Rear Window​ presents Jefferies (James Stewart) as an experienced photographer, thus legitimizing his gaze and letting the audience come to terms with his actions. He still peeps through the window of his often under-dressed neighbor and peruses the others as if he were flipping through channels on a television, but because of his profession his gaze has an added sense of permissibility. The film insists he is not simply spying, he is learning and appreciating. In the end his gaze gains extra justification, as it helps solve a criminal case, and the numerous invasions of privacy are forgotten. ​Rear Window​ presents the male gaze as justified and correct, with the simple caveat that the peeping tom must own a professional camera.

Post-classical films such as ​Blue Velvet​ begin to challenge this notion of a justified gaze. It initially provides the same setup, with Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) sneaking into Dorothy’s (Isabella Rossellini) apartment to potentially solve a mystery. As he looks through the shutters of the closet, his newfound peepshow devolves into a shocking display of fetish and sexual abuse. Soon Jeffrey finds himself whisked away from his quaint notions of the American suburbs and shoved into the reality of their seedy underbellies. Instead of glorifying the outcome of the male gaze, ​Blue Velvet​ shows the horrifying results it can produce. Jeffrey’s gaze ultimately rips away his sheltered life and stomps on his innocence. The world will never be the same for him. All because he wanted to get a quick peek.

Moonlight​ then shatters the traditional notions of the male gaze. Instead of the gaze being provided by a straight and white lead, the main character, Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes), is gay and black. Unlike Jefferies and Jeffrey, Chiron does not gaze out from a position of power or authority. An innumerable amount of pain and trauma mark his younger years. His home life is nearly nonexistent. He has few real friends in the world. Chiron’s gaze is one of hope and searching for belonging. Not only is ​Moonlight​ different for prominently showcasing a homosexual relationship in a feature film, but also because it depicts a male character using his gaze from a position of incredible weakness.

Since the rules of Classical Hollywood started to be attenuated in the late 1960s, the male gaze has shifted, resulting in a change in how male characters drive stories. How a film presents the gaze to the audience controls how much power a character has. Jefferies’ gaze in ​Rear Window​ presents him as an expert, allowing him to act with impunity. However, Jeffrey’s gaze in ​Blue Velvet​ does not result in the same level of sanitized success, instead offering a tale of how the traditional male power and sexual fantasies can go horribly wrong. And then ​Moonlight uses its gaze to give light to a marginalized group and offer a fresh new perspective. As time has passed, the notion of a male gaze (and others) has obviously persisted due to the medium itself, but it has also been subverted to tell stories from new and inventive perspectives.

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The following essay contains spoilers for The Big Sleep (1946), The Reckless Moment (1949), and The Big Lebowski (1998).

The Big Sleep​ introduces us to Detective Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) in a scene where Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers) almost immediately throws herself at him. Not too much further into the film a woman working at a store follows suit after talking to Marlowe for all of two minutes. As the stoic, powerful, and isolated male detective, Marlowe attracts the attention of nearly every female character in the film. In doing so, ​The Big Sleep​ illustrates the command Marlowe has over the situation at all times. That is in conjunction with his actual investigative abilities, which receive near equal screen time. If he is not flirting, he is probably making an incredible deduction so casually that you can’t help but be impressed. Marlowe’s character is the blueprint for classical film noir detectives, a mentally sharp and silver tongued man, capable of overcoming any obstacle.

The companion to any such character is the femme fatale. In classic noir, the femme fatale is the detective’s other half, and often serves as one of his greatest mental hurdles in solving the case. Although initially mixed in with all of the other women the detective may encounter, the femme fatale quickly stands out. Oftentimes she will be the one doing the seducing and lead the detective astray. She will have a power and strength of her own, but it will only serve the narrative in regard to the main detective. Over time he will learn to conquer her independence and become immune to her poison. In ​The Big Sleep,​ Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) fulfills this role, and does just as previously described. She seduces Marlowe, leads him into trouble, he overcomes it, and finally they ride off together.

Then comes ​The Reckless Moment,​ a film that begins to challenge the genre’s foundational approach. With her husband off at war, Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) must play the role of a protective mother and try to rectify the problem her daughter, Beatrice “Bea” Harper (Geraldine Brooks), creates when she accidentally kills a man. The Reckless Moment​ strips much of the agency away from the male characters. The one doing the investigating is a woman who currently has no husband figure in her life to lean on. She does the negotiating on her own behalf, deals with the police, and tries to scrounge up enough money to satisfy an attempt at blackmail. ​The Reckless Moment​ changed the classic noir structure to allow women to be the ones in control of the narrative.

The Big Lebowski​ further dilutes the original noir style and injects its own changes. Now the male detective has lost his motivation and wit, merely stumbling upon the correct answers. Maude (Julianne Moore) controls her father (introduced as a wealthy figure) through an allowance and uses The Dude (Jeff Bridges) to get herself pregnant. She does all of this without serving the plot, only acting as another attraction for The Dude until the film’s conclusion, where nearly no real progress has occurred since the opening scene. In this iteration of the noir, the male detective has lost his edge, the femme fatale only serves herself, and there is no grand reveal or prize at the end of the mystery.

Over the years the Classical Hollywood film noir has undergone many alterations. Once a genre near solely dedicated to showing off impressive male characters and their glory, it has now opened up. Women are detectives, male sleuths are lazy and bumbling, femme fatales are independent from the investigators, and the big reveal at the end takes a back seat to the journey. None of these changes completely replace the original format, but they open the genre up to a wider variety of stories, allowing more voices to shine and for greater artistic flexibility in the way films tell these tales.

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The following essay contains spoilers for The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), American Psycho (2000), and Fight Club (1999).

Martin Scorsese’s ​The Wolf of Wall Street​ showcases the story of real life stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio). It illustrates his acquisition of wealth and the subsequent destruction of his empire, quickly followed by him dodging any substantial punishment. Released in 2013, ​The Wolf of Wall Street​ can be read as a direct response to the Great Recession beginning in 2007. With the help of a number of Scorsese’s filmmaking techniques, the film’s visuals directly appeal to the crowd hit hardest by the failing financial systems. Instead of responding to the destruction of Belfort’s life, audiences latch onto Belfort himself due to the spectacle inadvertently replacing the message.

As the film opens and Belfort describes how he,

“…gambles like a degenerate…”, “…drinks like a fish…”, and has “…three different federal agencies looking to indict [him]”,

Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

the audience gets to watch a medium close-up of him doing cocaine off of an attractive woman’s butt. So while the film’s dialogue details a life teetering on the edge, the visual is much more engaging and desirable to a stereotypical male audience. Much like American prescription drug commercials, the potential horrors are audibly listed off while accompanied by eye candy.

Not only are the undesirable portions of Belfort’s life overshadowed, but the desirable pieces are paraded across the screen. When celebrating a week’s earnings, the office transforms into a dazzling house of debauchery. Marching band music plays, the band members march through the halls in their underwear, and then the servers and strippers follow close behind. Quick cuts between medium shots of two groups of strippers charging at each other fill the frame, with a strobe effect turning the whole scene into a dream. A close up of Belfort’s face appears near the end, as he pridefully watches over what he has created. Numerous scenes of this scale appear throughout The Wolf of Wall Street​ and they all end up distracting a sizable segment of viewers from the morally reprehensible nature of Belfort’s business and his looming demise.

The film presents all of this as easily accessible to the audience as well. According to the film Belfort’s only qualification is that he decides to move to Wall Street because of his love for money. He quickly finds himself working up the ladder as a stock broker and when that fails due to circumstances out of his control, he immediately pivots to penny stocks and experiences almost immediate success.

Finally, the film ends with Belfort proclaiming that for a,

“…brief fleeting moment, [he’d] forgotten [he] was rich”.

Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

At this point the film notes that despite all of his crimes, all of those he hurt along the way, and even the destruction of his own personal life, he would not be paying a hefty legal price. It gives audience members the illusion they could experience the three hours worth of hedonistic depravity as well, at little cost. Further driving this point home, the real Jordan Belfort appears in a cameo in the final scene to introduce Leonardo DiCaprio’s character version of himself at a get-rich-quick seminar. Not only did Jordan Belfort dodge consequences for his actions, he now gets to appear in a Hollywood film directed by legendary director Martin Scorsese. In the final seconds of the film, the camera pans over the audience in a medium close-up at eye level, a metaphor for the real audiences’ aspirations to achieve Belfort’s supposed success.

Thomas Salek notes,

“…the film’s cultural reception demonstrates a public ambiguously mesmerized by a wealthy individual and his ‘get rich quick’ philosophy.” Following the Great Recession, “In a 2013 political poll, more than half of U.S. adults said they did not think the government and financial industry had done enough to prevent future financial crises”. Yet, “…they are hesitant to impose any form of regulation on financial markets”. ​

Thomas Salek

The Wolf of Wall Street​ released at a time when many Americans were economically struggling, but also refusing to punish the individuals who put them in that position, possibly out of the hope that one day it may be them on top. ​The Wolf of Wall Street​ showed the disillusioned audiences how that may be possible for them. In the United States where money is so tightly intertwined with power, the men who felt emasculated by the recession now had an outlet of escapism. ​The Wolf of Wall Street ​said by fighting their way out of poverty to reap the rewards of capitalism, men could regain their masculine identity and the rewards that accompany that (mainly women and power). Society will not simply hand out this identity, but instead it will only award it to those willing to struggle against their current socioeconomic condition.

Much like ​The Wolf of Wall Street​, Mary Harron’s ​American Psycho ​found itself released during tumultuous economic times. It reached theaters in the year 2000, with the dot-com bubble having recently burst. ​American Psycho​ follows investment banker Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) as he strives to maintain an impeccable image for his yuppie colleagues, acquaintances, and fiancee. As the film progresses we watch as Bateman lures in and brutally murders numerous women. It concludes with Bateman being denied the condemnation he seeks by his peers, and the other characters merely continuing to focus on their own lives.

Similar to how ​The Wolf of Wall Street​ parodies the excessive lifestyle of Jordan Belfort yet the pure spectacle of it all still carries the audience away, ​American Psycho​ shows the monstrous side of Patrick Bateman but offers no in-universe condemnation of his character. Bateman’s closing monologue over an extreme close-up of his eyes states,

“My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself”.

Mary Harron, American Psycho

This lack of a clear condemnation from other characters allows the excesses of his life to outshine the horrors for those already looking to ignore them.

As Peter Deakin points out,

“Bateman becomes so fragmented and de-individualized (in addition to being defined) by his insane consumerism and his hyper-yuppie vision that, composed entirely of ‘inauthentic’ commodity-related desires… he ​cannot​… exist as a person.”

Peter Deakin

This explains how the film itself, but not the characters within the film, does condemn Bateman. However, it also describes how his masculinity and monetary goals are interconnected. He sees every financial conquest as a means of increasing his desirability in a world he perceives to be constantly attempting to rip it away. ​American Psycho ​may mock this notion by showing how all of the yuppies mix up each other’s names due to a loss of individuality, but it is this same rampant materialism that allows Bateman to live in a fantastic apartment, make more money than he knows what to do with, sleep with beautiful women, and ultimately face no consequences for his actions. To the men directly hurt by the economic downturn of 2000, Bateman may come with a lot of baggage (the brutal killing of innocent women is no small thing), but he also represents a lost lifestyle that is waiting for reclamation. A lifestyle only available by fighting against the economic forces of the time.

So once again a film presents a conventionally despicable character and depicts his failings, yet the character’s lifestyle causes audiences to use his material possessions as a goal to guide their lives in troubled times (even though the film itself condemns this). For a country that sees,

“Achieving financial prosperity [as] tied to the American dream”,

Thomas Salek

characters that provide a blueprint for that are highly valuable since,

“…most Americans [now] contend that it is harder to become wealthy and there is little chance they will achieve financial prosperity”.

Thomas Salek

Counter to both ​The Wolf of Wall Street and American Psycho​, David Fincher’s ​Fight Club​ released just prior to the dot-com burst, during an economic peak. It depicts its disillusioned narrator (Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) as they form the titular Fight Club, a place for aimless men to let loose their growing aggression. Increasingly fed up with a materialistic world, the members set out on a number of vandalism related plots, ultimately culminating in the destruction of numerous buildings housing countless debt records.

Fight Club​ parodies brands and corporations, and men’s increasing tendency to use them to define their lives. Mark Ramey states,

“The film is a powerful critique of a superficial consumer culture and the moral vacuum created by consumers who buy into that superficiality.”

Mark Ramey

Fight Club claims a generation without a war or depression to fight has it too easy and becomes effeminate as a result. It goes on to say men on some level crave violence and to fight and feel pain, feel themselves, and feel masculine. These men must fight to form their individuality and in death they will have a name. Their struggle gives them identity.

Of course much like the preceding two films which either depict their characters’ fall from grace and/or condemn them for their actions, ​Fight Club​ denounces the outright anarchy it depicts for much of its runtime when it has the narrator shoot out the part of his brain responsible for projecting the image of Tyler Durden, thus killing his aimless cravings for anarchy. But by depicting a lifestyle free of needless consumerism prior to this point, ​Fight Club​ offers an explanation to the men who feel like their lives lack purpose when their economic conditions are just too good. ​Fight Club​ tells these men to reject their financial bounties and instead embrace the primal nature of their identities. Toss out the comforts of modern life to get in touch with who you really are and what you truly desire. Those who stand in the way of this progress fail as men and (in the film, quite literally) find themselves castrated. Although this time Hollywood is not telling men to fight to climb the socioeconomic ladder, it is still telling them to fight, just this time to tear it all down.

These films expect men to pursue materialistic goods, but once they have acquired them they have either lost their individuality or have been so thoroughly consumed by their drive they have lost true autonomy. Films then encourage these same men to rebel against the broken system to tear it all down. And then films once again encourage them to strive for greatness because, without anything you are nothing, not desirable nor a real man. Throughout the years this cycle of societal and Hollywood based expectations has endured. A man must always be fighting in one direction or another to maintain his virility. To give in to the system, no matter which end of the spectrum the system is currently leaning, is a loss of decision making, agency, and therefore masculinity as often portrayed by American cinema.

Works Cited

• Deakin, Peter. “‘I Simply Am Not There’: American Psycho, the Turn of the Millennium and the Yuppie as a Killer of the Real.” ​Film International,​ vol. 14, no. 3–4 [77–78], 2016, pp. 85–101. ​EBSCOhost​, doi:10.1386/fiin.14.3-4.85_1.
• Harron, Mary, director. ​American Psycho​. Lions Gate Films, 2000.
• Fincher, David, director. ​Fight Club​. 20th Century Fox, 1999.
• Ramey, Mark. ​Studying Fight Club​. Auteur, 2014. ​EBSCOhost​, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000tna&AN=828933&site=eds-live&scope=site.
• Salek, Thomas A. “Money Doesn’t Talk, It Swears: The Wolf of Wall Street as a Homology for America’s Ambivalent Attitude on Financial Excess.” ​Communication Quarterly​, vol. 66, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 1–19. ​EBSCOhost​, doi:10.1080/01463373.2017.1323767.
• Scorsese, Martin, director. ​The Wolf of Wall Street.​ Paramount Pictures, 2013.

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Emma, the woman who rejects the Dancin’ Kid’s (Scott Brady) advances, represents femininity gone astray. She has no man, she attempts to control and lead on her own, and her short haircut lends to an all around butch appearance. It is for this deviation from the norm that Johnny Guitar crucifies Emma. The film takes advantage of audiences’ bias against strong females in the genre to turn them against her. So once the film does show Emma upholding a staple of the genre by her burning down the saloon, because audiences have already labeled Emma as the antagonist her actions become those of a villain. Thus by leaning into one regressive trope Johnny Guitar manages to subvert another.

At the beginning of the aforementioned scene, we see Emma holding a rifle while in high-key lighting with dramatic music playing in the background. As Emma fires the rifle the lighting shifts to low-key, casting shadows upon her. A close-up of the flames she creates follows, with violins now added to the score. Next we see her face, again in low-key lighting, but now also lit by the flames. As Emma backs out of the saloon and into the wilderness, Johnny Guitar completes its thorough denouncement of her. With Emma backing up closer and closer to the fixed camera, the shot ends with a close-up of her wicked smile, drums beating and flames raging behind her (complimented nicely by her bright red lipstick). The transition from a brightly lit scene to shadows and flames, the crescendo of the score, and the close-up of her hateful celebration cement Emma as a detestable character.

This is in stark contrast to Vienna, who repents for her sins of independence. Vienna returns to the warm embrace of Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), finding herself back at the side of her man. She is no longer the rogue woman building an empire of her own from the beginning of the film, but the damsel in distress wearing the pure white dress, waiting for her gallant knight to ride down on his white horse and save her. Johnny Guitar transitions Vienna from a self-sufficient entrepreneur to a more sympathetic character that audiences recognize as one who needs and deserves saving.

Vienna may no longer represent a deviation from gender norms, but she still represents the progress of civilization. The saloon that she built in anticipation of the coming railroad encapsulates small town fears of urbanization and the destruction of a simpler way of life.

When Emma transitions from the interior of the saloon to the wild outdoors, it symbolizes the refusal to accept progress. No longer confined by the laws of a modern society, the characters can give in to their urge for primal mob justice. The outdoors houses freedom, violence, hangings, and untamed wilderness. It does not have established rules or hierarchies and is ripe for exploitation (but not by outsiders). Watching a seemingly deranged Emma skip out of Vienna’s burning saloon sends a clear message- that those who seek to turn back time are irrational and maniacal. The doors of the saloon are a boundary in the world of Johnny Guitar, and with Emma burning them down she proclaims her willingness to send society backwards for the sake of her own self-interests.

The scene concludes with a long shot of Johnny Guitar and his white horse emerging from the trees, the camera panning to follow. Here, the music pauses for a brief second with Johnny’s introduction. The dramatic score from the destruction of the saloon subsides after one last long shot of the building. We see another long shot of the mob, and then Johnny rides his horse from a long to a medium close shot as he proceeds to follow. The white imagery, musical introduction, and dramatic panning reveal all establish Johnny as a force for good. The back to back long shots of the saloon and mob strengthen the connection between the two, act as Johnny’s gaze, and establish his motivation. The film reinforces the unwarranted nature of the destruction and provides us with a hero to rectify the situation and deliver true justice. Johnny arrives as the savior of the damsel (a stand in for modernization) and sets off to tame Emma and the lawless wilderness she represents.

Westerns traditionally support the nostalgia for slow and quaint towns of the frontier, yet in Johnny Guitar the individual halting that progress gets characterized as one to root against. With Emma as the villain, the film condemns her actions and expects the audience to as well. Yet, she accomplishes the goal of many Western heroes. She successfully (at least temporarily) holds off those who encroach upon her lifestyle. She rids the town of the saloon and the increased traffic and urbanization it would have brought. But because of the lighting, score, and framing the film successfully trains the audience to see Emma’s actions as treacherous. Therefore, instead of celebrating the upholding of classical Western values, viewers lament the destruction of the town’s growth. Johnny Guitar uses the audience’s own inclination to demonize strong female characters to in turn condemn one of the staple themes of the genre.

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The following essay contains spoilers for Scarface (1932).

To truly kick off the violence, Hawks employs a shot of a firing Tommy gun laid overtop a flipping calendar. The shots are at half opacity, allowing both to be visible at once. They imply a rampage of violence across time in the most stylish of ways. This brutality culminates in the execution of the lineup of rival gangsters. Facing the wall with their hands above their heads, Tony’s (Paul Muni) gang swiftly guns them down from behind. Again, the audience only sees the men’s shadows, distancing us from the savagery. And to show us the rewards of such actions, Scarface gives us the shot of Tony leaving the theater. Once he decides to rise at intermission, the camera begins to pan to follow his exit, and a staggering number of his men stand in unison to follow. Through this shot the audience understands the immense power Tony now wields. For those affected most by the Great Depression, this represented everything they could not have.

With heavily stylized shots and techniques, Scarface became an outlet of escapism for those stuck in the Great Depression. Even though its titular character meets his demise in the end, unable to escape his wrongdoings forever, the grandiose life he managed to live prior to his death seemed worth it to those with no success of their own.

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Whether jumping between ships, diving into a river, knocking out a policeman, or running for his life Buster Keaton peppers every scene with numerous punchlines. The narrative itself takes a back seat to the visual comedy. The audience knows the two young lovers will eventually connect, but the thrill resides in anticipating what wacky situations will temporarily derail that plot. Steamboat Bill, Jr. even features what many call Buster Keaton’s most dangerous and must-see stunt: fitting perfectly through an open window in a house’s falling facade. Keaton supposedly even told his director to keep the camera rolling no matter what. Valuing these stunts and visual marvels over the story is what makes Steamboat Bill, Jr. resemble the “cinema of attractions” more than a narrative focused film.

My particular showing of Steamboat Bill, Jr. also included live piano accompaniment by Philip Carli, which simply added to the sense of “attraction.” Now not only did the film itself want to draw the audience’s attention away from the plot and towards the technical craft of the stunts and gags, but the theater also added its own additional artistry to the experience. Even though we remember Buster Keaton for fusing his stunts with more than serviceable story, between him and Philip Carli the narrative did not stand a chance.

Of course all of this applies to a silent film from 1928, but how does it apply to modern cinema? Well, over the years it naturally progressed from Keaton (who was already fusing action with narrative) to franchises that dominate our current theaters. If you look at Marvel or the Fast & Furious franchise, these films draw in audiences with the promise of spectacle. Of course there is an interesting through line across the films, but the action remains the primary draw. Even as budgets and technology have skyrocketed, the principals found in Steamboat Bill, Jr. still hold true today.

Once you do away with the facade and superfluous story, whether it is Fast & Furious or pornography, in the end, you’re just there for the explosions.

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The following scene analysis contains spoilers for Some Like It Hot (1959).

Back beneath the table, Wilder packs the frame tightly, producing a sense of claustrophobia and anxiety. A pole runs in front of our view of Joe, a tablecloth takes up a quarter of the frame on either side, and Wilder films both Joe and Jerry with a medium close-up shot. But perhaps most importantly, Spats’ trademark shoes reside on the left-hand side of the frame, just behind Joe and slightly out of focus, but prominent enough to remind us of the danger of the situation.

The film routinely introduces the primary antagonist, Spats Colombo (George Raft), with a close-up shot of his distinct shoes. The film then either cuts to his face or employs an upward pan (tilt) to reveal the entirety of the menacing man. This process of association takes place repeatedly throughout Some Like It Hot. So by the time Joe and Jerry find themselves underneath the table, the audience understands the dramatic weight of the shoes sharing the frame. Tensions peak when all of these elements come together for a brief few seconds, and then momentarily dissipate when the unmistakable shoes slide out and go limp for the last time. That is, until we and our protagonists realize an even larger threat just effortlessly inserted himself into the chase.

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The scene, and especially the background, has low-key lighting and a multitude of shadows (a staple of film noir). However, when the waitress moves from the foreground to the background to serve another patron, she also turns on a light positioned to appear as if over Marlowe’s head. The newfound light illuminates the background behind the pondering detective, casting away the shadows. Coinciding with the light’s arrival, Marlowe’s search for an idea ends and he heads to the phone to call General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), and winds up conversing with Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) instead. Hawks follows Marlowe’s movement with a panning shot to show the connection between the idea and the action, and the urgency it demands.

The shift in lighting symbolizes the formation of the thought in Detective Marlowe’s mind, and does it so evidently that it breaks the rules of Classical Hollywood Style. Classical Hollywood Style calls for invisible filmmaking and editing, in the hope audiences forget they are watching a movie. Hawks’ much more stylized approach to lighting in The Big Sleep ignores that convention and helps cement him as a legitimate auteur in the eyes of film critics. Not only do his films spanning many genres carry similar motifs, but they also carry the director’s mark. By breaking both Hollywood and genre conventions, Hawks proves himself to be more than simply another cog in the studio system.

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Let me start off by saying I do not consider Avatar one of my favorite movies. If I was all powerful, Avatar would have made a tidy sum, but it would not have dominated the box office so handily. However, no one should understate what a technological achievement and global event it was. I never see movies more than once in theaters and only go through my favorites at home on occasion. I saw Avatar four times and never grew bored with the spectacle. James Cameron managed to accomplish absurdity on a technical level. The CGI, language, crowd models, and real depth producing 3D effects blew entire theaters away. No, the story was nothing revolutionary, but not every story needs to be. At the time, Avatar was king.

Saying all of this, not everyone has to appreciate the movie; just don’t play dumb. Stop refusing to understand the success Avatar experienced. And for the love of god, stop parroting it had no “cultural impact.”

Asking people to name a character from Avatar does not prove its lack of cinematic worth. Name a character from Inception. Name a character from Full Metal Jacket. What do you specifically remember from The Usual Suspects other than the twist? All great films. People love these movies and yet fail this arbitrary film purity test. They convey larger stories, ideas, and messages than what a pop quiz’s single question can encapsulate. Even so, you do remember the Na’vi (blue people), environmental themes, and set pieces. Do not try and convince everyone you have no memory of the film when in actuality you just don’t recall plot specifics from a 10 year old story.

Cultural impact is not limited to how often you and your friends quote the movie. After the Avatar expansion to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, attendance rose 25%. Just like the movie, the park opened as one of the most technologically advanced in its class and people responded. It also ushered in (an admittedly botched) wave of 3D into theaters. Avatar almost single-handedly forced every action movie for the foreseeable future to include a 3D showing. It may not have resulted in a welcome addition, but it had an undeniably tremendous impact on the industry.

Just like I have to do every time Disney decides to make a live action version of a beloved animated feature, you have to realize a market exists outside of you. If a movie makes $2.7B at the box office, four sequels doesn’t come as that big of a surprise. Get out of the echo chamber and realize that you might just not like it.

So much “discussion” on the internet has turned into competing with one another to scream the popular opinion the loudest. Of course Avatar did not perfect film making or seep into every nook and cranny of our lives, I don’t claim it did. However, my head feels like it’s going to explode every time I have to read another article wondering why “Dances with Wolves but worse” made so much money. Avatar is not a 10/10 film. Yes, it probably made more than its “true” worth. No, it didn’t have zero cultural impact. Yes, it’s okay if you don’t like it. Yes, plenty of people will watch the onslaught of sequels. And no, you don’t have to. Please, just relax.

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In some capacity, everyone lies. We hide facts, our character, our opinions and a wide range of other information. Nick wonders,

“What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What have we done to each other?”

while lying in bed next to his wife Amy. Even in marriage, a union where you supposedly bare all to one another, thoughts and feelings are kept private. Whole identities are constructed just for work or socializing. Amy conjures an entirely false persona to befriend a neighbor. She invites her over for wine, commiserates with her, and earns her trust. What’s more, the entire suburban populace suddenly dons a mask as well. They pretend to care about Amy and they pretend to want to find her. In reality, all they crave is a sense of accomplishment. They attack Nick and nearly line him up for execution, but do they really hate him? Once Amy returns, they cheer him on as a tragic hero. None of the middle class characters unabashedly display their true intentions; each one hides behind a different mask, a different lie. With no struggle to define themselves, they construct their own identities and become who they always dreamed they would be, further distancing themselves from reality.

While the suburbanites spin their stories, we meet Lola and Boyd at the motel. Amy believes she can find refuge at the dingy motel park, but unbeknownst to her, her facade crumbles here. As Lola and Boyd rob Amy of her savings, Lola sneers,

“I don’t think you’ve really been hit before.”

The two saw straight through Amy’s disguise. Amy views them and the lower class as trash. However, over the past few years she has been playing to an audience that yearns to be deceived and entertained. Now she faces two people from a place where they have to steal to survive. They do not have the same types of means as Amy. They live in a glorified trailer park. In large part their struggles have defined and shaped them. Lola and Boyd do have a purpose; to survive from day to day, week to week. Amy’s tricks fail because Lola and Boyd are critical of her and choose not to believe the lie, the story she has so carefully constructed. Lola describes real domestic abuse, real horrors that the quaint suburban neighborhood couldn’t fathom. It becomes clear that the lower class can see straight through Amy’s, and subsequently the rest of suburbia’s, mask.

If the lower class can see through Amy’s story, the upper class simply does not care. Amy’s rich ex-boyfriend, Desi Collings, sweeps her off her feet the second she finds herself most vulnerable. As she recites her lies, she notices that they garner neither the sympathy nor the derision that she has become accustomed to. Desi simply brushes it aside. He owns Amy now. Another toy in his mansion to bring him pleasure. Growing frustrated by her frequent denials of his advances, he decides to ignore her claim of domestic abuse. We never truly know if he believes it or not, but what is clear is even if he did believe her, it was not stopping him. Desi’s life has purpose in his pursuits. His wealth allows him to chase the finer things for his satisfaction, unlike the middle class who remain trapped in their own self constructed bubble.

Driving all this home, halfway through the film lies the grand reveal. As Amy tosses those cute fuzzy pens out her window, the audience gets yanked back to reality. Fincher defies one of murder mystery’s biggest tropes: the husband did it. The reporter asks,

“Nick Dunne. You’re probably the most hated man in America right now. Did you kill your wife, Nick?”

with a foregone conclusion in mind. Of course he killed his wife, now he just needs to confess. For the first half of the movie, the audience’s hand was held down the path of contempt; just as the angry mob’s was. Clue after clue our anger grew towards Nick. With each diary entry the certainty that Nick was the killer strengthened. By the reveal, one could hear a “Lock ​him up!” chant growing in the theater. But just as the audience becomes certain Nick killed his wife, Fincher pulls out the rug and all notions of justice come crashing down. We are forced to look around and examine ourselves. We have become the angry locals present in the film. We see the locals have gone from a sympathetic bunch to raving lunatics. And slowly but surely the realization hits, we are not in any way superior to the mob. Just minutes earlier we were one and the same. In fact, without being privy to the reveal, we would have continued down the exact same path of those we now look down upon with patronizing contempt.

Throughout ​Gone Girl, the oh so helpful suburban neighbors slowly take on a darker light. They go from a group just trying their hardest to help and seek justice for a friendly face, to a bloodthirsty mob looking for the freshest drama to bite into for the week. After all, what else are they to do? They seek meaning in their excruciatingly average lives. There is no survival involved with living in a lovely cookie cutter, white washed neighborhood. There are no grand escapades to go on in search of expensive trinkets or treasures. Middle class Americans are trapped in a bubble of their own creation. They don the masks of lives they wished they had to perform for their peers, each putting on a play of their own. Seeking any form of satisfaction they create their own threats, their own killers. As a unit they are going to fight back against their own conjured demons. Maybe then they will feel the rush and sense of accomplishment that has been so desperately missing from their lives. Maybe then they will have a purpose to be proud of, instead of wasting away their days gulping down wine and gossiping about the new neighbors. However, the lack of sincerity and purpose in the act ultimately proves it insufficient. The morsel of satisfaction gained simply keeps them hungry and coming back for more. Without true purpose, the disenfranchised American middle class will be left to wallow in the conflict of its own creation, fueled by the desire for any form of entertainment; a modern day bread and circus.

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