Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man is the queer romance no one ever would have ever asked for, yet we all needed.

The film begins with the protagonist, Hank, stranded on a deserted island and about to kill himself. We immediately know a few things about Hank. First, he's creative. It's one thing to scrawl "help me" on a drained juice box and send it out to sea (which he does), but it's quite another to build an entire ship with sails and a little ship's captain and send that out to sea (which he does, too). Second, we learn he's bored: the written pleas for help say as much. Third, we learn singing is important to him. As he hangs at the end of the noose, balanced precariously on an empty cooler, he is humming a song he can't remember the words to.

Enter Manny, very dead, very flatulent, very unexpected, and very much needed to keep Hank alive..

From here, we are taken on an interesting, introspective journey filled with comments from both Hank and Manny on the meaning of life, love, and happiness.

With the help of Manny, Hank makes it back to shore and begins trekking through the wilderness in search of "home." What home is seems difficult for Hank to qualify. It is much more experiential. When they find trash, that's good, that's bits of home lost in the woods. Hank frequently builds recreations of home for Manny, including cars, buses, and restaurants. Hank revels in the memory of home, appreciating the simple joy of sitting on the bus, listening to music, and looking at the window while the world passes by.

Here, you're likely thinking that this seems to be a love story only to normativity and indeed, it can fall into that trap. But it is also a critique of the home Hank ran away from in the first place.

Two things are going on in this film. First, Hank is repeatedly drawn towards home, as exemplified by a picture of a woman in a yellow dress he has on his phone. He believes himself to be in love with this woman, whose picture he has taken without her consent as she rode the bus one day. Yet, he also leads Manny to believe he is in love with her, which leads to our critique.

In order to demonstrate the woman, and teach Manny about society and home and how to love her, Hank begins dressing like her and acting like her as he guides Manny through the steps of interacting with her. Through this we find that Hank has internalized many of the messages of home: It's bad to wear feminized clothing when you aren't a woman, it's bad to be alone, it's bad to express bodily functions, bad to masturbate (while thinking of your mom), bad, bad, bad. Everything Hank explains about home is a study in sublimation. He suppresses his farts, his voice, and even his masturbation. We learn, for example, that the song he sings when he's "trying not to think" was once sung by his mother, who died when he was young. That's why he thinks of her when masturbating, you see, because she once mentioned that old folk tale about masturbating leading to an early death and how he could "catch up" to her if he tried hard (wink wink, nudge nudge). And that's why he can't masturbate, nor can he ever tell anyone why because thinking of your mom is a the worst offense!

But I digress: The point is, Hank and Manny fall in love.

It's an odd, queer, sideways-sort-of-love. The main romantic montage of the film depicts Hank and Manny creating more and more of society, eventually getting drunk, dancing, and nearly kissing before falling asleep (and we're treated to a view of Hank's face as he rolls over and faces away from Manny, internally panicking). The next day, they discuss. Manny feels there is now distance between them, although he clearly doesn't comprehend why. And there is great distance--which Hank denies. This small arc culminates in a kiss after Manny and Hank are plunged under water. Is the kiss for love? Oxygen? It's a bit of both, clearly, and the film revels in how muddled it all feels.

Finally, their stumbling takes them near society, and Hank panics. He means to stay in the woods with Manny forever, but a chance encounter with a bear injures him, while Manny learns to move again and hauls Hank into the backyard of the woman in the yellow dress.

Now we can feel the full weight of social pressure on Manny and Hank. It starts with Manny feeling his body is disgusting because of his magic-homing-penis (oh, did I forget to mention...?). He goes inert as the woman in the yellow dress comes outside, quite concerned over the tattered, bleeding man and the dead body in her backyard. She calls the police and Hank attempts to hide the fact that the picture on his phone is of her, but fails. He tries to hide from his father, and fails. He tries to hide who he is from a camera news crew, and fails. He tries to hide the creations he and Manny have built (weirdly behind her house), and fails. He finally gives up on hiding and hauls Manny back to the ocean to let him free, and succeeds.

With the approval of his father, Hank shares a fart and a few whispered words with Manny, who then jet-skis across the ocean into the unknown.

And the film ends.

It's as bizarre and lovely and interesting as you can imagine, and then some. The parts that were most interesting to me are the critiques of social pressure and norms, and the romance between Manny and Hank. As Gayle Rubin notes in "Thinking Sex," society structures and is structured by a "charmed circle" of sexuality. Some kinds of sexuality are charmed, and are privileged, like monogamous heterosexual married sex--best kind! Others are not charmed, and are excluded and othered, like gay polyamorous sadomasochistic sex. Within this charmed circle, what could be more queer than loving a dead man? 

The parts where the film veers into creepy territory are not, for me, the parts where Manny is a literal dead body, but rather the parts where Hank's crush on a woman he's never met are supposed to make us sympathize with him. It's pretty weird, especially because he's apparently been behind her house this entire time. Stalker with a crush is not cute, sorry.

Still, Hank is cute little bi-romantic babe with some serious queer potential.

Final rating: 8/10 rainbows.

 

Final thoughts: The heterosexual "love interest" he's never met is pretty clearly supposed to be another layer of critique about social expectations around love, but the film doesn't quite get beyond "creepy." Focus instead on all the ways Hank finds "home" in Manny.