'Midnight in Paris' and (the White Man's) Fanfiction
Let's tear apart the glorification of on-screen male fantasies.
Rania, London, July 8th.
Yes, I deserve all the criticism, because—really? Watching a W*ody All*n movie? In this day and age?
Not to make excuses, but the thing is I didn’t care for the guy at all in the first place—learned even more not to after his disgusting past surfaced and he refused to be exterminated from the world of cinema, seemingly more stubborn than a cockroach in a damp bathroom.
So when I clicked on Midnight in Paris (because it said '1h 33 min', Tom Hiddleston’s lovely face was in the preview and it’d been a long day I was just looking for something short and quick to watch!) I went in completely blind and did not realise it was one of his creations until I was more than halfway; at which point I was too far into the movie to back away and desperately holding onto the last hopes that it would redeem itself.
For the first few minutes, Midnight in Paris seemed to be promising a wistful, romantic watch that was probably a little silly but without compromising a nuanced portrayal of the highly romanticised city. The well-angled shots of Paris’ most picturesque streets with the backdrop of sultry Jazz music were big selling points, and I found myself wishing I, too, could ponder over my own existence under the canopy of street shops. I was initially hopeful of exploring the city through the lenses of a misunderstood man, especially when contrasted with the side characters’ whines of Paris being an unbearable metropolitan city—whines I found eerily close to my own grievances about London and its less-than-charming corners that for some reason people love to roomanticise.
Had I bothered to look up the director I may have saved myself some frustration/teeth-gritting through some bad cinema and watched something cooler instead (any suggestions?) because boy, oh boy. Instead of the exploration of a city steeped in both glamour and dark history, and the struggle for inspiration in a place that seems to juxtapose itself in every corner, the script of this movie just read like the pinnacle of bad white men’s literary fanfiction.
Out of respect and admiration for those who have somehow kept themselves from this particular cornerstone of pop-culture, the definition of fanfiction by The OED is: ‘fiction, usually fantasy or science fiction, written by a fan rather than a professional author, esp. that based on already existing characters from a television series, book, film etc.’
Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles? The Iliad fanfiction. Hamilton the musical? Fanfiction of the Founding Fathers. She’s The Man, Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You are quite literally on-screen high school AUs (Alternate Universes) of Twelfth Night, Emma and Taming of the Shrew respectively.
The thing that separates Midnight in Paris from them is that the examples I gave above are actually good examples of classic literature fanfiction (or ‘adaptation’, if anyone’s sensibilities are bristling). The examples immersed the basic storyline in their own constructed realities and settings. The original characters of the classical works are preserved, even if encased in slightly different bodies and given different names. After all, that is what it means for something to be an ‘Alternate Universe’.
Midnight in Paris is different in two ways:
It is neither a full reconstruction of the age in question (e.g. the ‘Jazz Age’ of the 1920s) nor a complete transplant of the storyline into a new one (a la Clueless/10 TIHAU). Gil, the protagonist, is transported every midnight to the Jazz Age—a time period he believes is the world’s ‘cultural peak’ (he is obsessed with everything of theirs, from music to art and literature).
The original characters from that age (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein among many others) are not the main focus of the story. Gil is.
What you get is what I personally found to be a cheap and slightly sickening portrayal of a white man’s nostalgic fantasy, with a script that reads like a complete y/n (‘your name’, basically self-insert) fanfic. The ‘famous figures’ presented are embarrassing caricatures of themselves—basically what a child would imagine these people to be if the child were to do a quick Google search and read the first search result (I was about to tear my hair off whenever Fitzgerald said ‘old sport’, when Dalí would not stop repeating his own name obnoxiously, or whenever Hemingway relapsed into tales of war in nonsensical poetic tones).
I know the main aim of Midnight in Paris is not to serve as mini biopics for the figures present—the characters there serve the same purpose they would whenever your Professor name-drops the Queen; to bring to life a fantasy that will never be realised. The characters are no more than props serving little else than to advance the protagonist’s personal story and for the audience to marvel at. As a result, they are most likely intended to be satirical—but it seems the filmmakers did not even try to hide their sexist reconstructions of these figures. The men are portrayed as mad geniuses and savvy womanisers, while the women are either props as their ‘muse’ (Adriana), crazy in a not-so-genius way (Zelda), with the only saving grace being Gertrude Stein’s wise advice, which they sacrificed actual good in-depth characterisations for. After a while, she really started sounding like a schoolteacher rather than a well-respected novelist.
Perhaps this was meant to portray Gil’s perspective of the ‘Golden Age’, and is meant to be ironic because the audience quickly realises just how artificial and fake everything is. Personally, I think that’s giving this movie too much credit.
However, what gets me about Midnight in Paris is how it’s lauded by critics as the perfect portrayal of a nostalgic time, and how it’s rated 93% on RT. That a white man’s wet dream about impressionist painters and romantic poets and bohemian lifestyle is allowed to be reconstructed in a way that is considered artsy. No matter what the ending message seems to be saying (that everyone longs from the past, that no one will ever be satisfied with the present!), the fact that much of Gil’s decisions to better his life in the present was affected by his travels to the past seems to read as an excusable pass for men that ‘if no one understands you, maybe you’re just living in the wrong era!’
Don’t even get me started on how it borderline romanticised cheating, or the ending that made me want to hurl myself into the Seine the protagonist was walking along (SPOILER WARNING: he gets together with a girl who shares his vision of a romanticised Paris (what the heck is up with him and the rain) and the nostalgic past in like, 0.2 seconds after ending things with his fiancée). Honestly, if this was fanfic posted on the interwebz, it would have to come with several warning tags, most of them unsavoury.
Perhaps this was no more than a glorified rant about the way men’s fanfiction and fantasies are allowed to have a platform that is regarded as something else other than ‘absolutely degenerate’, while much of the actual fanfiction base is made up of women*. This debate is also probably not gender-specific and I am simply looking through the issue through indignity-tinted lenses at the perceived injustice, but I do wish that these mainstream, critically-acclaimed works are not just referred to as cultural milestones or the pinnacle of rom-com or musicals or whatever—but also what they truly are, stripped bare: fanfiction. Maybe then, this particular genre of fiction would not be viewed with such scorn and disgust by the mainstream!
*PS: If you are interested in reading more about fanfiction's place in mainstream pop culture, I highly recommend this article by Katherine Arcement! https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n05/katherine-arcement/diary