Ethics Review: Anora and the chauvinist gaze

 

Ethics Review:  Anora and the chauvinist gaze

 

Anora is a masterwork of movie-making, with superb acting that morphs through a sophisticated, multi-stage plot.  This exceeding feat required protean skills from Mikey Madison, who won an Oscar for Best Actress playing the movie’s namesake.  Anora avoids shallowness, sleaziness and pornocentricity despite multiple scenes of nudity and graphic sex.  It opens a somewhat nuanced window into the world of sex workers, touching on some of the challenges of the job.  It doesn’t go into detail, however, about how rude or abusive the male customers at strip clubs can be, which isn’t all that surprising, as I’ll get into below.

The movie has some absolutely horrific ethical failures.  As Anora, who calls herself Ani, says in the movie, multiple felonies are inflicted on her, including imprisonment and restraint, but no one even comes close to being punished for this.  Why?  The inflictors are enforcers and fixers for a Russian oligarch.  The oligarch gets his way, even in New York City .  What does Ani get? $10,000 for keeping quiet, not only about her annulled marriage to the oligarch’s son, but for being manhandled, confined and gagged.  At the end of the movie, she is emotionally broken and has sex with one of the perpetrators of the crimes against her.      

Anora sends the message that men rule the world and that the ‘male gaze’ is inevitable.  Men’s bad behavior is backgrounded, belittled and forgiven throughout the movie.  There’s no hint of the #MeToo movement that had been embraced by Hollywood since 2017.   Ani has to accept felonious violence with no recourse in the courts or from police.  By focusing solely on women’s role as sex workers, and disempowering the lead female character’s voice or options, the movie underwrites the misogynist idea that women earn attention and money when they maximize their sexual appeal and physical attractiveness to men.  When they step out of that pleasing role, they get stepped on.

Another problem is that the movie glamorizes the lifestyle of Russian oligarchs.  They are portrayed as above the law, royal in how they act, dress, and arrogantly express.  Although Hollywood has worshipped materialism for a long time--the endless theme of the lifestyles of the rich and famous-- Anora takes it a step further by normalizing Russian crime bosses.  For one thing, we never learn what the oligarch does to reap so much power in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.  

Not discussed in the movie is the fact that Russia wantonly invaded its neighbor Ukraine and is still fighting a vicious war there, including multiple war crimes, such as mass execution.  The powerful oligarch we see in the movie wears a simple coat and looks mild and professorial.  He laughs instead of sneers.  His thugs are portrayed as comical and, in one case, secretly sensitive and kind.   This secret kindness, though, doesn’t prevent the thug from wielding a baseball bat to smash up a store.

Can it be coincidence that the movie’s belittlement of women and valorization of Russa concurs with the election of Donald Trump?   Trump who loves Russian strongman Putin, and dictators in general?  Trump who has been convicted of rape in civil court and accused by over twenty women of sexual assault?  Trump who played the song, “It’s a Man’s World” at his election events? 

Trump, as well, attacks the LGBTQ community, and it is worth noting that an anti-gay slur is used repeatedly in Anora--not in a way that criticizes the slur, but in a way meant to make the audience laugh at its target.

Artists, including film-makers, often argue that art is above and beyond ethics.  The producers of Anora could say something like, “We’ve pulled off a masterpiece.  We speak to the human condition beyond today’s issues.”

But great works of art that deal with representations of human life and society inevitably make statements about right and wrong, statements that can be evaluated for their own merit.  Many movies once thought to be great are now in disfavor.  A classic example is Gone with the Wind, which won three Oscars.

We live in a time where dictators are on the rise, and where two sets of standards, one for most of us, and one for the rich, are being mainstreamed.  It is a dangerous era, similar in the rise of ethnonationalism before WWII.   Understandably, we want to hide from a threat that provokes such tremendous anxiety.  Movie-makers might prefer to acquiesce instead of retort, lining up their message with the preferences of the bully in power. 

Yes, acquiescence brings money and favor, in the short term, anyway, but this is not the noble or decent path.  Producers who bow down to fascism make their movies a shadow vehicle for male chauvinism and all the violence, cruelty, oppression and ignorance it bears.

This is not the time to kiss the ring of people like Donald Trump, especially given a recent horror--the ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza, supported by US weapons.  I close with the words of Elie Wiesel:  “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

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