JOHN THE
OBSCURE ™
©
2006
Cherche
l’homme: ‘La Femme Nikita’ and Macho Drag
Drag is a (perhaps the) revolutionary modern aesthetic. In
a society increasingly churned by role-playing, identity-seeking and
gender-definition-questioning, it’s everywhere, from actual drag shows to the
gender/identity ambiguity of the Internet and video games. (Even the relatively
dry, numbers-crunching, currency-tracking site Wheresgeorge.com classes users’
self-reported gender as “People generally consider me a….”)
That’s not to say that all drag is
revolutionary. Indeed, the classic drag queen gig is crypto-sexist, a menstrual
show answer to the minstrel shows of yore. Less obviously, much of the straight
masculinity it rejects is its own lethal sort of drag.
This can become apparent in extreme,
costume-based examples: heavy metal bands, neo-Nazis, investment bankers (or,
as is quite possible these days, all of the above).
But that only reflects the insidious
internal drag that demands that men cloak their inner worlds with emotional
deadness. There may only have been one Man in the Iron Mask, but the vast
majority of us still have this disguise riveted firmly in place, from our Mean
Dad of a president on down the sullen line.
This affectlessness
is, of course, not just for effect. Macho masculinity is not merely an act or a
costume; it’s ingrained behavior. Indeed, it’s usually a useful adaptation in a
sick society that expects and demands males to provide and survive violence. (I
grew up in schools that in aesthetics, administration, population and threat
level replicated minimum-security prisons, and found grim detachment a potent
tool indeed.) Useful, but insidious, as most circumstances in
our highly culture-crafted world are not unavoidable high-noon showdowns.
I fear that, like all adaptations, the emotional death that characterizes
modern masculinity seeks—or creates—its own biological niches: battlefields,
torture chambers, serial killer basements and suicides-by-cop. Or, to be less
dramatic and just as tragic, broken marriages, abused/neglected children and
joyless, wasted lives.
While this stoic phenomenon is very
real—even promoted as a lifestyle or apotheosized as some kind of genetic
inevitability—it is also illustrated and informed by entertainment. Obviously,
the defining genre is the action movie, with its ever-narrowing emotional
range. The early, impenetrably gruff icons like John Wayne gave way to the
likes of Clint Eastwood, someone so lifeless that only
the occasional lip curl lets you know you’re not watching a documentary about pharaonic mummies. And even he was supplanted by walking
tree stumps like Chuck Norris or quasi-sentient fleshblobs
like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal.1
Like all drag, macho expressionlessness has elements of camp. I’ve always
enjoyed action movies while finding them hilarious at the same time—an
experience that, I think, is common but unstated. Sometimes the movies
themselves dip into it, like the quasi-parodies “Commando” and “The Dead Pool”
(of Schwarzenegger and Eastwood, respectively) or the general eyebrow-arching
of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Humorlessness is often humorous. But action
movies are meant to be taken seriously—not in their fantastical content, but in
their emotional tenor.
Action movies are often talked about
in terms of their politics, since they’re usually about crimefighting
or international conflict. But what they’re really about is blue-collar
jobs—cops and soldiers, especially—and the frustrating crappiness thereof. Even
the sleek James Bond was a working man who had to show up at the office to get
his assignments. The vast majority of action movies are damn-the-boss
fantasies. Paranoia, delusions of grandeur and false moral clarity are
typically injected to heighten the high.
The defining trait of the action
movie is what it presents as a successful coping strategy for crummy work
environments: numbness, hostility, uncommunicativeness and eventual explosive
violence. And maybe there’s something to be said for all that. However, the
action movie is all about justification and nothing about consequences.
Perhaps the only significant action
movie to let the drag slip, to appear briefly sans make-up, is “First Blood,”
the outstanding first Rambo movie. In this tale of
Still, the main impression of the
movie is Rambo as an invulnerable ultimate survivalist whose unleashed
vengeance cuts through cops, an entire town and the National Guard like a
custom-made Bowie knife through butter.2
I bring all of
this up because I have belatedly discovered a true action epiphany, the
1990s syndicated TV series “La Femme Nikita,” a show that uniquely explored
macho action drag in-depth and found it to be, well, a drag.
There’s a bit of the ridiculous in
me gushing about a decade-old series I still haven’t watched all the way
through.3 But this particular facet of the popular show seems to
have drawn little attention. The ground this show broke, and the incredible
talent it displayed in so doing, deserve much wider
recognition.
“La Femme Nikita” is based on the
1990 Luc Besson action movie of the same name, a modern-day
“Pygmalion” about a woman street criminal who is unwillingly turned into an
assassin by a cynical government agency. That was itself a groundbreaking
action movie that plays madly with gender roles and macho drag. (The woman as
action hero is a subversive subgenre all its own, with rules and influences
that are frankly too complicated to fit into my glib action movie encapsulation
above.)
The TV show (1997-2001) followed the
same basic storyline, with the remarkable Australian actress Peta Wilson in the title role. But naturally, it
domesticated the show more, turning Nikita into a member of an anti-terrorist
spy team called Section One, and documenting the grotesque office politics that
unfold in the group’s subterranean headquarters.
The strange seas Nikita navigates
are a diabolical blend of male and female evil, with undercurrents of brute
force and cruel manipulation. The gestalt is built and personified by the
Section’s evil Daddy and Mommy, the vicious Type-A executive Operations (Eugene
Robert Glazer) and the icy psychologist/analyst Madeline (Alberta Watson).
All Section agents are convicted
murderers operating under constant threat of death if they fail or disobey.
Emotional suppression is demanded; horrifying ruses and exploitations are routine.
Nikita, a lively, emotional, basically decent person, struggles daily to
survive the insanity.
Someone surviving well, and
typifying the macho drag portion of the program, is Michael (the
French-Canadian actor Roy Dupuis), Nikita’s mentor, evil genius and love
interest. Stoic to a point of Zen-like facial immobility, Eastwoodian
reticence and robotic economy of movement, and capable of killing anyone,
anywhere, anytime in about a nanosecond, Michael is a classic modern action
hero.
Thus, he should also be a classic
bore. Instead, he’s a remarkable, moving deconstruction of masculinity, thanks
both to the screenwriters’ conception and Dupuis’s talent, which results in one
of the finest screen performances I’ve ever seen (speaking as a one-time professional
critic of such things).
As in all action movies, Michael’s
persona is presented as an efficient, useful adaptation to a hideous job. But
“La Femme Nikita” lets slip the dirty secret that at best it’s useful only in
highly limited circumstances. It tells us that Michael has a much richer inner
life. It shows him fumbling to reach Nikita through his own emotional armor,
and Nikita similarly unable to touch him. It shows Michael’s mask as something
he struggles to remove, something that sometimes suffocates him. It shows him
dying to reveal himself, but feeling more comfortable in disguise. It shows him
confusing his identity with his act.
In short, it shows us your average
guy writ large.
The masks in the show are almost
literal. Facial expressions and other emotional displays are verboten in “La
Femme Nikita”; its drama happens almost entirely through the eyes. Glances,
blinks and eye contact have stunning significance in this creepy little world
where human relationships can transpire only as a form of espionage.
But Dupuis is even more restricted.
Indeed, his performance is avant-garde in its astounding minimalism, something
that goes beyond the required machismo and into a realm that, if he had flubbed
it, would have risked his leading-man status. At virtually all times, his face
is less mobile than an
Their language is not the squinty
glare of classic action heroes. Michael’s eyes are open, receptive, but also
shy and avoidant. The primary syntax of Michael’s glances involves him looking
away briefly, blinking thoughtfully, as if repressing an emotional response, then locking eyes, as if trying to imply a much deeper
message than the few words he might be simultaneously offering up. As the
friend who turned me onto “La Femme Nikita” put it, Michael’s eyes are never
hostile, even when he’s dispatching villains. (Ditto for his face;
Michael/Dupuis is truly expressionless, as opposed to scowl-locked like the
classic one-note action hero.) And far from the Classical Reptilian spoken by,
say, Norris’s eyes, Michael’s looks are relentlessly communicative. While the
classic action hero attempts to look like a predator through and through,
Michael’s eyes constantly tell us that his dispassion is just a necessary act,
that there is something still living inside him that is frightened by the evil
he’s forced to commit. He appears not angry, but shell-shocked.
Dupuis vocalizes Michael in a
similar way. He employs a low Eastwoodian whisper
that matches the screenwriters’ Eastwoodian terseness
of dialogue. Much of Michael’s dialogue is literally one word long, delivered so
as to convey the message that the conversation is now over. While it is
fundamentally cold and menacing, it is also unfailingly calm and polite—once
again, not hostile. It is also avoidant, hinting at contempt for his own
actions; one of Michael’s favorite responses is simply, “Of course,” a line
that sums up his air of machine-like obedience mingled with implicit distaste.
Besides intent and talent,
happenstance also aids this sense of emotional repression. Dupuis has a québécois accent
(though so terse is he, it took me about three episodes to notice). The huge
French vowels often battle with the American English terseness inside his
mouth, sometimes creating a clipped or slightly choked sound. Facially, this is
accompanied by Dupuis opening his mouth a bit more than a pure English-speaker
would, then catching himself and closing it up again, drawing his upper lip
down more tightly. By nature, Dupuis has to hammer flat his beautifully
expressive native tongue; by accident, it adds greatly to Michael’s aura of
emotional strangulation. At times, it makes him sound almost on the verge of
tears.4
Dupuis/Michael’s appearance, again
by both accident and design, has similar hints of softness. Dupuis is a
dazzlingly attractive guy, well-built with a strong jawline
and the usual hunky fixins, but made truly gorgeous
by individualizing imperfections (most prominently, a nose that appears to have
been thoroughly broken at one time, probably with a hockey stick). He exudes
“athlete-warrior” typing, but he also has those remarkably plush eyes, as well
as a somewhat sensual mouth. Design-wise, Michael is always dressed in trim,
funereal black and bedecked with macho stubble, but also with longish hair that
softens his otherwise severe visual impact.
Watching Michael is like observing
an eclipse—a darkness surrounded by a halo of fiery hints. There’s no doubt
he’s dangerous, virtually invincible. But he’s also buried alive in a tough-guy
coffin, and we’re given plenty of chances to smell the dirt around it. Dupuis
gives us a Michael who seems less cruel than clinically depressed—which is what
most tough guys are.
Michael is a brilliantly designed
and executed character, but the show doesn’t just let him float out there on
his own subtleties. It actively explores the themes of macho drag.
In the show’s theme song, a female
voice muses, “Cherche la femme,” and indeed, much of the
first season is about Michael seeking Nikita. Using (and abusing) his authority
as her mentor, he stalks her in her private life, breaks into her apartment on
a regular basis, and generally expresses romantic interest in highly
dysfunctional ways. But when Nikita challenges him—or worse, responds to the
interest—this tough guy turns on his heel and flees back into the underworld.
Macho machines who are little boys inside are not the meat and potatoes of
action dramas, but “La Femme Nikita” spills the secret relentlessly.
Indeed, by the second season, it’s
now, “Cherche l’homme”—Nikita
seeking Michael as he withdraws further behind his walls. Like so many shows,
“La Femme Nikita” is built around the sexual tension between its leads. Unlike
the rest, it takes the amazing step of plopping them in bed together at the
beginning of the second season. That would be a farewell,
they-lived-happily-ever-after episode of any other series, considered both the
pinnacle and death of the drama. In “La Femme Nikita,” it’s where the drama—and
the realism—really begin.
After finally confessing and
expressing love together, Nikita and Michael do not become warm and fuzzy. In
fact, Michael doesn’t even get his pants back on before becoming icy and
withdrawn, already disappearing back into invulnerability. This stunning
retreat into emotional unavailability right at the culmination of intimacy is
criminally absent from most romances, even as it’s utterly familiar to, I
daresay, the vast majority of men and women. It’s one of “La Femme Nikita’s”
most remarkable and honest moments.
Michael is literally naked during
the scene—but only physically. Emotionally, you can almost hear him saying,
“Time to become a man again. Time to disappear behind the
mask.”5
The show doesn’t constantly focus on
this theme, but it keeps Michael’s choice between romantic life and emotional
suicide constantly in play. When it does delve deeper, it remains powerful and
insightful.
A key example is a nice twist on a
hoary spy cliché—the amnesia episode. Drugged by terrorists, Michael loses his
memory—not only of his past, but of his macho drag. We see the real Michael for
a brief time—kind, affectionate, expressive. Painfully, but wisely, Nikita
pulls away from him. “This isn’t you,” she says in a searingly
complex line; of course, it is him, but not the Michael she can have long-term,
once his memory returns. In a bit that is simultaneously very funny and deeply
sad, Nikita instructs Michael (whose amnesia, if revealed, would get him
executed) how to act inside Section: “Use as few words as possible. Be terse.”
She trains him in rebuilding the macho mask she’s struggled so long to smash.
In the end, Michael regains his memory, and Nikita re-loses Michael.6
Nikita, an innocent who can’t stop
trusting and caring, is the show’s poignant victim. But Michael is its most
tragic figure.
Lest I get too gushy, it must be
acknowledged that “La Femme Nikita” also exploits the macho masquerade as much
as it peeks behind the mask. Michael’s main attraction is his standing as the
Unattainable Hunky Boss of romance cliché, a role many women have been trained
to respond to submissively by the deathly macho codes that pervade
much of our storytelling. (To the show’s credit, Nikita at least challenges and
rejects Michael as much as she yearns for him.)
More significantly, Michael is still
a credibility-straining superhero whose macho shell is justified in classic action-movie
terms by the false clarity of externally imposed forces—vile bosses and even
more vile villains. Action heroes are never responsible for themselves; they’re
always “forced” to be obnoxious.
For most men, the only real
imposition is the emotional deadness itself, presented as a tautological
definition of masculinity. Real emotional deadness is a symptom, not a
solution.
Michael compensates by becoming
extremely competent—indeed, as one episode mentions, it appears to be his only
determination of self-worth, possibly his only pleasure. There is considerable
emotional truth to that; our society often forces men into perfectionist
personality disorders, then rewards them well for it in work environments.
Still, most men do not become
glamorous ultra-heroes like Michael. They become gray drudges with early heart
attacks.
This concept of the action hero as a
glorification of (over)compensation has some relationship to stories that
present handicapped people as bearing magical powers. A good example is the
amusing TV show “Monk,” a mystery-comedy about a severely obsessive-compulsive
detective. (Like “La Femme Nikita” once did, it airs on the USA Network.) Monk,
who evinces a veritable “DSM”-load of neurotic symptoms, is depicted as
benefiting from his extreme detachment and attention to detail. He becomes one
of the world’s greatest detectives, though his emotional life is tragic and
crippled.
Of course, most real neurotics or
other injured people do not have amazing compensations. They’re just plain
screwed. Normal, screwed people.
Likewise, someone who acted like
Michael in real life would almost surely not be pursued by women. He would be
laughed at. (Remember that all drag has camp elements; Michael’s seriousness
begs to be mocked, and one of the thrills of Dupuis’ performance is how
dangerously close it comes to being a punchline.
Indeed, in at least one episode about subliminal persuasion, Michael’s deadpan
image is employed as unintentional self-parody.)
And in the worst irony, most men who
emotionally duplicate action heroes are not active. They’re frozen, dormant.
Less obviously, few men act like any
one thing, hard as they may try. Obviously, Michael has struck me because he
resonates with my own personality, which involves many of the same syndromes
and flaws. But I’ve begun thinking of myself as responding more on a
Nikita-Michael spectrum—sometimes more acting out, like Nikita, sometimes more
cold and shielded, like Michael. Still, most men identify with the male gender
role and actively imitate it, whatever their actual spectrum of behavior.
All that being
said, “La Femme Nikita” deserves enormous credit for its honesty and how much
it gets right. It shows love as the ultimate secret mission in a male
world. It shows that emotions are the real action, the real danger, the real
terrorism. It suggests that emotionally dead people may make great fighters,
but in another way have already lost. I fear in some ways it’s unbearably,
specifically timely, as I ponder what impact our cynical warfare and cultural
paranoia is having on men’s souls, and what will happen when soldiers come back
home.
One of the dangers of macho drag is
confusing image with reality. It would likewise be dangerous to equate Dupuis
with Michael. Indeed, from what I can tell, much of Michael’s effectiveness as
a character seems to stem from Dupuis being a very different person, or one who
lives out the similarities in very different ways: shy, retiring, sensitive,
witty, emotionally open. (He reportedly choked up while
addressing a “La Femme Nikita” fan convention and cried off-stage.) Upon
playing a gay hustler in “Being at Home with Claude” (1992), he freely
discussed how it led him to question his sexuality before settling into
straightness. He praises the feminine. He seems comfortable with himself,
living a rural life, supporting environmental and disabled-assistance
charities. In short, he seems like a much healthier person, and role model,
than his famous alter ego.
Back in the “La Femme Nikita” days,
interviewers often asked Dupuis what it was like to play Michael. His typical
answer: “Exhausting.”
As any man can tell you, it sure is.
1
I’m being conveniently glib and overly dynastic here. In fact, there have been
some interesting developments away from these stereotypes in modern action
movies, not the least of which has been the massive influence of
Another interesting take on modern masculinity is the
latest version of the BBC sci-fi show “Doctor Who.”
The time-traveling Doctor is a typical emotionally broken hero, but atypically
hides behind boyish enthusiasm, geekery and certain
kinds of self-effacement. The show’s classic quote about the Doctor’s
physics-defying time machine, the TARDIS, sums up not only its most remarkable
physical attribute, but also modern masculinity’s most remarkable emotional
attribute: “It’s bigger on the inside than on the outside.”
2 Living well is certainly not the best
revenge in action movies. Indeed, the heroes often live morose, frugal lives
that appear to punish themselves more than the villains. Obviously, the modern
action movie owes a lot to Jesus. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting the old acting
saw that it’s always more fun to play the villain. That’s often attributed to
it being “more fun” to be evil; but it’s typically because action-movie
villains are the only characters with an emotional life.
3 (placeholder footnote so that after John
watches all the episodes he can confirm how right he was) (update: Man, I was soooo right.)
4 Dupuis has said he purposely retained his
accent to give Michael an added “musicality”—another hint of softness. Also,
Michael was French.
5 I have used the metaphor of a mask, implying
a true identity beneath. In advanced cases, the true identity suffocates and
the result is a death mask, an image that is the only part of the man that is
actually alive. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the post-modern action hero, is a great
example. He’s famed as a bodybuilder, movie star, politician and entrepreneur,
but those are just personas he uses in an ambitious quest for abstract power.
He takes none of these personas, these self-advertisements, very seriously,
variously joking ironically about them and even fudging his way through them
for the appearance of success (from steroid use to secret corporate funds and
political donations). Even his marriage has bizarre aspects of political
ambition and lurid cheating. The mask is the only thing about Schwarzenegger
that appears to truly be alive. He’s become a self-promotion without a self.
The epitome of the phenomenon is our clearly movie-imitating prep-school
cowboy, G.W., a man so thoroughly phony that many people have embraced him as
utterly authentic, apparently because they simply can’t comprehend the depths
of such personal and emotional vacuity. Fleeing regularly to his
6 Quotes are paraphrased from memory.
Significant
sources not cited in the text or footnotes include: http://lfnforever.tripod.com;
“La Femme Nikita” Seasons 1-3, Warner Home Video; www.imdb.com; and various
interviews at www.roydupuis-online.com, www.petawilson-online.com
and www.royettes.com.
Some of my ideas about masculinity were loosely informed by the works of Terry Real. Many thanks to Christine at The
Boston French Center for double-checking my French. Any
remaining errors are my own. Posted July 23, 2006.
Updated Aug. 13, 2006 and Nov. 1, 2008.