At
its heart, Fantastic Beasts is a delightful
Rom Com: two sisters falling in love with unlikely beaus; the two couples also
held together by the budding – and equally unlikely – friendship between the
men.
At
its heart, Fantastic Beasts is a Tale
For Our Times, albeit a fairly clunky one:
calling
into question the morality of choosing to segregate ourselves from those who
are different to us, with whom we perceive greater difference than what we
share in common;
exposing
the hypocrisy* of Privilege painting itself as victim because it has been asked
to curtail its freedom for the good of others;
and
exploring the different options of isolationism, competition, and cooperation;
not
to mention speaking to our thoughtless attitude towards the survival – indeed,
flourishing – of non-human animals, and the evil of trafficking.
At
its heart, for all its clunky worthiness, Fantastic
Beasts is a lot of fun.
All
of which only makes it more frustrating that, while confronting some male
stereotypes, it so strongly reinforces female stereotypes.
In
a culture dominated by post-truth Alpha-males, Fantastic Beasts presents us with the man who is quite shy,
academic but in a hands-on practical way, who never quite fitted-in at school
but will go on to write a text book that will inspire generations of children.
In
a culture that demonises the working class, Fantastic
Beasts presents us with the man who, despite being both overweight and a
factory worker, has the vision and energy – though not the financial backing –
to do something creative and life-affirming, who has a vocation to bless people
through the simple happiness of pastry.
And
alongside these stereotype-confronting men, Fantastic
Beasts gives us:
the
Determined Young Lady, who has contained her femininity and adopted a more-male
wardrobe – not only of clothing but of inhabiting that costume – and become a
shadow of a man, only to be looked through by men;
the
Blonde Bimbo, who knows exactly how men look at her, and colludes with them;
the
Excessively-Controlling Mother;
and
the black President, who, in the context of the above – not to mention the conspicuous
absence of other black characters (the singer in the speakeasy is a black woman
– itself another stereotypical role, and hardly the Harlem Renaissance) – seems
a very token gesture.
I
want to love Fantastic Beasts And Where
To Find Them. It is beautifully filmed, and beautifully acted, and it is in
many ways a welcome extension to the wonderfully imaginative Harry Potter universe, being set seventy
years earlier and on a different continent.
But
it is hard to love a film when my wife is underwhelmed, and asks, ‘Really?
Strip away all the CGI, and we’re still
telling the same old story, with the same stereotypical roles for women?’
It
is hard to love a film, set in a universe my children love, when the roles and
opportunities it presents my daughter with, and the lenses it holds out to my
sons through which to see women, are so short-sighted.
We
know the stereotypes already. We know that they are an exaggeration of actual
types – whether exaggeration by turning characteristics into caricatures, or
exaggeration by over-representation. But surely it is time for some new stories,
ones we aren’t over-familiar with? Ones, indeed, we are not familiar enough
with, and need to hear, role-models we need to see?
Perhaps
the purpose of any given story is not to address every issue facing us. Perhaps
the fact that watching Fantastic Beasts
with others has raised the issue of how women are represented, and indeed how
people of colour are not represented, is enough?
I
don’t think so. How long can we keep making those excuses, passing the buck to
some unspecified time in the future that never arrives?
*literally,
unmasking; or revealing.
