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"Hitch" (http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/hitch/)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386588/)
Directed by Andy Tennant
Columbia Pictures
PG-13 / Australia:M
2003
Reviewed by a contributor February 21, 2005
Hip-hop icon Will Smith stars in "Hitch," a romance movie coming right out of the romance culture.(1) But there's a twist. Black man Alex Hitchens (Will Smith) helps white men out with their white wimmin dating problems and seems to make a good six-figure living off of it in Manhattan. His clientele includes high-level professionals, who want tips on how to date other professionals and even celebrities, such as the fictitious Allegra Cole (Amber Valletta). Will Smith himself becomes interested in a gossip columnist / news reporter, who happens to chase after Allegra for stories. Conflicts ensue.
It's not that obese people are unable to date attractive persyns without using money or power, but "Hitch" portrays a slob, Albert (Kevin James), as successfully courting a glamorous millionaire socialite, Allegra. Most moviegoers will perceive some underlying power relationship, what MIM and others call the eroticization of power. Alex Hitchens doesn't just help fellow men not to be goofs: he helps them to attract and seduce wimmin, even if not for immediate sexual purposes; this is pretty obvious. Interestingly, Allegra falls in love with Albert anyway, so it's as if there wasn't any real manipulation going on. The idea, and Alex says so himself, is that Hitchens only precipitates a sequence of events leading the wimmin to fall in love with his clients.
Even just "precipitating" an intimate relationship under conditions of asymmetric/unequal information is indicative of a power relationship, especially if the differences in information are reinforced in a systematic way. At the same time, however, that is not all that there is to patriarchy. In a sense, "Hitch" is right to put imperialist-country intimate relationships in the context of celebrity and glamour; it shows that while social inequalities between females and males exist even within the North Amerikan white oppressor nation, the white adults in general are gender oppressors who have no fundamental problems with the patriarchal status quo. They are gender oppressors in comparison with, and interaction with, children, and oppressed people in the Third World who know what Amerikans being "sexually liberated" really means, for the rest of the world. These gender oppressors include North Amerikan white adults with female biology, who form a gender aristocracy. Many of these "women," privileged in patriarchal society, enjoy intimacy and sex, out of sight and mind of others who are smothered, suffocated, bruised, disfigured, mutilated, shackled and killed (or driven to "suicide") by the patriarchy.
On the other hand, "Hitch" does give the romance culture celebrity appeal. It presents the romance culture as something typical Amerikans ought to aspire to, or at least fantasize about. In a sense, this is nothing new; Hollywood has a long history of giving the romance culture celebrity appeal by simply casting celebrities to play characters, who are mostly non-celebrity. Yet, it is rare to see a movie that connects celebrity appeal with the romance culture in such a direct way. It is like watching celebrities (and upper-crust socialites) in real life, a sensation reinforced by the gossip reporter Sara Melas' (Eva Mendes) stalking celebrities for stories. Also, the perception dovetails with reality TV shows featuring celebrity participants. Celebrity love life has never been more exciting in entertainment media.
While it upholds the romance culture, "Hitch" simultaneously is compelled for some reason to represent some wimmin being "abused." "Abuse" is between quotation marks because patriarchal ideology and "feminist" Liberals imply that non-"abusive" relationships and interactions are okay and immune to critical interrogation, when in fact non-abusive relationships under patriarchy are marked by inequalities, even in oppressor nations with gender oppressor majorities. What "Hitch" does is show Sara's womyn friend Casey (Julie Ann Emery) getting involved with the creepy man professional, Vance (Jeffrey Donovan), who just wants to "bang" Casey and then stop seeing her. Shocked, Hitchens objects, saying that isn't the kind of help he provides, and then Vance starts writing a check as if to buy Hitchens with some additional money. Vance says he gets what he wants. Well, Vance just about gets his ass kicked right in the restaurant.
Real-world people similar to Casey and Vance exist. They are the local fallout of the romance culture, in the imperialist country itself. "Hitch" touches on this issue, but the movie's outlook is so myopic, we get the impression that intimate relationships under the patriarchy are peaches and cream for the most part. Casey never rejects the romance culture as a matter of principle, even going as far as to accompany Sara to a speed-dating event in order to meet and choose from a group of men--Amerikan (and particularly straight) adults. Casey and Sara have the freedom and leisure time to choose their intimate and sexual partners generally, not just at speed-dating events. The whole thing between Casey and Vance just ends up giving the romance culture a glossy veneer. "Hitch" does deserve a little bit of praise for illustrating that sex without outright sexual assault can still be rape. Movies can be complex and subtle about non-sexual assault sex, but still be Liberal (at best).
The take-home message at the end of the movie is that moviegoers should just be themselves, and they will have success in their love life. A completely unscientific sentiment, but what can we expect from a romance movie with such high aspirations as teaching people how to iron out and lubricate their love lives when others are still distressed under the patriarchy? "Hitch" doesn't even present a single memorable solution to Casey's problem; Sara just "emasculates" Vance by smacking him in the nuts. And while "Hitch" at times appears to ridicule the idea of going to a dating consultant (and mock the larger dating industry), it may actually cause more people to seek out dating consultants, further combining and compounding the effects of capitalism and patriarchy. The sentiment at the end of the movie is that Alex Hitchens' techniques aren't needed, but can't hurt.
Note:
"Revolutionary feminism," http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/gender/