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rsadelleI recently rewatched the first eight Fast and Furious movies in preparation for F9. (Can you believe I have yet to run into any jokes about the movie being named for one of the keys on a keyboard?) I love the Fast and Furious movies. Love them. Having watched all eight of them in a short period of time, I will say that 1, 4, and 5 are still the best ones, and 2 was much better than I remember it being.
The thing I found myself absolutely fascinated by this time around was the portrayal of women. Every movie has at least one scene full of women in skimpy clothing. Nothing about it makes sense. The women are just there. They're not really involved in the action. It doesn't make any sense for the majority of spectators for street racing to be women. They're not actively doing anything to try to get anyone's attention and there isn't anyone paying attention to them. The only attention they get is from the camera, which just pans over them. They're basically the video equivalent of hot girl posters on a wall. Except that I don't find them sexy at all. They're all exactly the same body type that isn't really my type. I found myself wondering a lot about the interior lives of their unnamed characters. Why are they there? What are they getting out of this? I also found myself wondering about the straight male gaze. It seems like this is a good example of the camera panning over hot women being for straight men, but is it? I think of sexy women presented for the sole purpose of straight men looking at them as being much more actively enticing.
There's another dimension of this in the scenes where the women include two (or in at least one case, three) women kissing. The kissing women are entirely focused on each other, there are no men near them, and they don't look at the camera at all. It reminds me of one possible definition of the difference between pornography and erotica: pornography is for the enjoyment of the viewer; erotica is for the enjoyment of both the viewer and the subjects in it. The kissing women in the Fast and Furious movies seem to inhabit the third possibility: for the enjoyment only of the subjects. I'm coming to this from a lesbian perspective, so it's possible that I'm wrong and straight men do find this sexy, but none of it reads that way to me. (But I would love to know more about the kissing women, particularly the pair in the party at the Toretto house in the first movie.)
The other thing that's so interesting about the scenes full of women is the way there's such a strong contrast between the women in those scenes and the women in the romantic relationships in the series. There are three ongoing key romantic relationships in the series: Brian and Mia, Dom and Letty, and Han and Giselle.
Mia is so interesting to me. She's not presented as an object of desire. Sure, both Brian and Vince are into her, but she's never presented in a sexualized way. We see her in Brian's bed to make it clear to the audience that they've slept together, but we don't see much of her then and, unless I missed it, we never get a bikini shot of her, even when she's on a beach. She's the one character we see in dresses on a regular basis, but they're not sexy dresses. They're pretty dresses. She wears sundresses with floaty skirts. When she's not in dresses, she's in cute but relatively modest/functional pants and tops. You can see a little bit of Mia's character and life around the edges (I have so many questions about her schoolwork and age in the first movie), but her role is so much more in support of Dom and Brian in a very particular way: she provides both practical and domestic support, and she's an object of love. I think the way her and Brian's relationship works is that while Brian might have originally been attracted to her physically, his attachment to her is primarily romantic. There's a sexual element there, but it feels much more like he's hot for her as part of his love for her, not separate from it. When it comes to Dom, she's very much the domestic lead in his life. We get the sense that she does all the housework in the first movie and she's the one he trusts to hold the money when he races. She can also drive very well and very fast, but when it comes to the garage, we only ever see her dealing with paperwork, not working on cars. It's also very clear throughout the series that Dom very much loves her. (I had forgotten how much of a "sister or girlfriend?" vibe their relationship has.)
In many ways, Dom is the central character of the series, which makes the contrast between the women in the scenes full of women and Letty, who is the love of his life, so dramatic and fascinating. If you want to have a good time, show the first movie to queer women who've never seen it and watch their reactions the first time we meet Letty. We come in at ground level as a pair of sturdy boots with flames on the toes step out of a brightly colored car, and then we pan up over baggy camo pants riding below the waist of army green string bikini underwear, and then up to a red, midriff-baring tank top and sunglasses. She remains the butchest woman in the series all the way through. Later in the series, we see her in a bikini with a large button-up shirt over it, wearing a fancy dress, and in bed with Dom, but in the first one, we never see her in any sort of typical sexy/feminine clothes. In fact, the hottest sex scene in the whole series is when she and Dom are in the garage, both of them sweaty with grease on their clothes, and they make out while he picks her up. When Dom first meets Giselle, shortly after Letty's apparent death (we find out she survived later) and he describes his type, he describes Letty including, "Ain't afraid to get a little engine grease under her fingernails." I'm so fascinated that the love of the life of the series' main character is completely different from the large groups of women who are supposed to be sexy. I can't figure out if the various movie makers had any idea that they were completely undercutting the supposedly sexy groups of women with the actual relationships.
Giselle is interesting in that she fits the mold of the crowds of women (Gal Gadot is very tall and thin) while also having a role in the series that isn't focused on her sexiness. When we first meet her, she's high up enough in Braga's organization that she has a lot of power - power that doesn't rely on her being sexy. She isn't sleeping with someone in Braga's organization. She does try to entice Dom into something, but she very clearly notes that his type doesn't sound like her and stops. When she arrives to meet everyone else in Fast Five, she gets the motorcycle rider is actually a hot woman helmet coming off reveal, but she immediately follows it up with demonstrating that she is a badass not to be messed with. She gets a sexy bikini scene with Han watching her, but that's not what attracts him to her - he's already impressed with her and they have an excellent demonstrating that they've figured out things about each other banter conversation just before she walks off to be sexy in the bikini. And even then, she's not just sexy in a bikini to be sexy in a bikini; she's using it to get the villain's handprint on her swimsuit. The last scene of Han and Giselle in Fast Five is of her sitting on his lap making out and making plans while he drives. The first scene of them in Fast and Furious 6 is of them having a fun date in a food market, and then pulling out guns and standing back to back to defend themselves. Giselle may be sexy in the way the crowds of women are, but her relationship with Han is predicated on it being a partnership.
There are two other women who appear in multiple movies who are worth mentioning. The first is Elena who we meet in Fast Five when she's a cop working with Hobbs to track down Dom and his team. She's feminine, but not in a deliberately sexy or pretty way. When she and Dom have a relationship, it's based on both chemistry and the understanding that comes from both of them being in the same place of having lost the loves of their lives. Unless I missed it, we don't see her in a bikini shot. The other woman is Ramsey, who we meet in Furious 7 when the team rescues her from bad guys. Ramsey is a hacker, and her primary role on the team is to do tech stuff. She is also a Black woman who immediately garners the attention of Tej and Roman, the two Black men on the team. She does get a very dramatic sexy bikini shot, which I found interesting because instead of her being the very thin version of the groups of women, we see both her bouncing breasts and her thighs moving. The breasts are pretty standard for sexy bikini shots, but I was very surprised to see her thighs actually jiggling. I don't think of that as a thing you see in mainstream portrayals of sexiness. (To be very shallow for a moment, I greatly appreciated it - and noticed it - because I find fleshy women's thighs hot.)
It seems like all of this fits into one of the things I love about the Fast and Furious movies, which is that for all they're ridiculous action movies, they also have some interesting genre-defying things going on: They have a very ethnically/racially diverse cast. They have an ambiguous relationship to law enforcement. And they have romantic relationships between men and women that are predicated on partnership. No wonder I've loved this series for more than half my life.
The thing I found myself absolutely fascinated by this time around was the portrayal of women. Every movie has at least one scene full of women in skimpy clothing. Nothing about it makes sense. The women are just there. They're not really involved in the action. It doesn't make any sense for the majority of spectators for street racing to be women. They're not actively doing anything to try to get anyone's attention and there isn't anyone paying attention to them. The only attention they get is from the camera, which just pans over them. They're basically the video equivalent of hot girl posters on a wall. Except that I don't find them sexy at all. They're all exactly the same body type that isn't really my type. I found myself wondering a lot about the interior lives of their unnamed characters. Why are they there? What are they getting out of this? I also found myself wondering about the straight male gaze. It seems like this is a good example of the camera panning over hot women being for straight men, but is it? I think of sexy women presented for the sole purpose of straight men looking at them as being much more actively enticing.
There's another dimension of this in the scenes where the women include two (or in at least one case, three) women kissing. The kissing women are entirely focused on each other, there are no men near them, and they don't look at the camera at all. It reminds me of one possible definition of the difference between pornography and erotica: pornography is for the enjoyment of the viewer; erotica is for the enjoyment of both the viewer and the subjects in it. The kissing women in the Fast and Furious movies seem to inhabit the third possibility: for the enjoyment only of the subjects. I'm coming to this from a lesbian perspective, so it's possible that I'm wrong and straight men do find this sexy, but none of it reads that way to me. (But I would love to know more about the kissing women, particularly the pair in the party at the Toretto house in the first movie.)
The other thing that's so interesting about the scenes full of women is the way there's such a strong contrast between the women in those scenes and the women in the romantic relationships in the series. There are three ongoing key romantic relationships in the series: Brian and Mia, Dom and Letty, and Han and Giselle.
Mia is so interesting to me. She's not presented as an object of desire. Sure, both Brian and Vince are into her, but she's never presented in a sexualized way. We see her in Brian's bed to make it clear to the audience that they've slept together, but we don't see much of her then and, unless I missed it, we never get a bikini shot of her, even when she's on a beach. She's the one character we see in dresses on a regular basis, but they're not sexy dresses. They're pretty dresses. She wears sundresses with floaty skirts. When she's not in dresses, she's in cute but relatively modest/functional pants and tops. You can see a little bit of Mia's character and life around the edges (I have so many questions about her schoolwork and age in the first movie), but her role is so much more in support of Dom and Brian in a very particular way: she provides both practical and domestic support, and she's an object of love. I think the way her and Brian's relationship works is that while Brian might have originally been attracted to her physically, his attachment to her is primarily romantic. There's a sexual element there, but it feels much more like he's hot for her as part of his love for her, not separate from it. When it comes to Dom, she's very much the domestic lead in his life. We get the sense that she does all the housework in the first movie and she's the one he trusts to hold the money when he races. She can also drive very well and very fast, but when it comes to the garage, we only ever see her dealing with paperwork, not working on cars. It's also very clear throughout the series that Dom very much loves her. (I had forgotten how much of a "sister or girlfriend?" vibe their relationship has.)
In many ways, Dom is the central character of the series, which makes the contrast between the women in the scenes full of women and Letty, who is the love of his life, so dramatic and fascinating. If you want to have a good time, show the first movie to queer women who've never seen it and watch their reactions the first time we meet Letty. We come in at ground level as a pair of sturdy boots with flames on the toes step out of a brightly colored car, and then we pan up over baggy camo pants riding below the waist of army green string bikini underwear, and then up to a red, midriff-baring tank top and sunglasses. She remains the butchest woman in the series all the way through. Later in the series, we see her in a bikini with a large button-up shirt over it, wearing a fancy dress, and in bed with Dom, but in the first one, we never see her in any sort of typical sexy/feminine clothes. In fact, the hottest sex scene in the whole series is when she and Dom are in the garage, both of them sweaty with grease on their clothes, and they make out while he picks her up. When Dom first meets Giselle, shortly after Letty's apparent death (we find out she survived later) and he describes his type, he describes Letty including, "Ain't afraid to get a little engine grease under her fingernails." I'm so fascinated that the love of the life of the series' main character is completely different from the large groups of women who are supposed to be sexy. I can't figure out if the various movie makers had any idea that they were completely undercutting the supposedly sexy groups of women with the actual relationships.
Giselle is interesting in that she fits the mold of the crowds of women (Gal Gadot is very tall and thin) while also having a role in the series that isn't focused on her sexiness. When we first meet her, she's high up enough in Braga's organization that she has a lot of power - power that doesn't rely on her being sexy. She isn't sleeping with someone in Braga's organization. She does try to entice Dom into something, but she very clearly notes that his type doesn't sound like her and stops. When she arrives to meet everyone else in Fast Five, she gets the motorcycle rider is actually a hot woman helmet coming off reveal, but she immediately follows it up with demonstrating that she is a badass not to be messed with. She gets a sexy bikini scene with Han watching her, but that's not what attracts him to her - he's already impressed with her and they have an excellent demonstrating that they've figured out things about each other banter conversation just before she walks off to be sexy in the bikini. And even then, she's not just sexy in a bikini to be sexy in a bikini; she's using it to get the villain's handprint on her swimsuit. The last scene of Han and Giselle in Fast Five is of her sitting on his lap making out and making plans while he drives. The first scene of them in Fast and Furious 6 is of them having a fun date in a food market, and then pulling out guns and standing back to back to defend themselves. Giselle may be sexy in the way the crowds of women are, but her relationship with Han is predicated on it being a partnership.
There are two other women who appear in multiple movies who are worth mentioning. The first is Elena who we meet in Fast Five when she's a cop working with Hobbs to track down Dom and his team. She's feminine, but not in a deliberately sexy or pretty way. When she and Dom have a relationship, it's based on both chemistry and the understanding that comes from both of them being in the same place of having lost the loves of their lives. Unless I missed it, we don't see her in a bikini shot. The other woman is Ramsey, who we meet in Furious 7 when the team rescues her from bad guys. Ramsey is a hacker, and her primary role on the team is to do tech stuff. She is also a Black woman who immediately garners the attention of Tej and Roman, the two Black men on the team. She does get a very dramatic sexy bikini shot, which I found interesting because instead of her being the very thin version of the groups of women, we see both her bouncing breasts and her thighs moving. The breasts are pretty standard for sexy bikini shots, but I was very surprised to see her thighs actually jiggling. I don't think of that as a thing you see in mainstream portrayals of sexiness. (To be very shallow for a moment, I greatly appreciated it - and noticed it - because I find fleshy women's thighs hot.)
It seems like all of this fits into one of the things I love about the Fast and Furious movies, which is that for all they're ridiculous action movies, they also have some interesting genre-defying things going on: They have a very ethnically/racially diverse cast. They have an ambiguous relationship to law enforcement. And they have romantic relationships between men and women that are predicated on partnership. No wonder I've loved this series for more than half my life.