WARNING spoilers ahead
A developing trend recently is end of the world or utopian movies such as Insurgent and Hunger Games. The new movie Kingsman follows this trend as it is about a young man in a spy agency training program trying to save the world from destruction by an evil genius. The movie is clearly supposed to be a version of James Bond but whether it is more a spoof or a sequel is still up for debate. Like James Bond movies this film has no issue putting its female characters into gender roles and even sometimes the men, yet when looking more closely it a great example of some complex issues with gender such as the hero himself and his female best friend.
His Mother is one of the first females the viewer meets. Submissive and domestic, she is abused by her husband and is not able to protect herself or her children. This character is not particularly empowering as she must in the end be saved by her son, and rescued from the evil step father. While I know that domestic abuse is very complicated in real life, a fictional movie such as this has the opportunity to empower a character such a figure. The Seductress is seen here as the villains evil side kick, although she is incredibly intelligent and clearly beautiful and desirable she is a bad guy. It is possible to argue that she is incredibly loyal and perhaps was not aware that what she was doing was wrong, but through the male lens that we see this movie she is clearly a powerful force mentally and physically. One interesting thing about this character is her legs which are made out of shape knives which also get into people with disabilities in pop culture. In the end though she is strong, our hero is stronger and ultimately defeats her. Furthermore she is poisoned which turns her skin green, making her not as pretty which perhaps in this movie is supposed to be the ultimate defeat. The most obvious trope and definitely the most blatant is the sex object. She seen in the Swedish princess who serves no purpose other than a prize for the hero in the end. Locked in a dungeon cell, our hero takes a short break from fighting the bad guys to tell her that after he saves the world he will come back for her. This exchange is full of sexual innuendo and to sum it up if he lets her out she will have sex with him. The most disturbing part of this relationship is that the movie ends with an image of her back side. This character serves absolutely no purpose other than as a sexual prize of our hero. The Swedish princess actually is so ridiculous that is made me wonder if perhaps that was supposed to be mocking the James Bond franchise, which while possible is highly unlikely.
The movie has very few women that are introduced by name. In fact I believe there are only four, three of which are listed above. This means that there are lots of men characters in this movie some include his father figure and role model Harry Hart (Colin Firth), the man trying to end humanity Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), and of course the hero Eggsy (Taron Egerton). These are just a few of the named characters. I am going to focus of the main character for the purpose of this argument. Eggsy, the James Bond character, embodies so many tropes that it is hard to keep track of them all, and yet this makes him a more complicated character than most of the others. He is first presented as a “gangster” which is frequently seen in the movie as his step father and his friends are all “gangsters”. He is also a “tough guy” and athletic as you might imagine in order to actually fight the bad guys. He isn’t a “player” until the end of the movie when we see him interact with the Swedish princess. Part of the reason why his character is so complicated is because while he has parts of his character that personify a lot of these stereotypes he is also very sensitive. This can be seen when he chooses a pug as his side kick and is fiercely loyal and protective toward it. This can be seen in one of the moments where all the other trainees keep their dog companions in a cage at the end of the bed while Eggsy’s dog sleeps right beside him. Another somewhat confusing part of the movie is it’s patriarchal structures. The movie is primarily men and the whole premise is a spy school that leads into a secret society comprised of only men. in the end however the society is ultimately brought down and it seems to show the corruptibility of this particarcial system.
Something that I believe most people would have looked over in this movie, but that I found most interesting, was Roxy. Roxy (Sophia Cookson) is a young women who is also training to be in the secret spy society with Eggsy. It is clear that she is just as strong and intelligent as Eggsy if not more, in fact she is the one that made it into the society over Eggsy. But the really remarkable thing about her character is that besides one line we are never reminded about her gender. She looks no different than the men in the movie meaning that attention is not drawn to her physical attributes. Lastly, even though it is clear that she and Eggsy care about each other she is actually just his loyal friend. Roxy is a character that is very rarely portrayed an American media. Sadly had someone watching been too caught up in the storyline they may have missed her great character. I later realized that the writers could have replaced her with a man and the movie would have been the exact same, this seems to me the perfect test of no gender roles. I believe that this super cool character should get a spin off of her own.
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