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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