Review of Disclosure (1994) by Anthony P — 29 Jul 2018
No doubt the double-edged fantasy of red pill, men's rights activists, this is a movie that thinks it's being edgy and clever in flipping the sexual harassment script, but ends up simply exposing its own misogyny and reproducing everyday sexism without critiquing it.
It's the typical mother/whore paradigm constitutive of the male gaze: On the one hand is Goodall, playing Douglas' unerringly supportive wife, while on the other is Moore as a self-described "sexually aggressive woman," threat to masculine power both subjectively and institutionally, who must be put back in her place.
Hence the (male) viewer gets to see Moore in an intensely erotic, provocative, exposed position, and then watches her get punished for our pleasure, existing as nothing more than an object for a man's benefit throughout, a profoundly perverse structure wherein the male audience, identifying with Douglas, gets to both enjoy Moore's sultry femme fatale, and then disavow the act (and her power).
The result is an extremely regressive movie that treats the very real problem of sexual harassment as a man's issue, undermining actual victims and validating existing power structures.
This review of Disclosure (1994) was written by Anthony P on 29 Jul 2018.
Disclosure has generally received mixed reviews.
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