Anarchocyclist

I went to see the infamous “Snakes on a Plane” movie last week, to satisfy my curiousity. It turns out that it was, in fact, as bad as i expected it to be. One thing about it was interesting though: its illustration of the popular gender stereotypes. Beyond the typical flight attendant stereotypes that must accompany any airplane movie, pretty much all of the dialogue in SOAP was based around some gender theme…and the actions of the snakes were almost always sexual in some way.

( — WARNING: SPOILERS — …just in case you were actually anticipating some great plot to occur in this movie, be aware that i will reveal some of it)

It’s been suggested that they used a separate writer for the movie who just sat there thinking of ways for people to get bitten by snakes, and i think it could be true. Near the beginning, there’s a sex scene in the airplane bathroom, and we’re given an extended series of camera angles that all focus on the woman’s breast. Just when you start thinking “i know it’s a hollywood movie, but why the extreme focus on doing these gratuitous breast shots?” you see the snake enter and, of course, bite the woman’s breast. At this point i started thinking that perhaps they felt obligated to follow the horror movie cliche that “Scary Movie” popularized: characters who have sex are the first to die, in a sort of morality tale within the movie.

After i started really watching the movie for gender and sexuality themes, it was quite amusing. Notably, the men quite often refer to the snakes as “bitches”, such as “Get this bitch offa me!” when a snake predictably bites a man’s penis. Another theme that occurs quite often is the idea of women being useless at most things and always needing help from men. The women are usually portrayed as overly emotional basketcases that can’t function without the helpful men. When horrific things happen, the men just Get The Job Done, while the women go off crying and aren’t able to help their fellow passengers until a Strong Man comes up and comforts them.

One cliche that i thought was particularly weird was when one of the female flight attendants hears a baby crying, and is compelled to run and save it. Now, this doesn’t sound bad in and of itself, but it was the way it was portrayed. When a man rescues a baby on tv, it’s all about his steely resolve and heroic qualities, but in this case it was almost dehumanizing….the woman was pictured as having an irrational animal-like urge to ‘protect the young’ without thinking. Fine, have her save the crying baby, but why does it have to be a mini-story about how women are irrational animals with uncontrollable mothering instincts or something?

The other instructive idea was that the assumed-gay male flight attendant was also equally useless. On numerous occasions, he tries to do something and fails, just looking foolish or naive. He also has to call for the more macho guys to come help him with various tasks, being too “girly” to steadfastly accomplish anything unaided.

At the end of the movie, there’s a flurry of tying up of loose strings to resolve the various gender tensions. The assumed-gay male flight attendant has to have his girlfriend show up to lessen the homosexual presence. Even gay flight attendants can redeem themselves in the heterosexual world, or something. i’m not quite sure what the intended message was there. Then, each particular macho hunky guy in the movie has to resolve the gender tension by “getting” the appropriate girl at the end. Sam Jackson “gets” the older intelligent flight attendant that somehow needed comforting through the entire movie…despite her character being set up from the beginning as an intelligent and independant woman who is quitting her job to go to law school, she just isn’t complete without her strong and comforting male hero to help her through everything. The other male lead (a hunky 20-something guy with a strong jaw and a hint of stubble) “got” the younger flight attendant when she wrote her phone number on his arm after throwing herself at him through the whole film.

So, with all this in mind, perhaps viewers might enjoy a gender-critical drinking game for Snakes on a Plane. Drink whenever:

1. a snake represents sexual pleasure for those unworthy, or punishment for such pleasure
2. a woman screams at a snake, but the man next to her doesn’t
3. a woman becomes nonfunctional until a man comforts her (take an extra drink if the man has big muscles visible, or if the woman’s high heels are visible)
4. a woman or the gay guy are useless at a seemingly simple task. extra drink if a straight man does it for them
5. a single woman sees a man and plans how to pursue him romantically. (basically a theme for all the women in the movie, except the ones who are “too old” or “too fat” or something like that)
6. a man does something “brave” or something he’s “just gotta do”

Of course, this is all leaving out the parts where (a) every “asian” character in the movie is either a gangster or a martial arts master or both, and (b) the black characters are either famous rap stars or bodyguards/cops, but maybe that’s a topic for a whole other article. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. ;)

Ride hard, ride free

This entry was posted on Monday, August 21st, 2006 at 18:39 pm and is filed under Front Page, Politics, gender. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.