Magic Mike XXL

Magic Mike XXL is just like those old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland flicks. Some neighbourhood kids decide to put on a show. The slight difference here is that the kids are “male entertainers” and the theatrical climax — so to speak — is at the male strippers convention.

Still, it’s a celebration of Americana, post-feminist style. Hero Mike left the strip biz to design and make furniture. He rejoins the troupe when he’s lured to the wake of a still-alive (but absent) old colleague. That’s Mike’s resurrection.

The narrative covers the gender-role spectrum. The film first focuses on the male entertainers, as they catch up on their separate lives. Their MC is the most maternal, with his yogurt food truck. They move through a show at a drag queen bar, then the trad campfire romance, then a womens’ sex club, then a private visit to some wealthy frustrated women and finally The Big Show.

For once the film addresses the female gaze. That is, men are displayed in sexual postures and exposure for the satisfaction of the women in the audience. That goes against the groin of Hollywood film. So, too, the reversal of the Cinderella story, where the overly-endowed male —  who hasn’t found a woman who can accommodate him — finally finds “the glass slipper” who can. She’s Andie MacDowell.

The film corrects the assumption that sex is for women to satisfy men. In all three main shows, the men simulate sex for the gratification of women. As they spell out their ethic, they do what the women’s husbands don’t: ask what they want then give it. Revolutionary.

Significantly, the women here are not uniformly beautiful. Some strikingly large women are serviced as selflessly as the young and beautiful. Its not just the abs, pecs and etceteras that are XXL here. But these men celebrate the women’s beauty that transcends their physical appearance.

Our heroes conscript one of Mike’s old flames to replace their convalescing MC. She owns the club that makes its female clients all feel they are queens — at least for the night. She similarly calls the shots for the men’s big show. She articulates their function — to idolize and fulfill the women’s fantasies. The men find their magic in serving the women, not themselves.

     Because this reversal strikes at the heart of American show-biz the big numbers are attended by tsunamis of dollar bills. The women show their enthusiasm — and power — by throwing  money at the men who are faking sex with — and for once mainly for — them. Here women have the right to be celebrated, worshipped, asked their desires and gratified, and for once they have the money and power to be served. Both in real and in reel life, that’s revolutionary.