A feminist critiques movies by and about white guys – but why?
WHEN a new book by Lindy West comes out, I clear my schedule. Alongside Roxane Gay and Samantha Irby, West has become one of the most influential feminists of her generation. In 2016, she published Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman, a collection of personal essays that explore and condemn 21st-century misogyny, fat-shaming, white privilege and kindred forms of oppression. Her 2019 follow-up, The Witches Are Coming, expanded her topics to include climate change, corporate feminism and the films of Adam Sandler. She returns to those roots with S***, Actually, a collection of 23 essays in which West “rewatches successful movies from the past to see how they hold up to our shifting modern sensibilities”.
The answer, predictably, is “not well”, although this may have something to do with the movies West chooses. She doesn’t revisit classics or Art House gems, but instead treats “successful” film-making in financial terms. West isn’t trying to uncover deep truths about prejudices, even though calling out bigotry is central to her brand. Instead, she identifies filmic failings, from plot holes to bad acting and dialogue. West is at her best when she links these weaknesses to her life experiences, as when she compares the challenges of her marriage to those depicted in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. She also provides broader insights, many of which appear in her entertaining takedown of Top Gun. According to her analysis, Maverick (Tom Cruise) is the film’s real villain, because his self-righteous exceptionalism repeatedly endangers his partners. West draws a direct line from the film’s lesson that “safety is for dweebs” to Americans’ present aversion to protecting themselves from the coronavirus. In such moments, West’s essay collection feels funny, fresh and incredibly timely.
The problem – and it’s a significant one – is that the movies West focuses on affirm the very white male hegemony she typically critiques. Of the 23 films West addresses, only one, John Woo’s , is directed by a person of colour. Only one is directed by a woman: . And only a few – most notably and – feature actors of colour in leading roles. In her introduction, West explains that she “selected movies that fit at least one of three categories: 1) cultural phenomena that took over the Earth,
