Tom Cruise is a polarizing figure. No one would argue with that. Lately, the actor has been playing the same role in every film. It’s action and more action for Cruise, the short, eccentric, devilishly handsome human being-turned-action figure. Maybe he’s having a mid-life crisis? Before Tom was climbing up the sides of buildings in Mission: Impossible movies, hunting down malicious snipers in Jack Reacher, and preparing to confront the supernatural in the newest reboot of The Mummy, he was actually playing roles that were edgy and reflective. Between 1994 and 2003, Cruise was cast as Anne Rice’s infamous vampire Lestat in Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire, Dr. William Hartford in Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut, Chief John Anderton in Steven Spielberg’s brilliant film of Phillip K. Dick’s Minority Report, the villain Vincent in Michael Mann’s Collateral And in 1999, he played perhaps the best role of his career, Frank TJ Mackey, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.
Pre-divorce from Nicole Kidman, pre-Scientology obsession, and pre-Katie Holmes clusterfuck, Tom Cruise proved that he was one of the best leading men Hollywood had to cast. But it was with his nausea-inducing role as misogynistic sex guru Mackey in PT Anderson’s postmodern epic that really grabbed attention. Frank TJ Mackey is a sex addicted master of self-help who specializes in teaching men how to “respect the cock and tame the cu*t!” Everything Mackey has to offer comes down to power over others. He degrades women in such a way that he makes other men believe that they can finally have confidence in their own sexual abilities. This is done at the expense of women everywhere. Mackey’s system is titled “Seduce and Destroy” and it sounds oddly familiar.
Wasn’t it our president-elect Donald J. Trump who, at one point, said of women that he would “grab them by the pussy?” Did our country not decide to vote for and, in turn, elect this man? We know two things: 1. Roughly eighty-two percent of those who voted for Trump were white Evangelical Christians and 2. Trump’s biggest supporters are white men. There is a history of white male insecurity in the West. Frank Mackey offers white American men who feel belittled and emotionally castrated the same thing that President Elect Trump has offered the white American men who voted in the 2016 election: power over others. We are only now seeing evidence that Trump has duped the white working class. It’s called “Seduce and Destroy” for a reason, folks.
In David Fincher’s cult film Fight Club, Brad Pitt’s character of Tyler Durden, every man and woman’s wet dream, gives a speech about white men being the forgotten “middle children of history.” If you’ve seen and/or read Fight Club, then you know Tyler Durden isn’t really what or who he seems and he is unable to follow through with his promise to lift these sad and pathetic white men out of this “middle” he speaks of. Fight Club also came out in 1999, a great year for American films about “middle children of history” fighting the system. Eyes Wide Shut, American Beauty, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, and Office Space were also released that year. None have been more prophetic, however, than Magnolia.
Anderson’s original screenplay reveals some very troubling things about white male American messiahs and their disciples. Mackey is a leader and an inspiration because he says what everyone is already thinking. Sound familiar? Why did voters find this an admirable quality in Donald J. Trump? Plain and simple: Black men, gay men, trans people, and strong women scare white men and shatter their fragile egos. It’s as if white men, especially white Evangelical men, claim they have been put upon and walked over ever since the origins of American feminism/womanism and the civil rights movement. Phrases like “reverse racism” and “reverse sexism” are now running rampant throughout our country.
What did Trump offer the “middle children of history?” Well, it’s cheaper than fucking therapy and it involves your civic duty to vote. What belittled, castrated, oppressed white Evangelical man wouldn’t want a white male messiah who can silence that historically oppressive voice of women by “grabbing them by the pussy?”
There are two key scenes in Magnolia that we must visit. The first scene will sound familiar and the second will likely be a tough pill for progressives and conservatives alike to swallow. Following the first “Seduce and Destroy” workshop in the film, Frank is met by a reporter who has agreed to interview Frank for live television. She is a black woman. Frank strips down to his underwear and does push ups in front of her and then attempts to seduce her. It’s not working. The reporter, played with firm resolve by April Grace, is the great foil of Mackey and his disciples. She knows all of the right questions to ask. Frank attempts to lie his way through the scene, dodging personal questions that open up vulnerabilities within him, until he can’t stand his ground any longer. Frank has shut down. He stares icily at the reporter with his mouth closed. She asks, “Come on Frank. What are you doing?” Frank responds “What am I doing? I’m quietly judging you.”
Nothing about Trump is quiet, but, one can only hope that someday, a woman will sit down and force Trump into such a corner that he has nothing to do but “quietly judge” his interviewer. The reporter makes it clear, through her courage and refined sense of journalistic integrity, that Mackey and his Seduce and Destroy workshop are less about actual power and more about fear.
The second scene is where Anderson works hard to, in the words of my editor, “remove the mask from Mackey.” Frank is finally given the opportunity to see his father (Jason Robards) as he dies in his bed. Frank’s father, Earl, is under the care of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s compassionate hospice nurse, Phil, who searched until he could contact Frank. Frank now sits at his father’s bedside angrily calling him a “cocksucker” and a “prick” and telling him how much he hates him for all of the hurt that the old man has caused him. Then, he breaks down and sobs. It is one of the greatest on screen sobs we have. It is painful and beautiful. We watch Tom Cruise, in one of his finest hours of acting, desperately melt down next to the man he has tried so hard to hate. He cries, “Don’t go away you fucking asshole! Don’t go away!”
As a hospice care specialist, I can say with certainty, that this scene is not an over-the-top exaggeration on the part of Cruise. I have watched men, young white men in particular, break down by the bedside of their dying father and curse them out as they tell them how much they love them. What this scene does, however, is remind us that Frank Mackey has been deeply hurt and traumatized by his father. He is a tender, frightened human being whose shell hardened when any shred of power he had was taken away from him by his abusive, neglectful father. The question we are forced to ask of ourselves, as progressives and conservatives alike is, is Trump’s behavior indicative of deeper hurt and trauma?
Tom Cruise’s performance as Frank TJ Mackey makes me wonder: What is it that makes Donald J. Trump cry? What pricks his heart? Sure, it’s important to humanize characters like Mackey and presidents like Trump, if only to protect us from pure hatred and soul-eating resentment. But it is also important to recognize that men like Mackey and men like Trump should not be voted into positions of power. Make no mistake, Cruise’s performance in Magnolia is a warning. May we all heed it.
Joey Armstrong is a hospital chaplain from Western New York. He is also a playwright and amateur cartoonist. Follow him on Twitter @chaplainmystic and Medium, where he writes more reviews for film and television.
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