The Horrifying Thing About A24’s Men Is How Much It Fails Women
When the trailer for Alex Garland’s Men aired, it felt promising. We see Harper (Jessie Buckley) on her solo vacation in Hertfordshire, England, exploring the idyllic countryside and expressing her newfound freedom after the death of her abusive husband. Yet with every flourish of independence, Harper is met with the ominous threat of men, standing in her garden, following her through the village, peeping through the letterbox. We hoped that the film, from A24, was about to articulate some of women’s embedded fears of men.
Although the trailer alluded to that constant hum of threat that we experience on a daily basis, the film fails to deliver. When things start getting hairy for Harper, she is on the phone to her friend, trying to tell her the address so she can come to her rescue. In classic horror movie fashion, the signal keeps cutting out so her friend can’t hear this vital information. It may be a small moment — and perhaps I should have suspended my disbelief and forgiven it — but it told me all I needed to know.
Garland fails to understand the realities of living as a woman. There are safety precautions that are ingrained in our way of life: the extra mile we walk to stay on the lit path, the phone calls we make while walking home. If I go to meet a Hinge date I tell my friends what bar I’m going to. They would definitely know the location of the Airbnb I was staying in while on vacation, alone. We implement these survival mechanisms because the threat of men is a constant — a knowledge that mars our everyday lives.
Men's location demonstrates how little Garland knows of our lived experience. It seems that the Hertfordshire countryside was chosen as its isolation appears more threatening. Harper is cut off from her support system by distance. In reality, most of our experiences of male-perpetuated harassment happen in cities: being groped on the subway, followed off the bus, or heckled on the street.
Harper’s choice to leave the city, to get away from the torment of men, is one I would make myself. My experiences of the city and the country could not be more different. My body feels like my own in the country, reserved for hiking up hills and jumping over stiles. No one objectifies me while traversing rocky lanes or holding the gate for them. The most ominous experiences of my country life have involved walking through cow fields during calving season. I’m sure threatening behaviors exist in the countryside. I’m not implying that misogyny disappears once you see leaving state signs, merely that the threat is not as invasive in the way it is in the city. But you wouldn’t reach that conclusion from watching Men.
