He's dashing, he's talented and he's charmed hard-hearted, humorless feminists all over the Web.
Young movie star Ryan Gosling (The Notebook, Crazy Stupid Love) has become not just the heartthrob of chick flick devotees, but the knight in shining armor that feminists admit they think about when they've drunk a bottle of wine.
So what did it take for Gosling to win the cold, pea-sized hearts of feminists? He publicly denounced the NC-17 rating initially hitched to his 2010 film Blue Valentine.
Blue Valentine is a drama about a broken marriage between Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Gosling). We see the couple's fading romance alongside the butterflies-in-the-stomach sweetness of their meeting, courtship and marriage. The story itself is almost perfunctory. Two American kids meet, fall madly in love, discover one another through heated, joyful sex - and then have a child. They go about the business of making a life together, but Dean's lack of ambition and his drinking turn Cindy into a frigid, angry woman pulling most of the marriage's weight. The Motion Picture Association of America thought at least one scene where Gosling's character performs oral sex on Williams' character - which was intense, but not gratuitous - was a bit too much.
Gosling fumed. He accused the association of "rampant sexism." He deplored the fact that the association regularly gives R ratings to movies that depict women being sexually tortured (referring to it as "torture porn"), but thought no one under age 17 should watch a scene depicting a woman receiving pleasure from her boyfriend.
Gosling made a cogent point. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was rated R, which means children could watch protagonist Lisbeth Salander raped and tortured - twice - as long as they were with an adult. If you're under the impression that the association has relaxed its standards toward graphic sexual violence, think again. The 1988 Oscar-winning film The Accused depicted the harrowing, brutal gang rape of a young woman - and was given an R rating. Some producers avoid the issue altogether by not submitting their films for a rating. The unrated 1994 Indian-made film Bandit Queen, about real-life Phoolan Devi, didn't flinch from depicting the multiple gang rapes of the Indian rebel - going so far to film a line of male Indian officials queueing up outside a shack for their turn to assault Devi. The 2002 French film Irreversible included a 10-minute rape scene so vicious that seasoned film critics were reported to have left screenings en masse. It, too, is unrated. Ryan Gosling
Gosling's sentiments were so notable to women that it inspired a hilarious meme known now as "Hey Girl" that is still going strong. Anonymous fans and feminists have scoured the Web for images of Gosling, then added monologues they imagine Gosling himself might recite. A picture of Gosling smiling, scratching his scruffy beard says: "Hey girl, I can't wait to meet your parents and all of your friends." A candid photo of Gosling kneeling over a raft of ducks says: "Hey girl, I'm just sitting here by the dock of the bay, wishing I could waste the day with you instead of these ducks." A picture of Gosling shirtless (and a little glossy, to be honest) says: "Hey girl, I had a dream about you last night. We went antiquing and got your mom a really nice gift. It was pretty intense."
The "Hey Girl" Internet meme has been claimed by librarians, academic feminists and at least one really lonely horticulture geneticist, all of whom jokingly imagine that this blond, blue-eyed Adonis could possibly be really into them. Why else would Gosling shuck his shirt and speak to their heart's dearest causes so fluently.
Some of these images are hilarious, while others seem to prove that women continue to make inroads into the driest of sciences and work in quiet labs with Internet connections.
And yet the persistence of this meme seems to suggest a weary sort of sadness that women's needs - socially, politically and personally - are not only unmet, but maybe even silly.
That 21st-century women take an active interest in things typically considered masculine is clear. Large numbers of women attend sporting events, and growing numbers of women dedicate themselves to pursuits that were all-male by rule not so long ago. It wasn't until 1974 that it became illegal for American banks to discriminate against credit applicants on the basis of sex, race, religion or marital status. Now, American women can be in the driver's seat when it comes to their money and retirement, whether they are married or not.
Sure, there's a lot of chatter about American enjoying post-feminist culture. And yet a lone movie star - not a politician or pastor - suggests that maybe more people ought to be able to see female characters have agency in their sexual relationships without the stigma of a taboo rating, and hearts flutter. Even the supposed dead, shriveled hearts of feminists.
It might seem silly or forced to dissect an Internet meme and use it as an indicator of troubled gender politics, but consider Gosling's point about movie censors deeming it more acceptable to show Lisbeth Salander gagged, chained to a bed and raped in the context of a local screening for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Believe it or not, critics seem so benumbed by sexual violence against women as a trope of the cinema that they joke about it. At the screening, a young but established Dallas film critic approached another established Dallas critic, this one with salt-and-pepper hair and bifocals. The exchange was really a jab at the bonanza of 3-D movies in American multiplexes, but it betrayed a ho-hum posture toward women in movies and the humiliations they often endure.
"Hey guys," the younger critic said. "I think I already know I'm going to be disappointed in this one."
"Oh yeah?" said one of two older men who were poised to scribble in notebooks at the Studio Movie Grill. "How come?"
"Well, how am I supposed to watch a rape scene in 2-D? Why wasn't this rape scene done in 3-D? At this point, [director] David Fincher is just being lazy."
The three men guffawed, made suggestions not fit for print, and then got down to business as the lights dimmed.
The association's ratings are generally only questioned when a film is deemed too harrowing for children - period.
If it takes an Internet meme romanticizing a shirtless Gosling as a feminist to make moviegoers consider how often children can see women tortured and raped, then here's to the feminist lads and ladies who are still behind their keyboards, trying to be funny, and trying to get real.
LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com.
ON THE WEB
Feminist Ryan Gosling: http://feministryangosling.tumblr.com
Ryan Gosling reacts to "Hey Girl": www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YB9lfm5l5w
