Wild Hogs has become quite successful, especially for a comedy released in March, earning more than $123 million in its first three weeks. As a movie, it is what it is. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know exactly what you’re getting.
But it’s worth giving the film a brief examination for what it says about men. The male population has been taking its cues from movies right from the beginning. They teach both boys and men learn how to behave.
There’s a certain type of movie about confused men grappling with how best to be a man. I think this genre probably goes back to Post-War America, and includes The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Executive Suite (1954) and Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964) (the last ironically starring the heavily-closeted Rock Hudson).
Wild Hogs is very much in the mold of City Slickers (1991), with suburban men struggling with today’s complex world and yearning for a simpler time, when they could spit and scratch and make fun of girls behind their backs. The quartet in Hogs is feeling emasculated, not respected by sons and wives and disconnected from their earlier hopes and ambitions.
But their really big problem is not being seen as homosexual. This is a big comedy element in these male-bonding yuck fests. You see, it’s funny that you caught him and me in bed together, because that makes it look like we’re faggots and we’re so totally not gay in any way, so that just makes it funny, you see. There’s a bit where the guys end up naked in a body of water and they’re all nervous about being naked near each other. Then a homosexual highway patrolman (played by John C. McGinley as a more fey version of Lieutenant Jim Dangle) approaches them, after already encountering them once and indicating his attraction to them. He jumps in the water and starts playing “Marco Polo,” so the guys hightail it out of there. HI-larious.
In life, the only thing more fascinating than watching the most powerful group in America today — white middle-class middle-age males (yeah, I know Martin Lawrence is in it too) — feel powerless, is watching modern men feel a deep urge to live by completely obsolete archetypes. You know, like cowboys.
Or in the case of Wild Hogs, bikers. Bikers are offered as the last rebels, living free and riding hard. Our heroes think they’re poseurs compared to the real thing. But surveys by the Motorcycle Industry Council show that today’s motorcycle rider is older and wealthier than before. The joke is that they are the biker norm.
Good stuff. The funniest thing in the movie is Kyle Gass (of Tenacious D) who makes a brief cameo as a karaoke singer in Western garb who performs at a small town’s chili festival. Hearing him sing the Pussycat Doll‘s “Don’t Cha” was totally worth the price of admission. Here’s a man who is comfortable with himself.
Tags: Wild Hogs