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Predator is about Heterosexual Man's fear of Women (and Deus to a lesser extent)
I present here a look at an Arnie classic - Predator.
There are a number of themes of varying levels of subtlety that Predator is concerned with, but throughout the film, one thing is true - the Predator represents womankind. Here I break-down the themes roughly in the order in which they occur in the film.
* Arnie and Carl meet up = "It's ok to love another man as long as it's nothing g-a-y"
Arnie and Carl Weathers are clearly men who have a shared past. When first they meet, they express their affection through a ridiculously homo-erotic standing arm wrestle - "What's the matter, Dylan? They got you pushing too many pencils?" jokes Arnie at Carl's 'weak' grip. They bicker and quarrel throughout the film like an old married couple. But there's almost certainly never been a time when Weathers has stroked Arnie's face, post-coitus, and expressed his affection by circling one of Arnie's nipples with an ebony finger. This is because Arnie and Carl are strong, hetero guys who just happen to be good friends and have worked together in the past. This is ok.
* The squad finds skinned bodies in the jungle = "Women have all got a few skeletons in their closet, this scares men"
Arnie and crew find plenty of evidence that this woman his been around. This is bad. Men don't mind promiscuous women for sex, but for a man in a relationship in it's early stages to be confronted with the actual victims/lovers of a previous woman is too much to bear, and especially when that woman has been with, i.e. killed, some of their mates.
* The Predator and the Vagina - Fearsome alien entities
The Predator is clearly a woman. Long hair like a girl, a mask (makeup), a host of bewildering accessories, and very well dressed. Also, no man can understand a word it says, and it seems to have eyes in the back of it's head. You cannot get anything past the Predator/woman. It also hides, behind it's mask an obviously vagina-like mouth which, when confronted up close, is both mysterious and not entirely welcoming. What the hell is it? And how does it work? And why is it's breath so bad?
* The Men come to suspect that they are being hunted, and this freaks them out = "Man's fear of being hunted by women, rather than being the hunter"
No self-respecting man ever has marriage proposed to him by a woman, or is picked up in a bar the way a man picks up some floozy. MAN is the hunter. He is the one with drive, commitment to finding and obtaining poontang, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to get more. Man is the one who pursues woman, and when that role is reversed, it's time to flee into the jungle setting traps behind you as you go.
* All hell breaks loose and they shoot shit up - "Men have been reduced to frightened animals by empowered womankind and resolve this through the acquisition of phallic replacements and mass destruction"
If Jesse "The Body" Ventura's minigun is not a phallic symbol, then neither is the Taj Mahal. It's a whopper, and he handles it as often as he can, even referring to himself as a "Goddamn Sexual Tyrannosaurus". In a subtle way, he is the alpha male in the group for his penis size alone. Yes, he follows orders and gets the job done, but he is also the envy of the group for his gigantic member, which he has even nicknamed "Old Painless" - the ultimate irony since any woman accepting his girth would feel a great deal of pain.
Even Arnie is humbled in his presence and barely speaks a word to him. The only man who can relate to Jesse is his friend - Mac. Mac, who is black. As we all know, Mac is going to be hung like a horse because all black men are - FACT. Ventura is friends with Mac because they can both relate to each other through their huge cranks. There would be some alpha-male style battle, but it's not needed - Mac is instantly considered inferior to his white master - Ventura. It's unspoken, but for some reason unknown to him, Mac looks to Ventura as an authority figure because Mac is stripped of the black man's one hold over white - penis size, here rendered void by Old Painless.
This is all carried out in order to maintain the level of bravado required by men to put up a front of fearlessness in the face of terrifyingly empowered women - like the Predator.
* They cannot find the predator despite setting traps and looking for it = "Men in groups are clueless when it comes to finding single women"
Try as they might, men in large groups are making far too much noise and being far to boyish (i.e. playing war and making dirty jokes) for any single woman to be impressed enough to show up. Try as he might, Arnie simply cannot lead his mates and him to find the embodiment of the hot single babe - the Predator. The one bird they do find is that Spanish bird, and since she speaks Spanish, no-one can understand word she says. Again an example of men and women not sharing a common tongue.
Instead the Predator watches from a distance, picking off the men only when they are alone. When she gets them that way, they become disconnected from the group, just like men on a real night out, and are either taken off, or discarded - i.e. killed. Arnie can't even find the first man in the group to die i.e. score with a chick. Just like in real life, once a decent bird shows an interest in a bloke in a group, he is quickly distanced from that group, who will then wonder where the fuck he got to and presume that he must have pulled a bird.
* The Men are killed one by one "Man cannot live without masturbation since it frees him sexually from women"
The other men are killed in all sorts of ways related to men's failings with women - Jesse Ventura "has his heart broken" when he is shot in the chest, blasting his heart out. Mac's "brains are turned to mush" by a woman. The nerd guy is "Gutted".
Above all these stands Carl Weathers. Everyone remembers how he dies, and it's the most graphic and disturbing. Carl loses both his arms to the Predator/Woman. He is therefore denied any sexual release that does not involve this dastardly female since he cannot 'tug the boat' anymore. He is at her mercy, and despite trying to fight back, dies valiantly. We all mourn this loss as we would mourn the inability to exercise sexual freedom from women through self abuse.
* Final Showdown - Arnie vs Predator = "One definite way to beat a woman is to regress to Caveman State"
How does Arnie defeat womankind? He becomes the ultimate man. He becomes so male - stripped almost bare, covered in mud, using no weapons bar a simple club and a few grunts, totally alone in an alien environment - that all her usual tricks are useless, and she may be heard to say "I can't understand you at all!". In the end, they do battle - i.e. have sex - since despite herself, and knowing that it's a trap to go for a neanderthal man, she thinks she can change him, or in our case kill him.
The Predator is a dominant woman, and she is obviously in charge in the bedroom, giving Arnie a right old beating in the sack, and terrifying the wits out of him by jamming her fanny/mouth right in Arnie's face. HOWEVER! Arnie has the last laugh when he drops a giant rock - i.e. a bombshell - on the Predator. No matter how powerful she may be, no matter how in charge of the bedroom, she can still be rendered helpless and dependent by one thing. Her achilles heel - pregnancy. In the end, the predator decides to terminate the pregnancy - i.e. it sets off that nuclear suicide device whilst crippled by bearing Arnie's child. Having been freed of a potential responsibility, Arnie legs it and barely makes it out alive. This was a close encounter with a totally psycho bitch, and this is the most Arnie can hope for.
* Arnie Exits the Jungle "In the end, the only way out is sticking together with your male friends, and calling in support choppers"
Arnie escapes. He's given a lift home from the psycho beast's house by his mate, The General. Like all men who have suffered at the hands of a dominant woman, he cannot confess anything to his mates, and says nothing about what happened.
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