All Eyes on Me

Because the algorithms are getting way too smart, I am getting bombarded with ads for that Materialists movie. I confess I’ve become a little bit obsessed with the trailer, and not just for the most predictable, Chris Evans-related reasons. BECAUSE IT’S SO STRANGE TO ME.

I find the title much weirder than I probably should, because I was raised on C.S. Lewis and his usage of “a materialist” comes to my mind before the “Material Girl” sort of way. But that cover of the Madonna song they use is a bop.

As befits the Madonna reference, the premise seems to have time-traveled in from twenty or thirty years ago, complete with characters who still smoke. A woman torn between a slick rich guy and a sweet poor guy? With the implication that she actually has stronger feelings for the poor guy? That is just about as stale a premise as I can think of. How could they possibly do anything fresh with that? If she chooses the nice poor guy, it’s a total cliche. But what would they be saying if they go for the hot rich guy? “Yeah, sure is great when you fall for people who are hot AND rich! Love when life is easy like that!” Powerful stuff, there.

Also, they seem to be implying that Dakota is doing okay for herself. They show her doing well as a matchmaker to high-powered people, so… can't she just hook up with hot poor guy, and take care of herself? Why does she need a man to do it? Is her life going to be soooooo much worse if she’s at her normal level of success un-bolstered by her boyfriend, rather than the rich dude’s ridiculous level?

Now, I get that love isn’t just falling for somebody, but living in that love every day. I believe in a certain level of practicality, and I CERTAINLY could not live with a useless man who didn’t contribute. But like, being a waiter is a hard job, so it’s not like he’s lazy or doesn’t want to work. Is she really afraid he’s going to become a burden on her? Feels kinda classist. “Doesn’t make a lot of money” is absolutely not the same as “does not meaningfully participate in the upkeep of our life together.” But apparently his being a waiter is enough to make her not want to consider him as a life partner?

Of course, this is a woman who hooks up with a new love and immediately afterward asks him how much his apartment costs. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHO RAISED YOU? Pedro, do not marry this tacky chick! You deserve better!

I may just be biased in Chris’s favor. Pedro is a great actor and a total sweetheart, but he doesn’t do it for me for whatever reason. And I have always been way stupider over good looks than I am over money, so… definite possibility.

Chris looks very good, because of course he does. They’re trying to imply there’s a little wear on him, possibly to suggest he doesn’t have his life together at a point by which he should. He’s using his growly voice, which is a nice touch. Apparently he’s been pining away for Dakota, even though men who look like that have no trouble finding great women to date regardless of their professional status. It’s an appealing fantasy, to think of him as some devoted romantic. I confess, “When I look at you, I see wrinkles and children,” got me a little, thanks to my personal baggage regarding men getting sick of you when you get old and gain weight.

And I’ll say the bit where she tells Pedro that she wants a Coke and beer and it appears immediately, briefly implying he’s just that powerful, but actually because her ex Chris saw her and knows that’s order, is very clever.

Still can’t fathom how they plan to actually do something with this premise. Feels like any way you take it is… flat and ridiculous. Does anybody go to a movie like this hoping for innovation? But in 2025, do you really you go with the most done, trite, obvious thing in the history of narrative? Why does Chris keep doing dumb movies like this? Doesn’t he have enough money? Why is Pedro doing this, for that matter, whose career’s been gangbusters lately?

I almost want to go just to see whether it’s fish, fowl, or otherwise. Hey, maybe she’ll end up picking neither! Or maybe go with the best of both worlds, and end up in a polyamorous relationship with Chris’s dick and Pedro’s money. I could get behind either of those.

I went in as a guest speaker for a friend's theater class this week. Cari's husband Aaron asked if I could give a lecture for a class he was assigned at North Shore, and I decided it might be fun to introduce the idea of costume-choices-as-narrative. It's something I LOVE discussing but have very little opportunity to focus on in my regular instruction.

Bernie made the intriguing suggestion of choosing a particular character whose wardrobe changes with their nature and their circumstances, and explaining how it helps support telling their story. He recommended Captain America from the MCU— seeing as I knew him very well, the students were likely to have some frame of reference about him, and I likely wouldn't even need to look up a ton of visuals. My iPad is already choked to death on them, after all.

Of course, he and some others I mentioned it to warned me not to be too gross about discussing how Chris Evans looks and was dressed. The students didn't know me, after all, and I didn't want to seem creepy. I was a touch indignant, but acknowledge the point. The class was to be about the clothes and styling choices, after all, and while casting definitely affects how they make those choices, I didn't want to muddy the focus.

The hilarious thing was, THEY couldn't stop talking about how hot he was. The few times I had to rein them back into the discussion, they had gone off talking to each other about it— boys and girls alike. I managed to stay uncreepy, I think, but that amused the hell out of me.



I explained things about where the character was at any given time. How they made him look as unflattering and unimpressive as possible when he was skinny and asthmatic with clothes that didn't fit great, were in dull colors, and had 1940s period touches that read as "dorky" today, like short ties and suspenders. How even post-transformation he is still the same modest person on the inside, so still prefers conventional, low-key styles in a blue, white, and gray color palette. How when he first arrives in the 21st Century, he dresses in clothes that a person could have worn at any point between then and 1930 without really seeming strange, but would look at home on any grandpa— pleated, high-waisted trousers, blue plaid button-downs. But even when he updates his look to be more contemporary, with lower rise jeans and jackets with high-tech fabric and interesting seaming, he still sticks with simple looks that do not draw a lot of attention. How his one small dressing affectation is a love of brown leather jackets, likely learned in the army, that he updates with more and more modern styling periodically. How they keep him in those palette and styling parameters to contrast with Tony Stark. He's old enough to be Steve's father, but Tony is flashy and attention-seeking, with more red and black, dressing young for his age where Steve dresses old, in designer suits, graphic T's, and glasses with colored lenses. I dealt with the superhero suit as well, of course, but in a more general sense, pointing out its evolution through the circumstances in which Steve wears it, how it got more modern and functional in design, and how its breakdown is used to demonstrate how low he is by the time we've gotten to Infinity War.

I also brought in things about Mrs. Hawking, pointing out that theatrical circumstances require broader strokes, and how we work on a limited budget. I pointed out how many characters are associated with certain colors, like Clara with green and Mary with blue, to help audience members identify them, and to draw contrasts and connections. I pointed out how Mrs. Frost's blue and white is her attempt to seem innocuous, so when Clara confronts her in green and black she looks oppositional and threatening against her, and how Clara's fur coat functions like a form of armor. I compared Mrs. Hawking's super suit to Madam Malaika's, how they served to both underline the women's deep similarities as heroes as well as their vast differences. I pointed out how in Frost's scenes there is basically no color except HER color, and the significance of her tying it around Nathaniel's neck is a declaration of her power over him.

I wanted to give them a taste of everything you can do, and how creative you can be to say things with your choices. I had to pick and choose a few evocative moments, as there's so many possibilities for how costuming can be used. There are dozens more things in Mrs. Hawking that could be discussed on this level. And I tried to keep things a little on the simple side for the sake of introduction.

Like, I cut out some of Steve's outfits like the athletic wear in the "On your left" scene at the top of Winter Soldier. I'm ninety percent sure they have a relationship with Under Armour that required them to dress him in a way that made him look as hot in it as possible, but I don't really think it's totally diegetic that he'd wear his clothes that tight. It's not just too showy; it's borderline vulgar, to be honest. I think you can justify it in-story with the idea that he's never totally come to "own" his new body, to reconcile the reality of it with his self-image, and so doesn't have the best sense of what's going to fit it. But honestly, the character that they've established him to be is going to be slightly embarrassed to go outside like that, in the absence of concerns like "using Chris Evans's considerable assets to sell tickets."

I've always wanted to teach a full-semester theory of costume design class, but never have had the opportunity before, so this was super fun for me. It also makes me want to do a fuller exegesis on Steve's journey through costuming, about what all his looks say from a narrative standpoint. It's a study I'm fascinated by, and I had so much fun getting to teach other people about it for a little bit.

No, this isn't me making good on my threat to rhapsodize over each of Chris Evans's individual attractive features in turn. Okay, there's a little of that in here, but I swear I have more of a point. This is about costume design.

If you're like me, and you are closely attuned to the tiniest details of the presentation of the most physically desireable man in existence, you may have noticed that Steve Rogers's hair changes between his original 1940s look introduced in the first Cap movie...






...and the updated look in The Winter Soldier.






(Yes, those are all from a personal collection in my photo library.)

Or maybe you (like Bernie, who has already been subjected to this rant) didn't notice the styling of his hair at all. But I actually think it was a significant design choice, with a lot of meaning in it, and it's a change I'm not sure I'm on board with.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Cap's hair, at least from an aesthetic standpoint. Whether old-fashioned or modern, short, blond, and styled is my favorite look for the man who IS just about my favorite way anything looks in the universe. So from a plain prettiness standpoint, I'm cool with it. But from a costuming standpoint... I'm not sure I buy it.

Hear me out!

Look at THIS hairstyle they chose to use in Winter Soldier in particular. First of all, it's noticeably modern, particularly in contrast to the sideswept, side-parted, and likely pomaded 1940s good boy look we were introduced to him with. I know why they chose to update it. Probably partially to take advantage of Evans's boy-next-door good looks, but also, like all costuming and styling choices, to tell you something about the character. In this case, I think it's to show he's making an effort to adapt to the present day, to not live in the past. That's borne out in his acknowledgement of all the good changes since the 1940s, and his effort to learn about current culture.

But what bugs me is not that he has adopted a modern hairstyle-- it's that it's THIS hairstyle. 'Cause that look? Is NOT a roll-out-of-bed, low-effort, natural look. It's not even the Hollywood version of how average men wear their hair, where all the work of styling and product applied are deliberately concealed in order to create the illusion of natural hair. THAT hair is a clearly, obviously, carefully curated, meticulously designed, faux-messy style involving a lot of work and hair gel, associated with young, contemporary men who not only care about fashion and appearance, but about giving off a hip, current vibe to the people who see them.

I am a costume designer. I believe very strongly that truly good costuming (as with all aspects of production design) helps to tell the story. So the baggage the audience attaches to the clothing and styling of the characters should give them information about the characters and narrative.

So, diegetically... why would Cap have that? Now, he might not a be a stranger to styling product. He went into the ice a bit too early for the wet look of the 1950s, but he was probably pretty used to pomading things down as a matter of routine. But this modern look? Is LABOR INTENSIVE, and involves a fair bit of skill to execute those soft spikes and artful back sweep that's just the right height. In order to wear hair like that, he would not only have to put in the not-inconsiderable time and effort to do it every day, he'd have to deliberately learn how. Where from? I get the idea that he'd choose something more modern to indicate his attempt to update to the present day. But does he really strike you as the kind of guy who'd choose a high-maintenance style that could say anything from "trendster," "vanity," "metro," or even "douchebag"? I could see Steve, with his respectful, good-boy military background, wanting to be neat and turned out, but I don't see him as hip or invested in preening. To give you an idea, taken from this most excellent video, this is how a 1940s young man with a little bit of daring and vanity did his hair to be eye-catching:



Compare that to Steve's wartime look. Clearly he's a much more modest guy than that.

It's not that big a deal. Probably most people didn't even notice. And hell, other aspects of his presentation have more to do with his status in a superhero and the attendant stylistic choices-- I also doubt a truly diegetic Steve would wear his clothes that tight either.



But tight costumes are part of the superhero genre, Steve's extreme physique is likely going to fill out ANY article of clothing, and Hollywood is sure as hell going to show off that exquisite heroic figure. I'm the LAST PERSON ON GOD'S BLESSED EARTH to complain to you about that. Hell, I like the fanon joke that all the ladies at SHIELD told him that in the future, everyone wears their clothes that way.

But the hair bugged me. I felt like you could have communicated "Steve is trying to update" without making an out-of-character choice.

Immortalizing here:



The picture in question:



I think I can be forgiven for my wandering eye.

I don’t write about sex much. I don’t know if those of you who have read much of my work have noticed that, but I tend not to deal with it very often. To be frank, I think there’s something approaching a prudishness in a lot of my writing— not a lot of exploration of sexuality, not much drug use, few truly crude behaviors. I don’t even like my characters too swear too much. A lot of it’s just taste. I think dialogue’s more interesting when people don’t swear all the time, I’m a bit put off by human grossness. Those are just things I am not all that interested in exploring in my writing.

But I get a bit funny when it comes to writing about sex and sexuality. I have no DISTASTE for it the way I do with that other stuff. I feel like it’s an interesting and important part of most characters, something that could really add drama and dimension and intensity to stories. I can talk about sex with friends in person. But for some reason-- maybe it’s an immaturity, a silly hangup --I get nervous, even embarrassed, when I trying to write about it.

I have a weird impulse to worry, “What would my parents think if they saw this?” Which is stupid, for several reasons— not least of which because I only have one parent anymore —a silly thing for an adult to be concerned over. I also worry that the way I try to depict it won’t work the way I intend it to. Like somebody will read it and think I’m a freak for thinking that’s how you depict sexuality and eroticism. "What the hell was that?" “It was supposed to be sexy.” “That’s not sexy. That’s weird. And you’re weird.”

I ran into that challenge with Bernie and my Adonis screenplay. I don’t think sexuality ever played a bigger part in my work than in this story. A major theme is flipping the typical hetero power dynamic, and a big goal for that was to write a romantic relationship with a slowly growing sexual dimension to it that people would actually find hot. And with my nervousness that was challenging. It was made worse for the fact that I was using a lot of things I personally find hot to accomplish it. My muse for much of the project was Chris Evans, given my extreme attraction to him with the Captain America presentation— blond, smooth, and huge with muscle. So writing my lead character Aidan, the titular Adonis, to be played by him was a starting point. And naturally when I was looking for ways to express my characters’ attraction to him, I referenced how I experienced my own.

Sex is personal and idiosyncratic. Even when there’s nothing really wrong with how you relate to or experience sex, it’s not always something you want everybody to know about. People might not get it if it's too different from their own way. This made me feel particularly vulnerable— like, what if you thought I was a weirdo for things that were actually representative of me? Or what if I just didn’t get the job done as an artist depicting sexiness and it came off as clunky and awkward and now you knew way more about me than you wanted to for your trouble? A lot of the time I would feel shy as I was writing and then sort of pull back from the depiction for fear that if I got too specific, or too detailed, or too whatever, it would just be uncomfortable rather than sexy or furthering to the story. Or what if you read too much into a lot of the ways in which sexuality plays out in the story, particularly the problematic ones, and got uncomfortable because you suspected those things were representative of me? That one was particularly worrisome to me. You might find something a little disturbing in the fact that the man I modeled to be my physical ideal I wrote to be a multiple sexual trauma victim, which in certain instances plays out onscreen. I want that to be a circumstance driving the emotional arc of my story, not to come off like the author’s weird rape kink.

The truth is, if you care, what I mostly drew from myself for the various depictions of sexuality in Adonis is how I experience intense physical attraction. In this story I wanted to both celebrate and elevate the female gaze, as well as highlight the dangers of investing too much power into the mere concept of gaze. When it came to the former, I tried to depict the way I feel awe of extreme beauty, the somewhat fallacious but poetic attribution of some great deeper meaning to that beauty, the indulgent, rhapsodic cherishing of each quality in turn. When it came to the latter, I worked in the threat of that attraction to push out rational thought, the tipping over from appreciation into objectification, and the encroachment of a possessiveness that comes from the impulse to self-aggrandizement. Female gaze is my pet feminist issue, so I’ve given a lot of thought to deconstructing it, particularly how it expresses in myself. I joked a lot about how awesome it was to be able to claim looking at hot photos of Chris Evans as research. But I am being a hundred percent serious when I say that when I felt blocked, experiencing what my attraction to him felt like would help me figure out the right words to embody such a reaction for the story. I flatter myself that I think it gave the exploration of female gaze some real power.

It can be scary to put too much of yourself into your art. When people criticize it or don’t like it, it feels like a personal attack. But oftentimes that personal element can make something more complete, genuine, or powerful. So you have to be willing to open yourself up to that vulnerability. I hope it improved my work here, though it was definitely not an easy thing to do.

Today is Chris Evans's birthday. To celebrate:









Here's to one more year of that beautiful, beautiful man.

I'll just leave this here.



Pepper, there is an easy solution to this problem, and it involves getting IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THAT, DARLING. Also, love how the final shot is of Steve's dreamy eyes and luxuriant eyelashes...

As I’ve mentioned, I always found the comic book Steve Rogers to be completely boring. I understand that they wanted his true power to be his unerring moral compass, but he’s perfect in every other way too—he is always sure of himself, he has no fears, no psychological damage… no personality, really. Some like Bernie will debate this to the death with me, but that’s how I see it. But now that he's been depicted on the big screen... I am in love. I find the move version of the character fascinating, and I wanted to ramble a little bit about why. And I swear, it's not just because I want to jump his perfectly formed bones. 
( Cut for crushy nonsense, but there's some feminism and gender analysis here too! )