Is It Okay for a Socially Conscious Person to Enjoy Machete?

Outrage has become a staple of public dialogue and American consciousness. If Katy Perry gives a geisha-ish performance mixing elements of various traditional Asian cultures, this is labeled “cultural appropriation” and racist. As also illustrated by the furor over Miley Cyrus’s VMAs performance last year, nothing--neither a pop music performance nor the goofy costumes worn by its performers--is above a public grilling by cultural critics.

Personally, I’m fond of this kind of critique, although outrage isn’t my response to every offense (blog). Like many feminists, I thought the scene in Star Trek: Into Darkness featuring Dr. Carol Marcus in her skivvies was gratuitous (article), but the most I could work up was a chuckle at such a naked attempt to inject eye-candy into the movie.

I’m not, however, above turning away from something in disappointment. I recently started reading Paolo Bacigalupi’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel The Windup Girl. The first chapter was about Anderson Lake, a Western businessman running a factory in Thailand. The second was about the Chinese immigrant Hock Seng, a factory manager who aims to steal important designs from Lake. The third was about Emiko, a Japanese girl who was created through genetic engineering and works at a sex club.

At this point, I began to get a sinking feeling.

 

The stereotypes could not be any clearer: the dominant, straight-talking, brook-no-bullshit Westerner; the passive, sneaky, subservient Asian; and the sexpot Asian. In the case of Emiko, we must sit through a description of her rape by her employer and the club’s patrons--at some level, an enactment of a sadistic fantasy shared by the author and many in his audience. I kept reading, but when the big white Westerner rescued the helpless little Japanese girl, thereby winning her gratitude and setting the stage for eventually gaining her love and conquering her body, I decided I had better things to read.

Which brings me to Machete. In this age of active, sometimes overactive (blog), social and cultural sensitivity, what are we to make of a movie that blatantly breaks so many of the rules and is openly acknowledged by director Robert Rodriquez to be an homage to the exploitation flicks of less enlightened decades?

 

The text on the Japanese DVD case calls Machete the “complete filmization of a man’s dream,” and that it is--at least for many men. About a brawny, ugly Mexican who’s good at killing in grisly ways, it spills gallons of blood and shows miles of skin. Scenes of bodily fluids flying from gunshots, impalements and even weed-whackers are interspersed with scenes featuring svelte young women nude, topless, or in kinky costumes--sexy nurse outfits, a nun’s habit, black leather, and so on. While the plot deals with social justice--specifically illegal immigration--racial slurs and stereotypes abound.

Why is this okay, if it is indeed okay? Because it’s fiction? Because it’s all in fun? Because it’s a parody of exploitation flicks and not exactly one itself? Because the sexualized women are strong women? Because the epithets aren’t meant spitefully? Because all of these infringements actually serve to turn themselves on their head in order to make a point that is the opposite of what they might suggest on the surface?

No doubt the answer is all of the above, but at least some of the infractions are simply enjoyable without any need for an excuse. The racial aspects demand separate treatment, but with regard to the portrayal of women, which might in another film provoke cries of sexism or misogyny, perhaps we can say that sometimes it’s all right to put feminist narratives aside and just enjoy a ridiculous fantasy.

Sometimes it’s okay to just be a man or woman who thinks Michelle Rodriquez looks hot as Hell in black leather with matching eyepatch.