Channing Tatum will forever be known as the dance icon, from his humble beginnings as the hip-hop criminal turned ballet student, Tyler Gage, in get up, to his striptease days magical mike, playing the newbie, Mike. The first of a franchise, magical mike tackles so much more than just being a fun movie full of jacked-up dancers. It highlights the adult entertainment industry’s drug abuse, youth exploitation and greed, all squashed between scenes of Tatum and Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey showing off their abs.
While that in itself was a bit of a tonal surprise, the bigger shift was when the second film, Magic Mike XXL, was just a really fun time with a splash of something extra. Indeed, the second installment of the magical mike series manages to take these men who are the modern idea of masculinity and use the characters to break down gender norms while still maintaining feminism throughout. Turning the genre upside down, here are the ways Magic Mike XXL breaks stereotypes of the content and of the characters.
Subversive character goals
The premise of Magic Mike XXL is that Mike and the remaining Kings of Tampa strippers go on one last tour to get to a convention. They want to end their careers in a nice way. So, after some persuasion, Mike agrees to go with them as a last hurrah. However, throughout the journey, the characters try to discover what they really want out of life. For Mike it is a relationship and success in his business. Despite the lure of dancing, with the ladies and the drugs and the fame, Mike gets over his ex’s leaving after proposing to him. He wants to find one woman away from that bachelor lifestyle. He also wants his furniture business to flourish and he wants to make something of his life. Both break down the gender construct that the media forces men to pursue in pursuit of women and money, and lots of it. Another character, Richie – who also struggles with having a large extremity, which is in high demand in the male dancer community – just wants to find a woman to love. His struggle breaks gender norms about what is considered perfect and what is a reality for the character.
The rejuvenation
On the way to the comic book convention Magic Mike XXL, they quit and Mike tries to prove to the rest of the boys that he’s still good at it. They go to an old bar they use often called Mad Mary’s which turns out to be a drag bar. After watching a performance, the MC calls everyone on stage to show their moves to win $400. Mike and the crew get into fashion and take the stage to add something new to the show. While trying something that’s not in the mainstream, a group of very masculine presenting men who dance with traditional drag moves during a show break societal gender norms without making a joke out of it. Their drag show is shown as just one really good timeand they learn that they can do things other than just what they learned from their old boss, Dallas, finding all their strengths and weaknesses to create an epic show.
The female characters
It would be easy for the women in the magical mike films obsessed with these “ideal” men, but in both films they are shown to be strong and independent, often hostile to the male characters at first. In Magic Mike XXL, Mike meets Zoe, who wants nothing to do with him or his lifestyle. They get back together later in the movie and hit it off a bit more, but she’s a fully rounded character who has dreams and goals, and isn’t just a one-dimensional character whose only goal is to be with a man, as female characters are . often portrayed in male-oriented stories. Another theme in the film is enjoyment for women. The media often focuses on men’s pleasure, but the characters deliberately say that the female clients or the women in their lives take precedence.
On their journey to the convention, the crew stops by Rome, a woman who owns a strip club in Savannah. She is portrayed as powerful and ethereal without falling into the traps of stereotypes. Her place is depicted as an empire, a place for women and a place to dance and make money. Both Zoe and Rome are strong, three-dimensional characters, even though they have limited screen time. They break the stereotype of the “sexy woman” trope or the girlfriend trope, and break with their own gender expectations. The acknowledgment of women’s fun and the focus on the female patrons in both Rome and at the convention make this film an unlikely feminist anthem, prioritizing women and straying from harmful stereotypes. It’ll be interesting to see what the third term of the magical mike franchise focuses on, and what topics it chooses to tackle when it releases in February 2023.