Fart jokes and fem­i­nism: Austin Pow­ers at 20

My name is Sarah Gosling, I am a woman, and for years now I’ve been plagued by the inad­e­qua­cy of my own name. I’m just nev­er mak­ing the man-movie cut. Where’s the sense of pur­pose in a name like Sarah? What’s the point if it’s not scream­ing ​“take me!” like the lit­er­al­ly unbe­liev­able Pussy Galore? Clear­ly my moth­er wasn’t think­ing straight when it came to sign­ing my birth cer­tifi­cate. Her poor wom­an­ly hor­mones must have made her tem­porar­i­ly barmy.

I’m kid­ding of course, but watch­ing west­erns, ear­ly James Bond films and almost all action movies, it often seems that women were nev­er expect­ed to see this stuff, much less think about it. In these films, women exist to be seduc­tive­ly draped over tables in their best evening gowns, or laugh at the infal­li­ble com­ic genius of dick and fart jokes. And yet, despite all of this, despite char­ac­ters named Alot­ta Fag­i­na, I have a con­fes­sion: I love Austin Powers.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy. It was years before I trust­ed him and the ​“irre­sistible ladies’ man” tag awk­ward­ly pro­trud­ing from his flares, not to men­tion the fact that I’m a self-con­fessed snob: toi­let humour just ain’t my bag. Then one day, dizzy with the pow­er of the TV remote, I watched Inter­na­tion­al Man of Mys­tery in its baf­fling entirety.

It’s an exag­ger­a­tion to say that I was con­vert­ed. More accu­rate­ly, I realised that my entire pre­con­cep­tion of the film was as wrong as Pow­ers’ ruf­fled shirts. Bar one ​“you fight like a woman” insult which is guar­an­teed to make me squirm every time, Austin Pow­ers is star­tling­ly pro­gres­sive, a bril­liant satire that remains as sharp as when it was released 20 years ago. ​‘But the short skirts, the Bar­barel­la robots shoot­ing from their pink clad tits!’ I hear you cry. ​‘It’s just fart jokes and toi­let humour!’ Yes, yet so very no.

It’s the Swing­ing Six­ties, the age of lib­er­a­tion, miniskirts because they could, free love and women start­ing to work en masse. Sure, sex­ism was still rife, but change was afoot. And what’s the first fight in the film? An alter­ca­tion fol­low­ing the ​“that’s not a woman, that’s a man!” recur­ring gag which sees Pow­ers’ female part­ner Agent Vanes­sa Kens­ing­ton (Eliz­a­beth Hur­ley) wal­lop a sneaky assas­sin dis­guised as a female bar­tender. Not only is this daft gag actu­al­ly quite fun­ny, it shows a high­ly skilled woman beat­ing up some­one who thought hid­ing as a woman would pro­tect them from sus­pi­cion, and make them invis­i­ble. Lit­tle does he expect Kensington’s assault, just as we don’t expect her to refuse Pow­ers’ bids for a ​“shag”.

Her rejec­tion of him and his awk­ward des­per­a­tion (he car­ries around a ​“Swedish-made penis enlarg­er” just in case he can’t rise to the occa­sion along with his ​‘Male’ medal­lion – does he need remind­ing?) is a run­ning theme. Cryo­geni­cal­ly frozen for 30 years, Mike Myers’ hip secret agent wakes up in the sig­nif­i­cant­ly more staid ​’90s to fight Dr Evil (Myers again). Gone are free love and bee-hives, in is Pow­ers’ tem­po­rary inabil­i­ty to stop his inner mono­logue spout­ing like an incred­i­bly embar­rass­ing pre­ma­ture ejaculation.

Upon meet­ing Miss Kens­ing­ton, his ex-partner’s daugh­ter, his reac­tion is to purr ​“My god, Vanessa’s got a fan­tas­tic body… I bet she shags like a minx.” It’s gross yet unde­ni­ably fun­ny, and endear­ing when he apol­o­gis­es after she insists, ​“don’t call me baby”. This is what is so fan­tas­tic about Inter­na­tion­al Man of Mys­tery: the film knows men see women and some­times get too excit­ed, it knows it’s rarely polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect, and even bet­ter, it knows that women know this and are often doing the same right back. Decades won’t change that. The pre­sen­ta­tion is OTT, but accurate.

Take the beau­ti­ful sec­re­tary Alot­ta Fag­i­na. Met with onscreen guf­faws, she’s a bomb­shell embody­ing self-aware­ness of both the genre and wom­an­hood. Instant­ly attract­ed to Pow­ers, she lat­er ini­ti­ates the bizarre pent­house jacuzzi scene to gath­er intel­li­gence and get her kicks. These women aren’t pas­sive crea­tures to be pushed up against a wall. Kens­ing­ton choos­es to sleep with (and ulti­mate­ly mar­ry) Pow­ers after falling for his per­son­al­i­ty. Fag­i­na is gung-ho for it. The biggest prob­lem with the film, name­ly the big bazookas hid­den in the blonde Fem­bots’ breasts, are actu­al­ly an inge­nious con­trap­tion designed by Frau Far­bissi­na (a woman), to use the absur­di­ty of male lust as a weapon against them.

So yes, it’s full of dumb jokes which some­times miss the mark, and the whole thing is a lit­tle fluffy, but the first Austin Pow­ers film has a lot going for it. Its out­ward­ly hyper-mas­cu­line hero is a smarm­ing, shag­gadel­ic rel­ic, placed there to high­light how daft the dif­fer­ences in sex and the sex­es can be. He’s lust­ful and he inspires lust. He wants sex and uses it to get what he wants, just as the women do. Inter­na­tion­al Man of Mys­tery is satire at its finest, with an Air­plane!-sized serv­ing of base toi­let humour which Myers man­ages to spin into com­e­dy gold. Groovy baby.