Diversity Without Pity #20 | Magic Mike XXL

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This is a mini-series within Diversity Without Pity that explores diversity within society’s often most privileged group: The heterosexual white male.

Channing Tatum is BAE.

Like, for real. If there was a racial draft, I think I could make a strong case for why we should trade him for Chris Brown (and throw in Flo Rida as a bonus). Aside from being an incredible dancer, and charming-ass actor, he co-starred in Coach Carter. A movie in which a conversation about the word nigger was had — with Samuel L. Jackson — and he kept his mouth shut.

A white guy who didn’t make an n-word conversation about himself!?!?

In another life, he might have been the white guy at the black barber shop. While I miss the days when he wasn’t media trained and would post photos of his burned penis online, I pray he never decides to crack open Twitter to say something obtusely racist, homophobic, mysogynistic, and just plain-old insensitive. Until then, Channing Tatum is BAE.

Now that we’ve settle that, lemme tell you about the awesomeness that is Magic Mike XXL. This has got to be the blackest, gayest, most women-friendly movie I have ever seen. And not in an exploitative way.

The premise is fairly simple. About two years after Mike Lane leaves the cock-rockin’ Kings of Tampa, they come back into his life and convince him to go to the country’s largest male stripper convention in Orlando. Framed as basically a dudetastic road trip, Magic Mike XXL actually does a lot of really progressive presentations of late night performers, and who performs for audience entertainment.

Jezebel Interview: Magic Mike XXL Voguer Dashaun Wesley Talks Channing, FKA Twigs & More

Three big sequences make up the bulk of Magic Mike XXL: The drag bar, Rome’s house of beauty, and the home of wealthy white Southern women. Ostensibly, these sequences are designed to serve the audience: Drag performance may seem silly, but it’s serious business. Different kinds of black men are sexy to black women. And all women — even white, financially comfortable and conservative women — ultimately want to be heard, feel valued, and feel sexy.

The director is Soderbergh’s go-to director of photography, Greg Jacobs. It shows that he plays to his strengths.

Deep magentas and blues are used in indoor nighttime scenes, like in this one-take performance, by dancer/choreographer Twitch.

Rather than try a lot of fancy camera moves, Jacobs goes for sexy cinematography and long takes that make you feel you are in the room with these people.

But there’s also a really subversive theme about white heterosexual male sexually. It’s about the joy that comes from performing for women, and self-acceptance of being male entertainer. Before Channing Tatum hit it big, it was revealed that he used to be a male stripper in his youth. The media *coughs TMZ* tried to make him ashamed of it, by “revealing” a video of his performance. Instead Tatum did something rare: He talked about it interviews, he expressed how it was a crazy time in his life, and he met some amazing people doing that work. When Steven Soderbergh approached him to make a movie about it, Tatum again didn’t shy away. Magic Mike was a surprise hit, spawned this brilliant sequel, and The Magic Mike Experience is now a Vegas review.

But what’s more politically powerful about Magic Mike XXL is that — in addition to making space for heterosexual female gaze for women of different races, ages, and income levels — make space to understand why men would want to dance for women in the first place.

Whether you call it stripping, male entertaining, or dancing, Hollywood surprisingly found the one white guy who wasn’t going to be ashamed about his past. That, in many ways, is revolutionary.

Diversity Without Pity is a blog series from IDSL, highlighting media that uses smart design, and considers the diversity of it’s casting without selling the viewer or consumer, short.