Riverrun Film Festival [3] Rubber Review: A Call For Media Literacy

(I'm tired so this will be quick)

Director: Quentin Dupieux

If you told someone what Rubber was about you would probably tell them that it is a movie about a tire that goes on a rampage and kills people. Yeah, seriously. But that really isn't it. It's a movie about movies. It's a movie about how audiences connect with movies.

In addiction to this lunatic tire there is a crowd in this movie that have binoculars and watch everything that the tire does. Their reactions to the tire, mirror the reactions the audience had. I thought that was very smooth. Though at the end of the film we see tires looking a the Hollywood sign and that was probably the least smooth thing this film did. It was like "yeah I get it your cool and experimental. you are going to take down the establishment with your weird movie."

This movie is pretty cool for people like me who over think movies. For example. While watching this film and seeing the tire go on his killing spree I thought to myself, "He [as in the tire] is going to have to kill her." Why would I think about this tire as male and a white male.Well weird film geeks like me have this term called The Male Gaze.

The Male Gaze says that in films the audience is forced to look at a film from a male perspective. Now I believe the gaze is white and male. So anyway after a while of watching movies you can start to see things from this perspective.

So as soon as I realized I was doing this, we see the tire looking a woman in a shower. So, yeah, it's possible the tire is a lesbian but that is enough to confirm that the tire is male. Then the movie cuts to the audience watching the tire. Two white guys say to each other "I've never identified with a tire before." Then a white girl in the back ground basically tells them to shut up.  This exchange leads me to believe that the person who made the film is cognizant of the male gaze and what that means.

I find this film completely intriguing, it's definitely something you should watch once. My only issue is that it's entirely too long at the beginning.

If you are interested here is the first 5 minutes