Gender and Sexuality in the "Dogs"

Media has always been a step short when it comes to the way it represents gender and sexuality.  Modern media is still struggling when it comes to the female presence.  Many movies fail to have any female characters, and when they do have a female on screen, they typically lack any plot crucial dialogue/monologue.  And in many cases, the female appearance is purely used in a sexual connotation in order to control the attention of the male audience and draw them into the media in question.  Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs is a perfect example of this; however, there maybe more to this example than what first meets the eye.

So this movie starts off with a scene introducing the eight important male characters while they converse about Madonna.  More specifically, they are talking about the meaning to her song Like a Virgin.  Essentially, the end of the conversation is Mr. Brown’s very sexual explanation or meaning to the song.  So right off the bat, you have eight men talking about a woman who’s having sex.  One would argue that Quentin Tarantino is using femininity and sex to draw in the male audience at the beginning of the movie.  In other words, Tarantino would be using the topic of sex to hook his male audience.  No matter how true that statement may be, I think Tarantino has a different meaning hiding in the dialogue.

When Tarantino writes a story, he tries his darnedest to make it as realistic as possible.  He wants his script to mirror the way he sees society, especially all of the bad society has to offer.  This is apparent with his dialogue the most.  Anyone who is familiar with Tarantino’s work would remember that his films are littered with F-bombs and N-bombs.  This is especially apparent with Reservoir Dogs.  He wanted to make these eight men as real and lifelike as they can be, and that includes having them talk how he thinks people talk.

Having that said I can now get onto my point.  I think Tarantino was writing in a way to reflect how sexual or feminine media affects the average everyday men.  He wasn’t trying to lure his audience in through sex, but rather, write about men who have already bought into questionably sexual media such as Madonna’s song Like a Virgin.  This scene is about eight “average” men who are having breakfast at a local diner.  One of them brings up Madonna’s new song, Like a Virgin, and begins to explain the meaning to the lyrics.  If you follow his explanation to the finish, you can conclude that the song is very sexual, instead of the man who is describing the song.  It is as if Tarantino demonstrating how media represents women or sexuality.  Even if the overwhelming majority of his film lacks any female presence, his goal is to accurately depict the realistic events of these male characters leading up to the Heist and to their tragic deaths.  In this scene of Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino writes about eight very real men having a very real conversation at a very real diner.