2013 in Review: It Was a Year Like Any Other

Refn's Impossible Phallus

by Ian "Professor Clumsy" Maddison

There were a lot of symbolic penises in the movies of 2013. The Wolverine was so packed with erections and castrations that grown men fled in terror during its bizarre climactic scenes. The especially masculine are terrified of other men's penises, especially when erect and even more especially when the threat of castration is tangible. Hugh Jackman's six permanent erections were a constant reminder to the alpha male contingent in the audience that their own occasional erections were inadequate and fallible. As one reader pointed out:

"I think that you might need to sit down and consider whether it might just be you who is obsessed with erections."

My own interest in erections is purely academic, I can assure you. Now, back to all the great cocks in movies.

Pacific Rim featured the very interesting imagery of a huge, flaccid sword, made erect -- and therefore useful -- by the righteous, vengeful anger of Rinko Kikuchi. The destructive phallic power usually reserved for men, here used by a young woman as second nature in an act of heroic vengeance for the sake of her family. The power is inherent within her; she just needs that outlet. The phallic power, in the hands of post-humanist director Guillermo del Toro can become an ungendered one. As another level-headed reader politely inquired:

"How about a review of a movie that talks about it not succeeding because it's boring or lazy, not because it has a hetero-normative [sic], patriarchal subtext?"

This was in reference to my review of Planes, a film in which Dane Cook is forced to be castrated in order to become a better racer. His crop-duster, the stand-in for his genitalia, has no utility as a sexual organ or as anything else and so its loss is reduced to a pure symbolic stripping of his masculinity as the otherwise useless appendage is forcibly removed to the bemusement of the children in the audience. Planes has to be one of the most potentially harmful films ever to come out of the Hollywood system.

You wanna fight? Please say yes!

In a year crammed full of erections and castrations, it is no surprise that the best of them -- in my opinion, at least -- is the most direct. In Nicolas Winding Refn's mesmerising and dreamlike Only God Forgives, Ryan Gosling plays Julian, whose silent ruminations on the nature of his gender expectations culminate in a redemptive castration by God himself.

The symbolic castrations abound in Only God Forgives are not acts of violence, humiliation or disempowerment; they are acts of redemption and forgiveness, setting their victims free of the prison of masculinity and committed by a calm, all-knowing God, personified as a nameless police detective played by Vithaya Pansringarm.

We are introduced to the God character after Julian's brother Billy -- played by Tom Burke doing a mocking impersonation of the Canadian Gosling's affected Brooklyn accent -- murders a sixteen-year-old prostitute in an act of sexual aggression. God gives the murdered girl's father the freedom to choose Billy's punishment. He chooses to beat him to death with a stick. God asks him why. The father insists that with no sons and only daughters, there is no other choice. He cannot make ends meet without putting them on the streets and can only respond to this inevitable danger with a violent retribution. In order to teach him the error of his ways, God pulls out an impossible phallus, a previously concealed executioner's sword, and cleanly removes the man's forearm in an act of symbolic castration.

While Billy is committing his terrible crime, Julian ponders his hands. That's the kind of sentence that makes it easy to understand just why Only God Forgives didn't exactly set its audiences' hearts on fire. He stares at his open palms and then slowly clenches his fists, his face curious and fearful. He sees in these two simple gestures the entire dichotomy of society's gendered ideals. The open hand, submissive and feminine, the closed fist aggressive and masculine.

Where the hell did you even pull that from?After God has performed his first castration, he appears to Julian during a sexual fantasy. Julian's acts of sexuality all circulate around Mai, played with subtle solemnity by Thai pop star Yayaying Rhatha Phongam. She ties him to a chair by the wrists and he watches her masturbate. It is an act of non-phallic sexuality, his fists clenched as he fantasises about observing himself walking down a corridor to a dark room, nervously reaching his open hand into the blackness and being met by the castrating force of God's impossible phallus. The second time he wanders into this fantasy, he recoils in horror before reaching into the darkness. He is not ready. He later fantasises again about offering Mai his clenched fist as a sexual object while she is performing, she opens his hand before accepting it. It is perhaps safe to assume that Julian is already castrated in the literal sense, or is at least incapable of achieving an erection and his sexuality is carried out via his hands and through observation, which is probably what leads to his confusion about the nature of his masculinity. He watches, he opens his hands, he closes his fists.

This imagery of hands and fists comes to head during Julian's ill-advised confrontation with God. "You wanna fight?" he asks, meaning "You wanna compare your masculinity to mine?" In the age-old tradition of Hollywood action movies, if you can out-punch, out-gun or out-arrogance your fellow man, you will win the girl and save the day. Here, though, God has no time for Julian's posturing. The fight is presented in three stages; first, God dodges and blocks Julian's attacks. Then -- in a moment that not only ties into the recurring motif of closed fists and open hands, but also serves as a reference to the similarly themed Predator (1987) -- God essentially learns to ball up his own fist and throw a punch. He lowers himself to prove his point: You cannot defeat your own issues, they will simply be turned back against you. Finally, God delivers a brutal beating to Julian without breaking a sweat.

At the behest of his dominating mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), Julian sets out to ambush God, but has a crisis of conscience when a small child is drawn into the crossfire and he makes a decision to save that child, killing his companion and returning with the intent of destroying his mother. Upon finding her already killed by God's impossible phallus, he cuts open her abdomen and places his hand inside her, this man who did not want to be born wishing ultimately to return to his mother's womb where there are no expectations upon him, his desire manifesting in his unusual sexual activity.

In the end, God returns to Julian and the climax of the film has Julian offering his hands, fists closed, as reality and his fantasies collide and he is castrated, freed from his prison of masculinity by a kind, forgiving God. God then sings us out over the closing credits. It's a happy ending.

I saw Only God Forgives twice in cinemas, both times with fairly sizeable crowds, and the general reaction each time was very similar. It is clear that Refn has used his success with Gosling in Drive to draw in a certain kind of person, those who missed the point of that film's main character being less of an action hero and more of a violent savant or an autistic Jason Statham, unable to connect with anyone beyond the simple gesture of masculine posturing. With Only God Forgives, Refn is setting out to directly threaten and question the masculinity of his audience. He has taken us on an exploratory dream journey to learn the truth of what it means to be a man and we have all come back having learned that it is, in fact, meaningless.

Maybe 2013 will be remembered as the year masculinity and all of its symbolic reinforcement started to die. Probably not. More likely it will be remembered as the year I lost touch with reality and dove headfirst into a pool full of cocks, like a horny Scrooge McDuck, and films like Planes and Kick-Ass 2 continue to be made, the creative teams behind them pleading ignorance of the societal damage they perpetrate.