Let me first start by saying that I'm a huge moviephile. It's a guilty pleasure of mine, but I love movies and try to watch as many as possible, as often as possible. I don't nearly get as many in as I used to, what with responsibilities and all that, but I do try to watch what I can when I can.
Part of being a moviephile is also being able to interpret the art that you are seeing. Movies are an amazing form of art, and can have so much more depth than typically given to them. Even your rocking summer boom bang blah blockbusters, when put into a specific context can have deeper meaning than how big the next explosion is going to be.
Michael Bay movies need not apply. (intended jokingly)
Join me after the orange directors cut for an example of an action movie that's a lot deeper than what people might think.
Every single movie has a deeper meaning than what is presented, it may be very subtle as in the case of say Friday the 13th and its take on teenage morality, or it could smack you across the face as in say Starship Troopers with its anti-fascism take.
Now thats not to say that every director, writer, or actor goes out there with the intention of this happening, no very often it is just the natural progression of putting art to film. Us watching that art, and reading into the symbolism contained there in.
And then there are times where those symbols, those actors, that wardrobe are just so over the top with symbolism that you have to ask was it intentional?
This one is going in the way back machine for a movie called Con Air.
Seen it? If you have, you'd know that its a slam bam action film featuring Nicolas Cage. It features his characters struggle of being wrongly imprisoned for a crime and his last moments of that punishment. And just before he is to be released on parole, the character is tumultuously sent on a roller coaster to not only get home to his wife safe, but to also be the hero in stopping the bad guys from winning in this whirlwind of events he is drawn up into.
The movie was released in June of 1997 and featured a number of star actors, and some actors who small at the time would then go onto larger roles. It was directed by Jerry Bruckheimer and netted over 24 million in its first weekend. Not bad for what seemed like a movie just laced with on mindless explosion and tough guys fighting.
To most it was nothing more but that, another chest thumping summer explosion fest, but to the moviephiles out there like myself, it was chock full of symbols and imagery. It was rife with subtle double meanings, and chock full of purposely placed scenes, characters, and images. And the horrible part about it? I didn't even realize till I watched it again last night as I tried to rest my mind for slumber.
Let us start with the protaganist, Cameron Poe. Poe is an army ranger home having done his duty and now looking forward to settling in with his newly pregnant wife. Things are not destined for happiness for Poe though unfortunately. He gets drunk in a bar and then while leaving his wife is accosted. The men get into a scuffle and in an accidental fit while defending he unintentionally kills a this man.
Cameron throughout the movie comes to represent the good guy. Not just a good guy, no he represented THE good guy. He is the all American Ideal Male, tough yet soft for his wife. Honorable to his friends and despicable towards their enemies. He speaks with a drawl, is devout to his core beliefs and protective of women. His name is part of that symbolism as well. Poe represents his status, poor. A poor simple army man back from having served his country, we are to see Poe as to what men are to aspire to. Even in prison, Poe has maintained this aura and he fights so he can return home to his wife and daughter.
The tertiary characters also hold deeper symbolism as well.
Take Sally Bishop, female prison guard played by Rachel Ticotin. Rachel's character would at face value seem to be an iconic tough woman role, but this is smashed to pieces in the characters confrontation with the prisoner played by Danny Trejo. In placing that confrontation of a woman in power with that of a rapist it symbolizes that all women are under constant threat of rape, and that only ideal men like Poe are qualified to protect them. It also strengthens the idea that women in positions of strength and power only serve to distract men, both from the perspective of Trejo's character in that all women when surrounded by to many men will get raped, and that from Poe in that women do nothing but distract men from their objectives because of their prominence. This male view that men must protect you from yourself is strong throughout the movie.
The guard is not the only one to drive this narrative home. There is the wife as well. Small and diminutive, she serves only in the movie to take care of the child and to be shuffled about by men. The wife never lands in harms way because of this shuffling. This symbolically represents that women should listen to men lest you get in trouble. We see it in their respective plot paths. Bishop ends up beaten and almost raped until the hero swoops in to save her from her peril.
Whether intentional or not, its pretty clear what the message ends up being in the end. She is an anathema to the wife of Poe, the devoted woman who has no choices in life or action other than to mind the child and to be escorted by men throughout the entire film.
The rest of the movie has a metric ton of other symbolism, things like anti-intellectualism and a call to return to the nuclear family to a very large one in Poe's quest for insulin for a black inmate. A very clear cut racist dog whistle when combined with the other two black characters. However, I chose the almost a rape scene in particular because of this ramped up War on Women we have in this nation now.
Because you see, this is how the loosing side sees women. They see them as dainty, frail, and a distraction from the goal unless they listen to men. They see themselves as protectors of your womanhood, but not protection from outside forces really, more protection from yourself. That being, you wouldn't have gotten raped had you not put yourself there attitude.
This is why we see such a strong push on anti-abortion, calls of sluts, and the myriad of other ways men have been pushing in the last decade to strip women of rights they have and try to control your body.
In short, to them, your vagina is to powerful to contain for even yourself and only an ideal man can protect the world and you from it.