In 1988, two films about brothers appeared in theaters across America: one dealt with a greedy, self-involved man who, through the magic of a wild and sometimes tumultuous road trip across the U.S., forges a bond with his autistic savant older brother; the other depicts the unsettling relationship between twin gynecologists and their love triangle, of sorts, with a famous actress/functioning pill popper. The former was more of a popcorn variety movie, not without its merits, to be sure, but a narrative where even the most difficult questions have easy answers and everything is pretty much a-okay by the denouement; the latter, however, was a harrowing tragedy tackling delicate questions of human nature with few laughs and absolutely no easy answers.
You can probably guess which picture became a critical darling, a box office smash, and, ultimately, the Best Picture winner at the 1989 Academy Awards.
Had these two films—Rain Man and Dead Ringers, respectively—appeared in theaters in 2017, one might be inclined to insist the latter received top honors, given last year’s surprise winner Moonlight, which tackled not only race in America, but also homosexuality, and the struggle for identity against one’s station in life. This thoughtful, beautiful piece beat out the expected, crowd-pleasing winner La La Land—an overall well-done example of pure escapism, a simple, bittersweet love story set to music with objectively little conflict. But without being preachy or overwrought (looking at you, 2004’s Crash), Moonlight managed to have its metaphorical finger on the pulse of America at the time of its release, with gay rights and #BlackLivesMatter at the forefront of our collective consciousness. In this way, it was indeed the Best Picture of 2016, which makes its win all the more unprecedented, given that in dark, uncertain times, the feel-good spectacles usually take home the golden statue (one has only to examine each year’s Best Picture and compare it to the political climate at the time to see this connection).
1988 was no exception. America at large might seem, upon reflection, to be in a rather good place near the end of the decade, with a popular (ostensibly speaking) president, Ronald Reagan, who sat in office during a period when unemployment rates where at a record low, a key facet in the larger “Great Expansion,” a prosperity boom that, in 1990, was the “greatest, consistent burst of economic activity ever seen in the U.S.,” according to a New York Times article by Martin Anderson (also a Reagan advisor).
But things were not so sparkly for numerous groups of people at the time. The AIDS epidemic continued to claim the lives of gay men on a daily basis, giving the ongoing homosexual civil rights movement a morbid boost, considering the extreme backlash of increased homophobia from the “straight community” over what was pejoratively considered a “gay disease.” Feminism was in the throes of a backlash, with negative portraits painted mostly by Reagan-era “pro-family” policies and leanings, as well as a tendency toward depictions of “evil women” out to destroy typical nuclear family constructs (Fatal Attraction), or positive, male-scripted and produced “girl power” narratives that, despite their best intentions, still divided and reduced women into binaries of good and evil, virgin and whore (Working Girl, which featured a strong female lead rising to the level of her male corporate counterparts, but which, at the end of the day, was little more than a love story that lionized “fairer of the species” behavior and punished feminine “shrewdness”). (Also note that while Working Girl, with all its flaws, received numerous Academy nominations, it still lost to the male-driven Rain Man that year.)
Lastly, and largely due to a reaction against both gay and women’s rights movements, as well as the “pro-family” (read: pro-patriarchy) leanings of Reagan and his administration, there was a (re)emerging men’s movement that would, down the line, help coin and later popularize the term “toxic masculinity.” Writer Susan J. Douglas, in an In These Times article, defines toxic masculinity as “a version of manhood predicated on stoicism, domination of others, sexual aggressiveness, violence and misogyny.” In his piece for the New York Magazine feature Beta Male on poet Robert Bly’s “drum thumping men’s movement of the ’90s.” Christian Lorentzen traces the history of these pro-masculine “uprisings” and helps further define toxic masculinity:
Closer to home, for Bly, was ”50s man,’ who was ‘supposed to like football, be aggressive, stick up for the United States, never cry, and always provide’ This led, Bly wrote, to Vietnam, Reagan’s ’80s meddling in El Salvador, and callousness toward the poor and the elderly.
This view of the strong American male was satirized, in the late 80s, in the form of Homer Simpson on The Simpsons and Alex Cox’s characterization of William Walker in his film Walker, but it was also reinforced in numerous films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (ironically a native Austrian), namely Commando and Predator; in the deeply patriotic Missing in Action, starring Chuck Norris; the aforementioned Fatal Attraction, in the form of Michael Douglas’s “vagina-menaced” character; the return of Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty” Harry Callahan in The Dead Pool; the gritty machismo of Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness and Sean Connery’s Jim Malone in The Untouchables, and even in Rain Man, where Tom Cruise’s character Charlie Babbitt must soften some of his bombastic, greedy, and shallow behavior, but not by much, while his brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) learns to dress in swanky suits, how to gamble, how to dance with pretty ladies (and how to kiss them to, a “gift” from Charlie’s girlfriend, played by Valerie Golino), and in general how to be just a little bit “less autistic.”
In this way, and so many others, Dead Ringers serves as Rain Man’s exact opposite—its “evil twin,” if you will. It tackles, head-on, all the hot-button issues mentioned above: questions of masculinity and its relationship to homophobia, and feminism. The film was scripted by director David Cronenberg and Norman Snider, and loosely based on the novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, which in turn was also loosely based on the true story of Stewart and Cyril Marcus, identical twin gynecologists who met with a disastrous end. Jeremy Irons spectacularly plays the fictionalized versions of both men, here renamed Elliot and Beverly Mantle, who operate a thriving gynecological private practice in Toronto. The brothers abuse their physical indecipherability by unnervingly sharing women as if they were pairs of pants or shirts, never revealing to these “sexual conquests” that they are, in fact, sleeping with two men instead of just one. This all changes when Elliot and Beverly begin dating Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold), a successful actress and functioning drug addict; Beverly develops feelings for this woman and no longer wants to share her with Elliot, causing the already existent rifts between the brothers to widen, leading to shocking and uncomfortable horrors.
As a means of examining the dangers of toxic masculinity, the brothers are depicted as two halves of the same person: the dashing, extroverted, and aggressive Elliot serves as a poster boy for the stoic and macho ’80s man described above, while the shy, reserved, and sensitive Beverly is more stereotypically feminine. Elliot mockingly refers to Beverly as his “baby brother” and is quick to point out he is slightly taller. This desire to dominate his “inferior” half is classic “alpha” behavior on the part of Elliot. Beverly endures his brother’s abuse, slipping right into the role of “beta,” though his displeasure at Elliot’s condescension does not go unnoticed. Beverly’s issues with this treatment manifest most noticeably in his expressions of homophobia, seen first when he displays extreme discomfort at the idea of treating a woman’s husband to solve their conception problems (i.e., getting up close and personal with a man’s genitalia), and later when he verbally attacks Claire after she jokes about his “girl’s name.”
The ramifications of this toxically masculine power dynamic come to a head when Claire discovers that she has been unwittingly sleeping with both Beverly and Elliot, resulting in her terminating all contact with the former. This naturally breaks Beverly’s heart, but it also forces him (and, subsequently, the audience) to acknowledge that, while never outright stated as such in the film, he and his brother have been committing sexual assault. Even the caring and compassionate, “feminine” brother could not see this basic truth, at least at first: he and his brother had always shared everything—”things…people, experiences,” as he puts it. The consent of their sexual partners never actually occurred to him, especially since, as Elliot later and aptly puts it, the brothers are “perceived as one person” anyway.
The above plot points transpire over the first half of the film, and while it does highlight the detrimental consequences of toxic masculinity, what’s discussed above barely scratches the surface of what is arguably Cronenberg’s masterpiece. Albeit brief, it does give one an idea of the sociological examinations expertly woven into the film as a whole; there is sadly not enough time in an essay of this length to talk about it all.
However, it should be clear at this point that Dead Ringers very much had America’s number at the time of its release (and many ways, still does). But 1988 was not the time of Moonlight; it was the time of La La Land, and while Cronenberg’s film swept the Genie Awards (the Canadian equivalent of the Oscars) it received no nominations whatsoever from either the Golden Globes or the Academy Awards—not even for Irons or Bujold’s stellar performances. Apart from the fact it is technically a horror film (albeit a rather tame one, where blood and guts are concerned, especially in contrast to Cronenberg’s previous film, The Fly), a genre historically ignored by critics and prestigious awards ceremonies, the ultimate reason for Dead Ringer’s snubbing should be apparent: people just didn’t want to hear the truth.
And if this film’s absence even from the roster of nominees isn’t proof of that, consider the actual Best Picture nominees that lost to Rain Man at the Oscars that year: The Accidental Tourist, a quiet, contemplative film tackling American male stoicism (though nowhere near as head-on as Dead Ringers does); the aforementioned Working Girl, a flawed film about a woman struggling against systemic sexism; Mississippi Burning, an account of systemic racism in the American South; and Dangerous Liaisons, a period parable about the dangers of sexual power dynamics, systemic sexism, and masculinity versus sensitivity.
Truth and hot-button issues were the furthest things from Academy voters’ minds in 1989.
With Oscar nominations for this year just announced, films like I, Tonya, Get Out, The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri—which deal with sexism, racism, toxic masculinity, homophobia, and rape culture, respectively—have all received one if not several nominations (including Best Picture, save for I, Tonya, which only received acting nods for Margot Robbie and Allison Janney). There are other, less “hot-button” focused films on the roster—among them, Lady Bird and Dunkirk—so unless one of these films ends up sweeping the night, it’s safe to assume we won’t have another Rain Man on our hands. After all, this is the era of Moonlight, not La La Land. But, as the saying goes, only time will tell.
