Subtle Sexuality and Quiet Female Rage in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Jerry J. Sampson

Mandy Lane is hot, but she doesn’t know it. Mandy Lane is sexy, but in an accessible way. Mandy Lane has curves that beg to be ogled. Mandy Lane might tell you no, but she’ll probably change her mind if you ask her enough.

At first glance, it seems like Jonathan Levine’s All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) doesn’t realize the clichés it indulges in. As Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) walks in slow-motion down a crowded high school hallway, boys and girls alike can’t take their eyes off her. Mandy feels the the attention but doesn’t yield to it, almost shy to the adoration, like a girl who doesn’t yet realize the power she holds over others.

Mandy’s introduction is one that most female writers crusade to criticize on Twitter. It’s the sort of character description that could only be written by a man, perpetrator of the male gaze. The male gaze most often serves to empower men, as they perceive the object of their attention to be at the mercy of their wants and needs. It is apparent that Mandy has “blossomed” since her classmates last saw her, and while the formula feels dated, as the popular boys each vie to impress her, Mandy doesn’t appear to indulge in their pursuit. Instead, she sticks to the comfort of Emmett (Michael Welch), a childhood friend who exhibits all the telltale signs of a wayward dysfunctional youth. But despite her friend’s outcast status, Mandy sticks with Emmett, insisting he attend a party she’s been invited to, a choice which ultimately leads to the tragic death of popular boy Dylan and the further alienation of Emmett from the rest of the kids.

Nine months after the tragedy, it appears that Mandy has turned her back on Emmett in favor of popular kids Chloe (Whitney Able), Bird (Edwin Hodge), Red (Aaron Himelstein), Jake (Luke Grimes), and Marlin (Melissa Price). She is invited to Red’s family house in the country and agrees to go, enduring but not indulging in the constant jokes about her virginity and how she has her pick of the guys, despite showing no active interest in anyone. The night before her trip, Mandy is viewed through an open window by an unknown figure. His breath is shallow and catches as he watches Mandy take off her top. This is the first intentional act of voyeurism within the plot, but in the moments leading up to this, the camera fixates on Mandy in an equally leering style.

Take a scene that shows Mandy running track. When we are with her, she is gasping for air, uncaring of how she looks as she runs, merely doing what she is there to do. But from every other angle, the sun shines softly through the clouds to illuminate her body, her curves, the bounce of her breasts, and those around watch with wet, wanting eyes, all but eliminating the likelihood of anyone engaging in a non-sexual way with the girl. Mandy is an object, whether she knows it, or wants it, or not.

The male gaze and violence in the slasher

As addressed in Laura Mulvey’s 1973 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” while scopophilia (the love of looking) is inherent to all sexes and is largely what fuels the love of cinema and the visual spectacle that filmgoers expect, it is the tendency to objectify and sexualize that which one looks upon that becomes dangerous, specifically to women. This has been a common theme in the horror genre, with films like Maniac (William Lustig, 1980) making the audience see from the killer’s point of view. The viewers become voyeurs alongside Frank Zito. As he observes women, his future victims, the viewer understands his desire. As he begins to hate that desire, however, instead of turning his hatred inward, the shame he feels is projected onto the women, the objects of his desire. This dynamic is very prevalent in the slasher genre, where there is customarily a “Final Girl,” defined by Carol Clover in her seminal 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, as the last girl standing, the one who fights and defeat the bad guy, maybe bloody and beat, but ultimately the victor. Most other women in the films, though, are the objects of the predatory gaze before being dispatched with a phallic weapon. Jason’s machete protruding from him, penetrating flesh with an unstoppable power, Michael’s oversized butcher knife, Leatherface’s chainsaw, these weapons signify the mighty phallus, the appendage that men value most, and the extension of justice toward sexually active, rowdy, independent, sassy women.

This isn’t to say that men don’t meet similar painful deaths in horror, but there is a recognizable difference. In Halloween, Bob’s post-coital demise consists of being impaled on the wall fully clothed, but Lynda’s fate, strangled with a telephone cord with her breasts fully exposed, is much more visceral. Like most of Michael’s kills, the deaths of his female victims feel personal and much meaner, and as the audience, our point of view is controlled in these moments, just as during the moments the camera appears to be taking Michael’s point of view: the visceral nature of this gaze is both stimulating and terrifying.

There are many cases of extreme scopophilia in horror (especially the slasher), where the mere pleasure of looking becomes unbearable and leads to violence. Film has long been an outlet for men to fulfill fantasy and deny reality. Even in genres outside of horror, the female body is something that men “deserve” to attain. There is also a pervasive pattern of subtle sexuality, wherein a woman or girl moves through her life in a manner that leads those around her to believe that her intention is to sexually arouse others without performing any sexual acts or acting in an outright sexual way. This does not happen, though, with many Final Girls in the slasher subgenre, as most of those girls are asexual. Without knowing the rules of the slasher, and pre-dating such meta works as Scream, the lead female character avoids, is afraid of, or can’t attain sexual gratification. She will wear modest clothes, she avoids drinking and drugs, and is often a virgin, a detail that is mentioned at some point before the stalk-and-slashing starts. These are the rules that must be adhered to for early Final Girls to survive.

Looking at Mandy Lane

In All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, it isn’t one threatening man who objectifies Mandy, it’s everyone she knows; it’s us as the audience, forced to objectify her by the filmmakers and script. After all, we don’t know much about Mandy other than her parents’ death, so we can’t know her feelings, her wants, or her goals. We only know what we see. As objectification often goes hand in hand with desire, the scenario within the movie quickly turns to pressure, resentment, and ultimately a sense of entitlement, as many of the teen boys represented are quick to blame Mandy for their lust. The only person who seems void of this character flaw is farmhand, Garth (Anson Mount), whose apparent indifference to Mandy fuels her interest. He talks to her like a person, looks into her eyes, even avoids her advances, proving his worthiness of her attention.

As the teens begin drinking and partying, Bird, Red, and Jake continue their incessant questioning and harassment, insisting that Mandy choose one of them, asking when she’s planning on giving up her “cherry,” and coercing her into situations that could potentially net the result they’re looking for. Mandy’s irritation in these moments grows. She does not sit quietly by but stands up for herself by either actively refusing the harassment or passively manipulating the boys against each other. As we spend more time in this space with her, it becomes clear that Mandy may not be as innocent and naive as we are meant to believe. She has a biting wit and begins to actively reject the advances of others while engaging in flirtatious banter with Chloe. She drinks, huffs whip-its, smokes pot, dances, loses herself for the briefest moment in the company of those she may begin to consider friends.

The thing about Mandy is, for as tired as she seems to be of the constant remarks and lechery, she doesn’t walk around in a turtleneck and prairie skirts like a self-righteous schoolgirl. In fact, Mandy has a subtlety that some would likely insist signifies her actual enjoyment of being looked at. The problem is, she’s never given control. There’s nothing to say that women don’t find certain attention flattering, it’s when a woman is denied control of that attention, or control of her response toward it, that it mutates into something darker. As Mandy begins to lighten up around the group and warm up to the attention she gets from Bird, we are quickly met with a sobering scene that finds her alone on one couch while the three boys sit across from her, staring, practically drooling. She is upset, likely because the brief moment she was treated like a person became yet another spectator sport, another moment of objectification.

Near this point the situation escalates, morphing into the expected slasher formula, as a hooded killer begins brutalizing the teens and murdering them one by one. The audience quickly learns that Emmett is the killer, and while fighting with Bird, he asks about Mandy, insinuating that he may be carrying out his violent revenge on those who have taken her away from him. He is a whiny, disorganized, vicious killer, whose means of dispatching Marlin includes prying her mouth open and breaking her jaw with the shotgun he carries while calling her a “slut.”

This scene encapsulates the role of female characters in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Chloe and Marlin are oversexualized, catty, and spend most of their time fighting over Jake while seemingly only ever talking about blow jobs, penis sizes, and how fat the other is. Next to them, Mandy seems angelic, fitting into the representation of the Madonna next to the Whores.

Mandy Lane takes the gaze – and the knife

Eventually, Red, Chloe, Mandy, and Garth are the only ones alive, with Garth suffering a gunshot wound that sends Mandy into a caretaker role. She encourages Chloe and Red to get help while she stays with Garth, and the two leave, Chloe barefoot and wearing skimpy lingerie while Red, of course, is fully dressed. Emmett attacks them on the road, shooting Red to death while Chloe runs for her life back to the house where Mandy stands, arms stretched open, yelling for Chloe to hurry. Chloe bolts straight into her open arms, impaling herself on the knife Mandy produces at the last second.

The camera circles in a manic unveiling as Mandy sweetly strokes Chloe’s hair, thrusting the knife deeper into her belly, disemboweling her before letting her drop to the ground. As we realize the truth about Mandy, her beautiful face seems to glow, she looks different, less doe-eyed, more exacting. And then Emmett is there, revealing to us that the two had planned the whole ordeal together.

The beauty of a reveal such as this is that everything leading up to it becomes clearer. Mandy’s angelic look and feigned humility worked to cloak her true nature. Her body was her weapon, her innocence was her tool. This very fact turns the formula on its head, as she is no longer the Final Girl, but the perpetrator; no longer the prey, she has become the predator. And this carries on, while she and Emmett prepare their agreed upon murder-suicide, as Mandy leans in, whispering something we can’t hear into his ear before kissing him softly on the lips. “That’s why you did all of this, isn’t it?” she mutters, before breaking his heart by dropping the poison pills and saying, “You should never do anything for me.”

And again, Mandy defies expectations. Her anger at her objectification has seeped into every aspect of the film. Emmett viewed her as everyone else did and she knew it. She had manipulated him, stringing him along, even as they fight, and he screams while pinning her down, “I did everything right, why can’t you love me?” The statement rings of generic ‘nice guy’ behavior, wherein a man assumes that his kindness alone should merit him the woman he desires. Emmett, though Mandy’s long-time friend, did everything for his own selfish purposes; he was the peeping tom staring at her through the window at night, another pathetic man desperate for a glimpse of the real Mandy Lane.

Upon Emmett’s death, Mandy helps Garth into a jeep and drives away from the scene of the crime. Garth gazes upon her, giving her the only attention she actually wants, saying incredulously, “You saved us.” And for once, we feel that Mandy has found someone who will see her for who she is, notwithstanding the murderous impulses, but as someone more than a beautiful face and body, a strong woman who can achieve anything she puts her mind to.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, despite what initially seems like a lack of awareness, created in Mandy Lane a female villain who has elevated herself above the basic slasher killer. She manipulated Emmett into killing for her, carrying out the sort of physically demanding work that she couldn’t, or simply didn’t want to do, all while reaping the desired benefits and watching those who dared to objectify her meet an excruciating end. And, not unlike other slasher villains, Mandy doesn’t have to stop and monologue her motivations. No one asks Michael why he stabs, nor Jason why he machetes. Mandy is who she is, maybe she’ll carry on killing, or maybe her bloodlust has been sated and she and Garth will live happily ever after. Either way, as the camera gives us one last long look at her, we see Mandy in a new light, a blood-soaked, ruthless light, and we may think twice about how we perceive other young women, because there’s no telling what savagery may lie behind pretty green eyes.

 

Works Cited

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Directed by Jonathan Levine, Occupant Entertainment, 2006.

Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. British Film Institute, 1996.

Halloween. Directed by John Carpenter, Falcon Films, 1978.

Maniac. Directed by William Lustig, Magnum Motion Pictures Inc., 1980.

Mulvey, L. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, 1975, pp. 6–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6.

Scream. Directed by Wes Craven, Miramax Films, 1996.