#SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS MOVIE#

If you’re trans or fat or BIPOC or disabled, your body is automatically othered, and cannot be celebrated, and is, in fact, maligned. OK.Įven when it comes to rejecting beauty norms, there is a standard, and that standard is still the most acceptable type of body. But when this began occurring, I noticed a trend: the only people being celebrated were white, cisgender, conventionally attractive, with mostly blonde or light body hair. Years ago, it became the “cool” thing to throw a big middle finger at the patriarchy and refuse to shave, either your legs or armpits. The subject of body hair is tricky, and can often be painful to talk about. Now, as an adult, my only thoughts are questioning why some men feel the need to point out the obvious, when all the person targeted wants to do is exist. Not if they wanted to remain desirable, that is.

Something embarrassing about my body was noticeable enough to others that they had brought attention to it, when all I wanted, as many middle schoolers do, was to make it through the day without crying or spontaneously getting my period.Īt the time, all I could think about was how I was subverting the expectations of my assumed gender - girls did not have facial hair, or any obvious body hair. Reader, I must point out that my moustache was just as wispy and ill-designed as his, but that is neither here nor there. There I was, minding my own business, standing by the table where I was assigned to sit, and a boy with thin, rectangular glasses and gelled hair - ahh, the aughts, what a time to be alive - looked at my face and said, rather plainly, “You have a moustache.” Unsurprisingly, it was during the abject hellscape otherwise known as a middle school science class. In somewhat more predictable fashion, Tarantino pulled the revisionism card out again for his most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, rewriting the fate of murder victim Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) by having her would-be attackers get dispatched before they even met her - in hilariously brutal fashion no less.I remember clearly the first time I was made to feel shame about my body hair. Though some cried foul at Tarantino's historic revisionism, it was nothing if not a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek flipping of the bird to reality, where Hitler ultimately escaped anything close to true justice.

The Basterds and Shosanna's (Mélanie Laurent) plan to burn down her cinema with the German High Command sealed inside is successfully pulled off, but because that's a little too subtle for Tarantino, he also has the Führer and Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) get machine-gunned to pieces by Ulmer (Omar Doom) and Donowitz (Eli Roth). opted instead to offer a window into the alternate history many wish actually happened. If most viewers assumed the film would end with the Basterds' plan to kill Hitler (Martin Wuttke) failing in spectacularly ultra-violent fashion, Q.T.

#SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS MOVIE#

While it was reasonable to assume that a Tarantino-directed World War II movie was never going to be strictly married to The Facts, even so, his homage to classic men-on-a-mission movies of yore made one extremely bold decision in its finale. This isn't to say that defying cinematic conventions is inherently a good thing - in fact, when done for its own sake it can often be quite terrible - but when talented filmmakers tinker with established movie rules in inspired ways, the results can be truly incredible.Īnd while many directors have fudged the facts either for the sake of a more entertaining story or to suit their own political agenda, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds tinkered with history for the sake our collective catharsis. While such efforts often end up falling flat, and a certain subset of audiences are always going to struggle with films that do something different, these ten films all flipped the script in frankly brilliant ways.įrom unexpectedly deviating from historical truth to ditching moldy genre tropes, killing off characters out of nowhere, and even denying the audience the violent catharsis they think they need, these films left audiences surprised and perhaps even a little bemused. Studies have proven time and time again that general audiences actually find genre formula comforting in its familiarity, and often reject films that dare to challenge the status quo.īut sufficiently creative and daring filmmakers have attempted to rip up the rulebook and subvert expectations of the type of movie they're making.

Subvert expectations