Mike Drop – How Chan­ning Tatum and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma redrew the tem­plate for masculinity

Just as Rea­gan had Die Hard and Bush had The Dark Knight, so America’s 44^th Com­man­der in Chief, Barack Oba­ma, will come to be asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cif­ic films from the last eight years. So what exact­ly is Oba­ma Era Cin­e­ma, and what does it reveal about the world we live in today? Have your say @LWLies #Oba­maEraCin­e­ma.

In Jan­u­ary 2009, less than three months after Barack Oba­ma had been elect­ed as pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, The New York Times ran an arti­cle about How The Movies Made a Pres­i­dent. Crit­ics AO Scott and Manohla Dar­gis wrote about the films that paved the way for America’s first black pres­i­dent, cit­ing cinema’s ​“fan­tasies of black hero­ism” as giv­ing ​“some sense of what the coun­try hopes for in its [then] new leader”.

But Scott and Dar­gis were not to know that the pop cul­ture rever­ber­a­tions of Obama’s ten­an­cy would be as coloured by his celebri­ty – his sex appeal, real­ly – as his black­ness. In the same way that cer­tain films ​“have helped write the pre­his­to­ry of Obama’s pres­i­den­cy,” Oba­ma him­self has helped to redraw the tem­plate for what it means to be a lead­ing man. Affa­ble, charm­ing, con­ven­tion­al­ly hand­some (of course), but self-effac­ing, pro­gres­sive, homoso­cial, even – qual­i­ties that Oba­ma shares with the most impor­tant male movie star of the last eight years, Chan­ning Tatum.

Flick­ers of Tatum’s par­tic­u­lar brand of mod­ern mas­culin­i­ty first appeared in two films from 2006, two whole years before Obama’s his­toric vic­to­ry. In Step Up, Tatum plays a delin­quent who can dance; while doing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as a jan­i­tor in an arts school, a bal­le­ri­na picks him as her part­ner. She teach­es him about dis­ci­pline, while he loosens her up. In She’s the Man, a teen movie adap­ta­tion of Shakespeare’s ​‘The 12^th Night’, Tatum is an adorable jock who becomes close with his room­mate (Aman­da Bynes in full drag, pre­tend­ing to be her own twin broth­er). In both films, Tatum is char­ac­terised by a relaxed flir­ta­tious­ness and goofy, phys­i­cal loose­ness that plays off his hard, sculpt­ed body.

Six years lat­er, these facets of his star­dom would re-emerge in Steven Soderbergh’s Mag­ic Mike, based on Tatum’s real-life expe­ri­ences as a strip­per in Tam­pa, Flori­da. In it, Tatum’s alter ego is a con­struc­tion work­er by day and exot­ic dancer by night, per­form­ing for quick cash that will one day enable him to start up his own cus­tom fur­ni­ture busi­ness. He’s a blue-col­lar crafts­man – cer­tain­ly no intel­lec­tu­al – but he’s nev­er char­ac­terised as macho. He’s play­ful and tac­tile with his pro­tégé, the Kid (Alex Pet­tyfer), unboth­ered by the dick-swing­ing naked bod­ies behind the stage cur­tains. He shows up at the Kid’s house dressed as Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe (an expla­na­tion is nei­ther demand­ed nor offered).

The sec­ond instal­ment of the Mag­ic Mike fran­chise, released in 2015, increas­es the soft mas­cu­line ener­gy present in the orig­i­nal. Three min­utes into Mag­ic Mike XXL, ​‘Big Dick Richie’ (Joe Man­ganiel­lo) – naked, nat­u­ral­ly – grabs Mike in a broth­er­ly embrace and jumps into the pool with him. They tell each oth­er how much they love and miss each oth­er (“There’s a giant hole inside of me that was cre­at­ed when you left, and now I feel like it’s full again,” says Richie of Mike’s absence), all the while cavort­ing about in the back of Tito’s (Adam Rodriguez) fro-yo truck.

At the 2015 edi­tion of the annu­al White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Din­ner, Oba­ma spoke fond­ly of his Vice Pres­i­dent and long-term friend Joe Biden. ​“I feel more loose and relaxed than ever… Those Joe Biden shoul­der mas­sages, they’re like mag­ic!” he joked, telling the room that the pair had ​“got­ten so close, there’s places in Indi­ana that won’t serve us piz­za any­more.” Biden tweet­ed a pho­to of the friend­ship bracelet he’d gift­ed Oba­ma on his 55^th birth­day, cap­tion­ing it ​“a best friend for­ev­er”. At the end of a mon­tage in Mag­ic Mike XXL, in which Mike and his fel­low enter­tain­ers set about chore­o­graph­ing their final per­for­mance, Mike and Tito flop face-down onto a dou­ble bed, exhaust­ed. The impli­ca­tion that these two grown men will share a bed is not dwelled upon.

In David Mar­niss’ biog­ra­phy, ​‘Barack Oba­ma: The Sto­ry’, he shares a love let­ter from one of Obama’s old girl­friends, which picks out how his ​“warmth” was at odds with his ​“cool­ness” and ​“sharp edges”. Indeed, Obama’s Har­vard edu­ca­tion and cold intel­lec­tu­al­ism are absent from Tatum’s star per­sona (David Oyelowo’s smart, sto­ic black mas­culin­i­ty might be a clos­er match). Of course, Tatum’s on-screen con­fig­u­ra­tion of man­hood isn’t based on Oba­ma him­self, but rather the kind of lead­ing man per­mit­ted to exist in Obama’s Amer­i­ca. A lead­ing man who is mas­cu­line with­out being aggres­sive; emo­tion­al but not weak; fun-lov­ing, hard-work­ing, and respect­ful towards women.

In XXL’s show­stop­ping finale, each dancer per­forms a short, themed solo. In Mag­ic Mike, their cos­tumes are root­ed in rigid and tra­di­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty (army offi­cer; fire­man; Tarzan; Ken Doll). In XXL, these out-dat­ed mod­els of male­ness are swapped out for fem­i­nised roles (painter; groom; ice cream con­nois­seur…). Their set pieces take place in imag­ined domes­tic spaces, their rou­tines engi­neered to max­imise female plea­sure. But it’s not entire­ly strate­gic. Tito ​“nev­er want­ed to be in the navy” or to ​“do this Top Gun shit”. Richie has a fear of fire.

In his essay on fem­i­nism for Glam­our mag­a­zine, Oba­ma wrote: ​“It’s easy to absorb all kinds of mes­sages from soci­ety about mas­culin­i­ty and come to believe there’s a right or wrong way to be a man. But as I got old­er, I realised my ideas about being a tough guy or a cool guy just weren’t me.” The guys in XXL aren’t tough or cool either; Ken (Matt Bomer) laments hav­ing to fight with his fists (“No, it’s not fuckin’ awe­some, there are a lot bet­ter ways to han­dle that shit!”), Tito dreams of run­ning a fro-yo truck and Ritchie per­forms a rou­tine to a Back­street Boys song. Theirs is a ver­sion of mas­culin­i­ty that recog­nis­es female pow­er and accom­mo­dates it. In Rome’s (Jada Pin­kett-Smith) pri­vate member’s club/​mansion, black women are queens, catered to. First Lady Michelle Oba­ma is a queen, too.

The dance sequences in both Mag­ic Mike films show bod­ies in bits, chopped up by the cam­era and fre­net­i­cal­ly edit­ed so that the focus is nev­er on the rou­tines, but rather on the com­pos­ite parts of the men per­form­ing them. The orgas­mic poten­tial of the abs and ass­es, of the lifts, flips and gyra­tions is priv­i­leged over the audience’s abil­i­ty to actu­al­ly appre­ci­ate the ath­leti­cism of the rou­tines – or even see them prop­er­ly. These scenes are orches­trat­ed for the ben­e­fit of (straight) female view­ers and suc­cess­ful­ly so, but there’s some­thing of a sleight of hand tak­ing place.

There is the sense that when cou­pled with his celebri­ty, Obama’s left­ist stance on social issues offers a dis­trac­tion from cer­tain unsavoury pol­i­cy deci­sions. Yet from his ear­ly endorse­ment of gay mar­riage to the rise of fourth-wave fem­i­nism under his admin­is­tra­tion, the con­se­quences of Obama’s pro­gres­sive sex­u­al pol­i­tics seem to be where his lega­cy will lie. With it, hope­ful­ly, the slow dis­so­lu­tion of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty – and the rise of more stars like Tatum.