Happy New Year!
Just a quick pop-media post (I swear I'll get back to more, um, "weighty" things some day): tonight I watched Chihwaseon, or Painted Fire, a 2002 South Korean film about the 19th-century painter Jang Seung-up, also known as Ohwon.* The film's title is literally "drunken painting immortal," which gives you some idea of its protagonist's major activities [being an immortal painter version of King Arthur. Another, which is my primary concern here, is his third hobby--having sex with, or at least ogling, just about every female character who appears in the film.
Now, I have no problem with looking at beautiful ladies acting in fairly frank sex scenes. It is quite hot. (The only detraction was that I was watching the movie with my parents--even someone who wants to spend time being paid to spout off about penetrative hierarchies has problems watching sexy movies with the folks, which probably indicates something.)
The problem arises when the female parties all look like the same lissome twentysomething with pearly teeth, fine brows, dewy complexion, and liquid eyes, while their male counterpart, particularly in closeups, resembles a leathery potato incised with human facial features. I mean, it is a rugged, interesting face, to be sure, and its owner does some fine acting. But the contrast was terribly obvious. Such sex-based double standards of attractiveness and talent aren't a revolutionary revelation, but in this case they must've particularly gotten to me because lately I've been thinking over certain examples this trend in reverse, by which I mean attractive, youthful-appearing men to match the by-default superficials of their leading ladies in heavily-funded projects. The popularity of Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Carribean franchise, for one. As much as I shudder to mention its name on this blog for my utter hate of just about all it stands for, Twilight for another. More excitingly still, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Vintner's Luck--in production, and hopefully will join the small selection of highbrow movies with LGBT themes--both feature impressively good-looking actors.*
I am following this trend with enormous excitement, not just for the increase in the raw amount of beautiful men I get to see, but also because it may be a marker of a deep shift in Euro-American society: now viewers can actually have the chance to ogle equitably. That there is an association between equal-opportunity ogling and LGBT topics makes a lot of sense, when one considers how central the "desiring" role is to our (and many other patriarchal societies') definition of masculinity. In other words, the only desiring position is a masculine one. Thus, if anyone who did not consider hirself a man desired a man, the nearest approxmimation would be the male "homosexual."* So, there's an overlap between movies with gay themes, movies with beautiful men, and movies that have broad appeal to people who love men, because of the way desire itself is defined (or, dare I say it, constructed).
Anyhow, male objectification seems to be on the rise. Along with the nubile boys come more objectionable things. Young men are reporting body-image issues in increasing numbers; "men's magazines" are plastered with stupid diet tips and weight-loss-quick schemes just like those marketed to women. Clearly not good. Of course our goal should be to promulgate health and self-confidence for every individual, regardless of sex or gender. Yet I can't help feeling that the aestheticization, on parallel terms, of the male body is a necessary first step toward such utopian possibilities, given our race's much-less-than-ideal previous trajectory. People desire, whatever gonads they have, and sexy beautiful men in the movies can help move us toward a broader recognition and acceptance of that fact.
*By the way, it's a pretty interesting movie, if a bit stiff and dry-feeling. The 1890s' tumultuous history of the simultaneous presence of Qing and Japanese troops, the Donghak Revolution, and the fall of the royal house and the yangban are all there, and not just serving as a quiet backdrop, either.
**But don't take my word for it:***
***(Imagine #2 with some wings and other suitably divine haberdashery, svp.) If the powers that be, aka the studios, decide to tickle my horrifying period costume/angel fancy any harder, I may combust.
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