An Analysis of Doug Liman’s Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) Focusing on Butler’s Notion of Fluid Gender Identity.
An analysis of Doug Liman’s Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) focusing on Butler’s notion of fluid gender identity.
Butler’s concept of fluid gender identity states that rather than seeing the male and female genders fixed, they should be seen as fluid or flexible depending on the situation any one person could be in at any point in time. By using this notion Butler proposes that we could work towards a new equality where people are not limited by their male or female gender roles.
Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) follows the lives of a couple, John and Jane, whose marriage is falling apart. Both are secretly assassins for hire and neither one of them knows their spouses secret until they are both assigned each other as targets. While on the pursuit to eliminate each other they continue to learn more about one another than they have over their six years of marriage.
I have chosen to analyse Doug Liman’s film Mr & Mrs Smith since Butler’s fluid gender identity theory is already partially at work here. The gender roles of the male and female characters, John and Jane Smith (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), have, in a way, been swapped therefore challenging many gender specific stereotypical ideas. Throughout this essay I will be discussing the significance of Angelina Jolie’s character Jane Smith in terms of Butler ‘s theory.
Although both Pitt and Jolie play the role of assassins, Jolie’s character Jane can immediately be seen as the more dominate of the two and you already begin to see the flexibility in Jane’s gender identity right from the start. The first scene we find John and Jane in a marriage councillors office, we can tell that Jane is uncomfortable in this situation therefore leaving her gender identity to flow from her preconceived feminine gender, that the viewer might already have, to that of a more masculine manner by not wanting to talk about the problems their having. On the other hand John’s gender reaction, if you will, is pushing more towards the feminine, by
Butler’s concept of fluid gender identity states that rather than seeing the male and female genders fixed, they should be seen as fluid or flexible depending on the situation any one person could be in at any point in time. By using this notion Butler proposes that we could work towards a new equality where people are not limited by their male or female gender roles.
Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) follows the lives of a couple, John and Jane, whose marriage is falling apart. Both are secretly assassins for hire and neither one of them knows their spouses secret until they are both assigned each other as targets. While on the pursuit to eliminate each other they continue to learn more about one another than they have over their six years of marriage.
I have chosen to analyse Doug Liman’s film Mr & Mrs Smith since Butler’s fluid gender identity theory is already partially at work here. The gender roles of the male and female characters, John and Jane Smith (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), have, in a way, been swapped therefore challenging many gender specific stereotypical ideas. Throughout this essay I will be discussing the significance of Angelina Jolie’s character Jane Smith in terms of Butler ‘s theory.
Although both Pitt and Jolie play the role of assassins, Jolie’s character Jane can immediately be seen as the more dominate of the two and you already begin to see the flexibility in Jane’s gender identity right from the start. The first scene we find John and Jane in a marriage councillors office, we can tell that Jane is uncomfortable in this situation therefore leaving her gender identity to flow from her preconceived feminine gender, that the viewer might already have, to that of a more masculine manner by not wanting to talk about the problems their having. On the other hand John’s gender reaction, if you will, is pushing more towards the feminine, by
Bibliography: Laura Mulvey (1975) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen 16.3 Autumn. Judith Butler (1990) Gender Trouble, New York, Routledge Andrea Dwokin (1988) Letter From a Warzone, Lawrence Hill Books Ann Oakley (1974) The Sociology of Housework, London, Robertson