Being Sexy in Death in ‘The Nice Guys’ (2016).
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mentions of blood, death, nudity.
The Nice Guys (2016), starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, is a hilarious film that I think slipped under the radar after performing poorly at the box office. No one I talk to seems to know about this film’s existence, but it is an excellent comedy. It is one of the rare instances in the past decade where a Hollywood film in mainstream theatres is a well-written original screenplay, not a sequel, or a reboot, or a spinoff, but an entirely new creation. Not only that, but it also slaps.
Holland March (Ryan Gosling) and Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe).
The film is set in the 70s, when pornographic movies and their pornstars were all the rage. The plot focuses on an enforcer for hire, Healy (Crowe), and a private investigator, March (Gosling), trying to locate two different women. March has been hired to find a famous pornstar believed to be dead, and Healy is looking for a young woman who disappeared shortly after hiring him because she was being followed. The characters have to run in the circles of the pornography industry in order to try and solve the mystery of the missing women in an amusing buddy-cop team-up.
The two leads are seamless together: Healy is the competent tough guy, and March is the clumsy dolt who solves cases almost entirely out of dumb luck. They have great banter, they are both emotionally bankrupt with no charisma, and Ryan Gosling unsurprisingly shines in his comedic role whilst Russell Crowe delivers his one-liners with a punch (literally). The film is witty and fun, with dialogue that never feels too rushed or forced. It takes skill to write something that reads as effortlessly funny, and that sentiment shines through in the script of this movie.
Holland March (Ryan Gosling).
One moment that stuck firmly in my mind, however, was the opening scene of the film when a famous pornstar named Misty Mountains gets into a car accident. The camera shot that establishes her ill-fate takes its time in showing the audience her completely naked, bleeding corpse, with her breasts turned for the pleasure of the camera. Despite her injuries and the context of the fatal car accident, the camera makes sure to linger on her exposed, bloody body whilst it slowly pans up to her face. Whilst she is dying, she is sexually objectified by the camera in a way that is reminiscent of Renaissance paintings. The naked female subject is painted with her exposed body twisting outward toward the viewer while her face turns away. “My body is yours to view as you wish.”
That, everyone, is what we refer to as the “male gaze.”
All I could think during this shot was, “Please stop showing me this dying woman’s naked body.” And it got me thinking about a film from my childhood that did a similar sort of thing, called Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009), a Horror-Comedy that excelled in the fetishisation of lesbian women.
In the film, two average English blokes end up in a situation where they have to kill a bunch of women who have turned into vampires. The women in question are, by shocking coincidence, usually scantily clad or naked whilst they are doing so. The two men kill the women in a variety of creative ways while the cameras make sure to show us as much skin of the dying vampires as they can. Should I have watched this film as a child? Probably not. But I digress.
Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009).
I find sexualised, dying women a sobering thing to witness on screen. Personally, I find it unpleasant to be forced into the point of view of objectifying women as they die, and I would find it unpleasant regardless of the gender of the victim, but I cannot currently think of an example other than a woman.
When watching scenes like this, I think, “What’s the point?” The directors and cinematographers of these films are all men, by the way. I doubt that will surprise you. I suppose they were thinking, “She’s a pornstar” or “She’s a vampire,” therefore, “we must frame her seductively because this is a status associated with lust.”
Women on screen don’t have to be attractive if they are dying. True, women on screen don’t have to be attractive, period, but the film industry is still a shallow business, as we all know. Anyone with common sense could probably imagine that an individual, even if they’re a pornstar or a vampire, would probably not be trying to contort their bodies into seductive shapes whilst they are facing death. Could you argue that it’s an expression of “artistic licence?” Sure. But even if it is, what is the “artistic message” there? Is the nudity of the bleeding woman supposed to tell us she is beautiful? We can see that if she has her clothes on. Is the woman dying naked supposed to be funny? It’s not.
Even as I think that, I can feel my reflexive thoughts scalding me for sounding too much like a “feminazi” or a “buzzkill”, but I know that those thoughts are to be fought. They are the result of having been taught to accept the objectification of women in this way. To accept casual misogyny and the degrading of women as the norm.
I find that films are a good way for me to practise unlearning such things. Films can teach us new things, either through their intended message or by allowing us to realise the shortcomings of our own thinking by playing our social biases out on a screen. They are also a good way of judging the characters of others. If you sit down to watch this film with someone (because I promise it is very amusing other than at the start), see if they laugh at the bleeding, naked woman. See if they notice the strangeness of it at all. Films can be very revealing. Hopefully, one day, we will get to a stage in cinema (and in society) where the vulnerability of a woman isn’t seen as a joke.
Holland March (Ryan Gosling).
I recommend watching this film for anyone looking for a good laugh and some fun action on a quiet night in, especially if you love seeing Ryan Gosling flex his comedic talents. That is, if you can get through the cringe of the opening scene and the objectification of most female characters. It’s hilarity from there.