Dan Stevens thinks feminism is about engaging masculine energy
You guys, I’m still not sure if we’re on board with Skinny Cousin Matthew? I still associate Dan Stevens with the role which made him famous, that of Cousin Matthew in Downton Abbey. Cousin Matthew always looked a little bit soft. He had a fuller face and he really looked like a British country lawyer who just happened to be heir to a massive estate and earldom. Then Dan insisted that Cousin Matthew die and Dan moved to America and he lost a bunch of weight, most of it off his face. And I still think he looks weird. Skinny Cousin Matthew is not as hot (to me) as OG Cousin Matthew.
Anyway, Cousin Matthew is the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Most of the questions about the story and whether or not there’s a vein of feminism in the movie have fallen on Emma Watson to answer. But as it turns out, Cousin Matthew wants us to know that he’ll answer feminism questions too! As the Daily Beast writes, “Friends, the Beast is woke.” Is that really the case though? Some highlights:
He admires Emma’s work with the HeForShe Un program: “It was really addressing a lot of things I had always seen in fairy tales, that I had always seen in literature and really believe in: that feminism is about redressing a balance, and in order to do that you need to engage boys and men. You need to engage masculine energy, and grapple with what that balance is, what that entails, what are the elements of the patriarchy that need walking down and which are just elements of masculinity that need to be balanced with femininity.”
How feminism plays into Beauty & the Beast: “All of these ideas are very much at play in Beauty and the Beast and they’re also very much in play in Emma Watson’s mind. It was getting to sit with her and discuss how this fairy tale resonates timelessly but also resonates now. Not shoehorning anything but just realizing how much of what we both believe about the gender spectrum and those masculine and feminine energies are at play in this fairy tale.”
Girl-movies & romance stories: “There’s a great piece Gloria Steinem wrote last week in The New York Times about chick flicks, and should the opposite be called pr-ck flicks. Trying to explode these traditional labels that we have….It’s like a couple who’s getting together and he discovers that she really likes The Notebook and he’s like ick, and she’s like oh what do you like, Fast and Furious? I know tons of guys who like The Notebook and tons of girls who like Fast and Furious. It’s finding the way to tell the same kind of stories.”
If Cousin Matthew wants to call himself a feminist and he wants to quote Gloria Steinem and consider himself to be “woke,” I can’t stop him. I applaud him for trying and making the effort. But I also want to sit him down and have a real conversation with him about why he thinks a prerequisite for feminism is “engaging masculine energy” and “grappling with what that balance is.” Why can’t we just call out toxic masculinity when we see it? Why does feminism have to be about engaging boys and men? Which is more of a criticism of the HeForShe program’s goals, one of which is “make basic, lukewarm feminism more palatable to potential male allies.”
… All of which is for naught because this movie is being sold to girls/women, not men. You know what I mean? This is Cousin Matthew talking to a female audience about THEY need to do to make men more woke. This isn’t a man talking to an audience of men about they can do to BE woke.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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