot, this time of Carrie leaving Maggie’s house (where her mother self resides). This crane shot is actually pretty great, especially since it leads to this…

The unmitigated rage on display as she exits the world that self inhabits is a thing to behold. We’ve all been there, Carrie.

This shot reminds us of the end of “Long Time Coming,” as Carrie drives away from Dar’s house after learning of Saul’s betrayal. The major difference of course being that she’s not leaving her work self behind now--she is driving toward it, her choice clear.

WJLTP

WJLPT, part II. Yevgeny really does have a thing about casual posture, doesn’t he? He must be ~one cool guy.

The choreography here is very similar in style to what happened to McClendon, which is ironic of course because that’s kinda what started all this. We’re also going to invoke “Q&A” again and note that both Dante and Brody had stuff happen to their hands. (Sara cannot believe that Carrie’s Bad Cop is “let’s poison him!” Gail thinks it’s funny that Carrie’s vagina is a death trap. Sara would like to point out that Dante has not died yet.)

This is the last aerial shot of Carrie this episode, this time showing her work self.

In case you haven’t been keeping track, we got four aerial shots of Carrie after she admits she’s far from where she ever wanted to be:

Departing work, on the way to home

At home

Departing home, on the way to work

At work

Each reveals something unique about these two halves, these two selves Carrie is harboring inside of her, and how she transitions from one to the other. Whether it’s sneaking meds to appear less manic in front of her family; getting in an actual physical altercation with her sister; yelling without reservation after leaving home; or tending to a man she poisoned but pretended she hadn’t, in her relentless search for the truth, it’s clear the toll this split is having on her. Eventually she’ll either have to pick a side, or she’ll have to reconcile these parts of herself into something whole.

This is such a great shot, and it reminds us of Saul’s scenes in “The Choice,” calling Carrie and Mira, after the Langley bomb had gone off. It’s only a metaphorical bomb here, but the result is the same. He’s shown smaller in frame, and his tone is soft, more resigned.

The episode’s final moments are extremely interesting. As Carrie is pushed out of the ER, she turns around and observes the destruction in her wake.

It wasn’t even a year ago she was in almost this same position with Quinn, and we think her expression above is one of the worst kind of deja vu. This episode is all about Carrie taking stock of where she is, who she is, and what she’s doing. It’s about her both accepting she went down a much different, much darker path than she’d ever envisioned, and how that’s all wrapped up in her personal and professional failings, on bright display for us throughout the entire episode (leaving a distraught Franny at school, being at the center of a conspiracy she didn’t detect sooner, failing to crack Dante, leaving her daughter behind, and having her last-ditch effort to crack Dante backfire spectacularly).

For a second, she’s in sharp, brilliant focus. Yes, this is where Carrie is now. And this is who she is.

Then she turns, her face obscured, and she’s blurred again.

#homeland #homelandedit #in the director's chair #lies amplifiers fucking twitter #homeland meta #up the WAZOO #*#by: sara #by: gail #tucker gates

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drink-n-watch · 5 years

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Irina: Random fact about The Morose Mononokean: the review for season 1 was my first ever post! You don’t need to look it up just take my word for it. At the time I thought that writing posts about anime was some form of magic. It seemed so crazy that you could consistently just watch a series and say something about it… It still does occasionally. Coming back to the series is a bit like coming back to the roots of I Drink and Watch Anime. It’s where it all started. No pressure or anything.

I said relax!

And what better way to celebrate that than with one of my first and most consistent sources of encouragement and inspiration: Karandi! I think we don,t need to introduce her here… Karandi is one of the best people to work with and I strongly recommend you take every opportunity to do so. Make some up if you can.

Karandi: Thanks Irina, I’m really glad to be collaborating with you again. It is always great fun and I’m really glad we’re discussing The Morose Mononokean.

I: Well here we are, two and a half years later, and as you said on Twitter, it’s like we never left. Aside from a very brief recap montage at the beginning of the episode, it basically just follows season 1 as if no time had passed at all. I wonder if people who don’t have access to that first season will be confused.

recap complete!

K: While season one didn’t blow me away, I really enjoyed its kind of laid back story-telling and the characters. Plus, there were a lot of ideas that had been introduced still to be explored so I’m really glad this came back for a season two.

And this really does just throw us back into the story. I think the opening sequence with Hanae and Fluffy chasing a yokai and Abeno waiting to send it back to underworld really fills in enough of the details about the character relationships and their purpose for those who have watched season one to be reminded of where we are, though as you said, people who haven’t watched season one are going to have to play catch up for a bit.

I: The episode follows Hanae (a young man who can see yokai) who is still working off his debt to Abeno (a young exorcist), when they get called to the underworld to help the Legislator with some paperwork.

don’t worry about it – just sign those documents and don’t forget to add a drop of your blood…

K: I love the split reactions between Hanae and Abeno to this. Abeno really just wants the Legislator to leave him alone and do his own work while Hanae is inclined to help, and once money is offered, Hanae is fully on-board. I also liked that they used this opportunity to confirm that Hanae isn’t just going to quit once his debt has been paid. While that might have been the catalyst for him taking on the job, he’s genuinely drawn to this world now and he isn’t planning on ditching Abeno. Maybe Abeno will even start paying him better? Seems unlikely.

I: Those two have always been an odd couple and it seems they’ve gotten even more comfortable with each other. It works fairly well.

this flower means : pick up the dry cleaning

All the main characters seem to be back. I have always loved how Hanae’s mom expresses herself through the language of flowers and was happy to see the gag reprised! Anything pull at your nostalgia strings?

K: I’m all for Fuzzy (Moja). While he doesn’t have the personality of a stand-out animal companion like Nyanko-Sensei (alright, given the subject matter Natsume comparisons are almost a given), I absolutely love his interactions with Hanae. For a character that doesn’t speak, he is incredibly expressive and just so cute.

hmmm… this is the best screen cap of Fuzzy I got… my priorities may be skewed

I: Is it just me or was there a slight animation boost? Abeno and Hanae seemed a bit more detailed and consistent than before.

K: I do think the animation got better or at least this first episode seemed to be at the upper end for this anime. And I love the rich use of colour in this anime and how they contrast the normal world and the underworld. There are some bold colour choices here but it never ends up being hard on the eyes or feeling excessive.

I: Oh good – I thought I was projecting hopeful thinking on my screen.

Just look at this!

I had forgotten just how gorgeous the underworld is!

K: I’m kind of hoping this season explores the underworld more and the characters there. And this first episode kind of plunges us straight into that which is why I’m really happy with how this has started.

I: I really enjoyed the new OP and ED. That mix of traditional sounding music and pop beats was really intriguing to me and I think it fit the show well.

K: Hmm… The OP I really enjoyed but the ED I found a little bland (though that may have been more visually than the music, I’m struggling to remember the ED from the sound point of view).

this is turning into an underworld scenery post

I: I was also impressed by the voice acting this episode. Was season 1 much better than I remember it or something? Junichi Suwabe was in my Top 5 voice actor post so it’s not surprising that I really enjoyed Rippou’s performance but I think everyone else more than kept up.

The episode was a lot of fun. A basic light supernatural Slice of Life (to me it played like something in between Natsume and the Flying Witch). I don’t have much to say about it but I just liked it. I was smiling through all of it. What were your thoughts?

K: This brought us straight back to the characters doing their work and we went straight into a story in the underworld with one of the more interesting characters from last season, the Legislator. I’m really liking how this has started as it seems to be doing exactly what I wanted from a second season, which is more of the same but just giving us a bit more information and insight into the underworld and the yokai.

this little guy is a smartphone

Though, I still want to know more about Hanae and they flashed back to his previous time in the underworld when he was attacked so I kind of hope they plan to explain what happened then because I am incredibly curious.

Also love that the first episode ends on a cliffhanger. A lot of the episodes in season one were self-contained but the stories split over more episodes just felt like they were a bit more memorable and more interesting.

I: I did not expect that cliffhanger right off the bat!

dum dum DUM

I was pleasantly surprised by this episode (I’m not sure why I expected it to be worse) and I am looking forward to the rest of the season.

K: Part of me wondered if the story was going to stagnate and just have the characters continue to help yokai without getting into looking at their lives and development, given season one kept hinting at all these ideas about these characters but didn’t explore them. Season two seems to indicate it is going to explore some of these ideas and that makes me excited (more-so than I was just at the thought of a second season which I thought would be pleasant but not overly noteworthy).

more fun than expected!

I: As you mentioned, right at episode 1, we are getting a lot of what I wanted from the first season. The complex politics that seem to govern the underworld are already being brought into the storyline while at the same time we got a hint of Hanae’s human friends. Now they just need to tell us a bit more about Abeno.

On a side note, the cover art for the mangas is really beautiful. Those colours are amazing!

K: Are the mangas in English? Why am I asking that… I still have the Natsume manga and about a dozen other light novel series to finish reading.

Well, I’m looking forward to episode two and to collaborating with you this season and hopefully some of our readers end up watching this series and following along as well.

Please come back next week – or rather meet us both over on Karandi’s blog for episode 2.

I actually really like Abeno but somehow didn’t end up using any pics of him in the post. So here they all are!

The Morose Mononokean 2 episode 1 w Karandi and Irina – Picking up Where we Left off Irina: Random fact about The Morose Mononokean: the review for season 1 was my first ever post!

#anime #blonde bishie #Collab #comed #episodic #slice of life #supernatural #yokai

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