House of Eratosthenes

There are these things called Akshun Movies. That’s kind of a phony way of spelling “action,” and there’s a good reason for that, because what I’m talking about are movies that have explosions, people dying violently, stunts, cars, and guns, but when you’ve watched it for a few minutes it becomes clear that this movie is not made for men. And that’s not to say I disapprove, necessarily, because there are other people who like to watch movies besides men. And a lot of these movies can be highly entertaining, to a lot of people, some of whom are in fact manly-men.

But when men genuinely enjoy these movies, they do so as individual men whose individual fancies happen to be tickled by something in the movie. Men, as a group, aren’t being catered-to as a demographic group, by this movie, which is pretending as hard as it can to be catering to men as a demographic group. I don’t disapprove of the genre, what earns my disapproval is the phoniness. And I don’t even disapprove of that, since it’s capitalism. What rankles me is my own obliviousness when I sit through movies like these, which, of course, is my responsibility alone. Hence this note.

So how do you know a movie is an “Akshun” movie? This can be important. Some wives and girlfriends like to “trade”; this weekend we’ll see something that is a chick flick, and doesn’t even pretend to give guys anything they want at all whatsoever, so tonight, in the spirit of compromise we’ll go see an “Akshun” movie. This is a scam. It’s a highly profitable scam, though, so like e-mail phishing, glossy flyers in your mailbox, and telemarketing, it is here to stay. If you’re watching an Action Movie, and you see the following, you might actually be watching an “Akshun” movie. What to do with this epiphany, is up to you. It’s probably a completely useless epiphany, but it’s always nice to know what’s going on.

Reflexes Are There, Brain Is Not: This is a very interesting phenomenon that I began to notice a few years ago was becoming very common, and now you can’t get away from it. There is this cute couple around whom the entire movie revolves: he is the hero, she is the heroine. The man has a very interesting set of mental faculties. When his leading-lady is about to be run over by an out-of-control truck, or squashed by a giant ape, or sliced in half, or whatever, he is Johnny-on-the-spot. He always saves her life at the last possible second, usually by yanking her out of the way, and without exception, the leading lady has absolutely no idea what harm was about to befall her until the danger is past. Often, he has to bound across a crowded room to stop her from falling through a growing crack in the earth, as the bystanders who were standing close enough they could have kicked her, do nothing (nor, apparently, are they in any danger that would demand some of our hero’s attention). Thank goodness he was there, or she’d be flattened/eviscerated/sliced/diced/melted, whatever. She owes him her life YET AGAIN! Sounds like every Action Movie you’ve ever seen, right?

Not so fast. The cute couple has just discovered a coded message in a stained glass window. Or received a clue from a ghost. Or noticed it’s high tide when it should be low tide. Whatever. What could it possibly mean? He asks, she answers. That is an iron-clad RULE. In fact, if this gets really abused badly, you’ll get to the point if you hear his manly-man voice say the words “What Could It Mean?” one more freakin’ time, so help you, you’ll want to smack something. His leading lady needs a second or two before the answer jumps into her head. No one will have any doubts that she’s correct, even if she delays explaining it indefinitely. There will be no plot twist later, resulting from her failing to realize some subtle nuance. Nobody else in the whole movie will have even a clue as to what she figured out. Amazing, huh? She’s too stupid to notice a ten-ton truck with failed brakes, when it’s breathing down her neck, but suddenly she’s Sherlock Holmes in high heels. And ten minutes later, they’ll do it again.

Nobody else but him may ever rescue anybody from anything, and nobody else but her may solve any clues, for two solid hours. Why? Simple. Women like to feel important, especially in the puzzle-solving department, but they still find the knight in shining armor sexy. Someone has researched this, and figured out most women are willing to give up the latter role, but cling jealously to the former. The movie starts to get tedious, because once you put those rules in place, you can’t ever, ever, ever violate them, or you’d betray the formula. Real life doesn’t work that way, but hey, it’s a movie. At least now, you know what kind it is.

The “Oh God, I Suck So Much” Face: So we’re down to the last five minutes of the movie and all the kitties have been rescued from trees, our hero and heroine have lived through their trials and tribulations, they’re reunited after trying to find each other, the bomb has been defused, all mysteries have been solved, there’s only one thing out of place: The head bad guy is still alive. That, and, perhaps, the hero is trapped with him somewhere, maybe with the heroine he has just rescued. Maybe the bad guy boss is holding a gun on the hero.

The hero does something to take the bad guy by surprise, grabs the heroine — can’t forget her! — and, after also perhaps finding a secure pocket for the maguffin, or stolen idol, or microfilm that proves his innocence, whatever it is, leaps onto a passing delivery truck or swings on a lasso, out of the whatever, just before it is hit by a cruise missile which kills nobody but the head bad guy.

Just before the fireworks, however, time slows…down…to…a…CRAWL. And then in some kind of super-duper slow motion, the camera zooms in on the face of the bad guy, who is just starting to realize “Hey, uh…they got away. I’m going to die and I’m not even taking anyone with me like I wanted to.” And then the slow-motion camera zooms WAY in, so you can see the emotions on his face as he comes to fully embrace his final thoughts in this sphere of existence: OH…GAWD…I SUCK SO DAMN MUCH!!!

And, …boom.

That’s not an action movie, folks. That’s a chick flick. This late in the movie, you should have that figured out.

Tweedledum And Tweedledee: Two male characters have different roles. One might be the hero, one might be the villain. One might be the loveable nice guy, one might be the goofy sidekick. One might be a central character, and one might be more of an extra with just a couple of speaking lines. Maybe one of them will be the last guy killed by the crazed serial killer, and the other one will be the fornicating drug-snorting asshole jock that gets it in the first fifteen minutes.

The physical differences between them are obvious to someone who is sexually attracted to males. To you, as a heterosexual male, these guys look so much alike it is hard to understand what’s going on in the story. This is particularly annoying when the movie is about a woman cheating on her husband, and the guy she’s cheating with looks just like said husband. You have to listen to the background music while she’s having sex with someone, to figure out if this is something she’s “supposed” to be doing.

What I find particularly odious about this is that neither guy looks like, you know, a real guy. You’d never walk down the street and see a guy who looks like this. As a straight man, you look at these two twerps and you say to yourself “okay, these are actors in a movie, and they look like actors.” They look “metrosexual,” in a way that real metrosexuals don’t look. They wear a lot of hair gel. Their haircuts are clean and “sexy-looking,” in a way, but still look funny. You probably can’t ask for, and get, a haircut like this, nor would you want one.

Guys in real life, who are willing to change everything about their appearances to get more tail, especially, do not look like these guys. If they did, they would not get tail. Women are sexually attracted to a certain image of a guy on film, and they’re attracted to a different image of a guy in real life — or else, someone who makes a living forming opinions about such things, thinks so. What I think happens, is the studio hires a consultant to figure out what everyone should look like, and the consultant researches current fashions and trendsd. So the studio doesn’t get “good guy looks like…” and “bad guy looks like…” recommendations, instead, it gets “MEN should look like…” recommendations. Lots of generic rules, very few specific rules.

And hey, once you pay money for an idea, you have to use it, right?

So if the woman’s husband is five-foot-ten, clean-shaven, with wavy chestnut hair, the guy she’s cheating on him with his not six-foot-three with a shaggy beard and a big knobby earring. That would make it easy, and it would be too much like real life. No, the backdoor man is five-foot-ten, clean-shaven, with wavy chestnut hair. The detective is the same. The hired assassin is the same. The guy who is blackmailing her is the same. They all wear suits, all the time. Or, if one of them wears an open-collar short sleeve shirt with blue jeans, they all wear that. And if you still care about what’s going on, well, congratulations…you probably can’t.

Which brings me to:

Pink and Purple: Since about the early 90’s, it has become very fashionable for men to, when dressing up, take their dad’s suit and give it a colorful twist. Your slacks and jacket match, they’re solid black, but the other items have some loudness to them. Personally, I like this. I think it looks good and refreshing, and it gives us guys a chance to mix-and-match a little bit like the ladies have been able to do for centuries. A nice conservative suit with a white shirt, and then a crazy-colorful necktie with a fuax Picasso pattern, looks good. And if the shirt isn’t white, it can be crazy-colorful too. I like all this stuff. Sometimes, I get the ridiculous notion that maybe I even look good in it.

One thing, though.

Detectives from the police department who are investigating homicides, do not wear purple. They don’t wear pink ties. You probably won’t see one wearing a “bolo,” and there’s no way any homicide detective is going to have sunglasses with little tiny itty-bitty blue lenses.

If they do, in the movie you’re watching, well…you know the rest.

There are probably other indicators, but I haven’t really noticed what they are just yet.

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Akshun MoviesSunday, December 18th, 2005

Akshun Movies
Sunday, December 18th, 2005