Review of Top Gun (1955) by Jake C — 15 Sep 2018

More aptly titled "Cruising the Skies"-or, a la Hendrix, "Cruise Me While I Kiss The Sky"-the two most remarkable things about the movie are its definitive 80s soundtrack and its utterly baffling fanbase.

The former, of course, has plenty of time to standout, the screenplay being so thinly sketched, while the latter I think is best explained by the homosocial/heteronormative dialectic of toxic masculinity, fully on display here.

Time and again the film bribes its audience with teases of repressed, prohibited enjoyment, letting viewers gaze at sweaty shirtless hunks spitting innuendos and constantly wrangling to be on top, yet only for so long before the film must structurally reassert traditional masculinity through the figure of the surrogate, avuncular father, denying Maverick his Goose, his closest male companion, to instead return him to normal heterosexuality with an especially feminine woman wearing bright red lipstick, heels, and stockings.