Reel Phallic: Hitch
Will Smith charms the pants off of this reviewer, fails to seal the deal.
by Sam Kuhlmann

Back in the 20th century life made sense. The movies were like twin, virile and all-knowing towers that we looked up to for wisdom. We asked the movies that enigma of all riddles: What do women want? Male and female audiences everywhere were enlightened—women wanted Mel Gibson, and sometimes in hose. It was a revelation. Dudes everywhere were reading the signs, going beyond thunderdome and becoming lethal with their weapons. Chicks blushed and swooned in admiration of brave hearts, looked beyond the surface of the proverbial man without a face and hoped to be swept away by rugged handsomeness for a year of living dangerously. Sadly, all towers are built to fall, and looking back at that innocent time it seems silly that we fell for the Mel Gibson fairy tale. It recently took another fairy tale, The Passion of the Christ, to make us realize that Jesus also had his eyes on Mel. How could we, mere mortals, compete with Christ. Just look how well he was hung! What are women supposed to want now? What are men supposed to model themselves after? Should we look to the movies? To the empty space where those towers once stood? Can we re-erect our understanding of what women want?

I just watched the trailer for Hitch, and it appears that movies are once again trying to answer our question. Pelvis, brace yourself: women want Will Smith. Yep, ladies want to shake their I, Robooty with the Fresh Prince of stale faire, the legend of gag-star dance, and the pun in black. All kidding aside, the trailer for Hitch is actually not an indication of what modern American women are looking for in a romantic relationship with a man. (“Shut up!!”) It’s a self-esteem boost for the average American male and, on a larger scale, exemplary of how mainstream media enforces male mediocrity, while demanding female perfection. Also, because the movies are a patriarchal apparatus and only understandable from a male perspective, the trailer shows what a man thinks a woman wants, or basically exposes what a man finds attractive in another man. As if that wasn’t enough, the Hitch trailer is racist… um… damn, Big Willie looks slammin’ in a wet suit!...

Just because the Hitch trailer doesn’t reveal what women want, doesn’t mean it isn’t instructive. The movie still has some important observations to impart. For example, it turns out that most guys just don’t have a clue about women. Men trip on curbs, have hairy backs, forget to listen, dance with their elbows pointed out and, get this, are tongue-tied around pretty gals! Thankfully, for these dweebs, help is on the way: He’s romantic, and he’s smooth, and he’s played by Will Smith… It’s Dr. Love! (“Cough, cough, excuse me, nurse, get me an appointment with the doctor, STAT!”) So, Smith runs around New York City helping overweight, bald men trick models/actresses into sleeping with them.

That is, until he meets his match. Enter the only more-stereotypically-sex-crazed-ethnic than the Black Man, the Latin Woman (authentically portrayed by Eva Mendes). Mendes throws Smith off his game. He accidentally kicks her while jet skiing (?); he shuts his shirt in a taxi door (!); he has some allergic reaction to food and his face gets swollen and ugly. Despite his newfound buffoonery, it’s evident that Eva doesn’t mind and will get with Will anyway. In the face of all this hetero posturing, the trailer ends on a gay note with a kiss between Smith and one of his lumpy clients, played by Kevin James.

Is this a conscious attempt at portraying the object of female desire? Writer Kevin Bisch and director Andy Tennant put their heads together in what must have been a downright mind-blowing brainstorm session:
“Gosh, Andy, I was dumped again. I just don’t know what women want!!“
“Well, Kev, I’d say women want a well-dressed fella, a groomed…”
“But he has to be a devil between the sheets, right?”
“Yeah, well, he’s probably black.”
“Girls go wild for those.”
“Kevin, I think we just figured out what women want!”
“What if we could find one of these, these… love doctors… and get him to teach us his ways. We could trick women into thinking we’re what they want!
“Good idea, I’ll dial up Sony Pictures.”

What these poor puppets failed to recognize is that their brains are washed, and they’re merely serving a higher order. All of their actions are informed and subconsciously suggested by an insidious Dr. Love, of sorts. This doctor, however, is the underlying structure of the society in which we’ve all been raised. Patriarchy, like Rupert Murdoch before it, uses the media to reinforce these simple mind states. Media examples of what a woman should look like (thin) and how she should be tricked into bed (flowers) are repeated to the point that a viewer understands these things as reality. The women in the Hitch preview are all visually perfect and, like in some King of Queens episode, they happily slum it with schlubs like Kevin James and a hideously swollen faced Will Smith. All that men in this trailer have to sacrifice is the hair off of their backs. (In, I might add, a hilarious back waxing scene. Yeeoooowww!) It’s all a big double standard that naturally arose from patriarchy. Those in control of the media use it to reinforce the structures that keep themselves in power and keep them dick-deep in thin women. In this way the trailer boosts the ego of the average male, while setting an impossible example for any self-respecting female.

So, who wants men like this? It must be understood that all men are part-fag. Just like women can be easily talked into a little Frenching at frat parties, all dudes wanted to wrestle in high school. What’s also obvious is that mainstream media is created for a male viewer. On a subconscious level, the language of filmmaking is a male language. The very act of viewing a film is voyeurism; it’s like violating or figuratively penetrating someone, usually a woman. Penis goes in vagina; men penetrate, keep up; the movies reflect sexual desire to penetrate. The object of this desire is presented as an image of a woman. This image doesn’t have any root in reality, but is created out of patriarchal models. In this way, it all comes from the male mind; the male is craving himself. Freud tells us that narcissism leads to homosexuality, right? I’m a little lost, but I think it follows that, by presenting an image of female desire from a male perspective, it’s actually a reflection of male desire. Men want Will Smith…duh.

Hairy, overweight guys…patriarchal mind control… female desires from the eyes of men… Something smells, well, not fishy, but peculiar, or queer even. The Hitch trailer is (in addition to all that other crap I said it was earlier) a reflection of white male desire to carnally possess black male sexuality. Three scenes from the trailer offer overwhelming support. The first shows Kevin James trying to dance. Dancing, when not performed in a line, is a black sport and can be understood as a symbol for sex; Kevin is dancing with Will in the scene. The next scene shows Kevin confronting a woman he’s attracted to. She asks for his number and asks if he has a pencil. Will slips one into Kevin’s pocket when the girl isn’t looking. The pencil is perennially symbolic of the phallus, so James is actually penetrated by Smith; it’s a very sexy shot. The final scene of the trailer speaks for itself, as Kevin initiates a lip lock with Willie.

So patriarchy has completely fucked everything up. While trying to backhandedly force images of female perfection upon a less than perfect male image, the media has only exposed patriarchy’s latent homosexual tendencies. When a discourse on male-female relationships doesn’t present a true female image, testosterone searches elsewhere. Dr. Love is the cure for the common man, and he’s delivering his medicine in the form of a suppository. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with women. The original dilemma is still at hand—what do women want? All I can think to do is turn to another movie, but this time we’ll look to something from a more sensitive male viewpoint. Let’s let the homo-patriarchal phallic symbol from the first paragraph, the twin towers, lie flaccid, and look to something a bit smaller, but surer of itself. Probably someone foreign, with stubble and slight indie-cred…Orlando Bloom, I’m winking at you!