The Stone Cold Fox of a Generation
The summer of 2007 was all about Michael Bay’s raucous and juvenile epic, Transformers. A live-action adaptation of the toys turned cartoon, and a treasured mainstay of my childhood. Though the movie seemed more concerned with the humans than the robots and bizarrely obsessed with the wrong human in the movie.
Transformers and the ensuing franchise would follow the exploits of Sam Witwicky played by Shia LaBeouf, in the world’s most obnoxious Jerry Lewis impersonation. Sam Witwicky was a part of the cartoon and was someone absolutely no one who watched the show gave two wet farts about.
However, his co-star was the svelte, sultry, charisma-laden, natural bimbo Megan Fox, who played Mikaela Banes. Fox oozed sex like most people breathe air, with an effortlessness that bordered on dark alchemy.
A few months ago, LaBeouf lamented his role in the Transformers movies. “You come up on these stories, Easy Rider, Raging Bull, and DeNiro, and Scorsese, and you find value in what they do. Meanwhile, you’re chasing energon crystals.” He called the films irrelevant, and honestly, when talking about the films and LeBeouf, they are.
However, in regard to Megan Fox, Transformers is foundational. Megan Fox is, simply put, sex on fire. A woman who commands every moment she’s on screen and whose mere presence draws every eye in the audience. No mean feat when her competition is a cadre of towering fantastical robots brought to life by a horde of VFX workers and Bay’s hyperactive camera and seizure-inducing editing style. Yet, amidst all the machismo, what stands the test of time, what stands above the ludicrous plot so convoluted the brain instantly memory-holes the details to function, is Fox.
I’m not going to go into how Fox’s Mikaela should have been the main character of the films. That’s obvious. But can you imagine the Transformers films with Fox’s Mikaela as the lead and not the spastic-once and future boy-king wannabe? Forget the simple bonus of having more Megan Fox being filmed by Bay’s obsessive acrobatic camera. Think about how centering Fox would have allowed the films to have an even larger and likely sturdier cultural impact.
The latter is self-evident, as the only thing anyone remembers fondly about those movies, besides Peter Cullen’s soothing baritone rippling through our bodies thanks to the IMAX speakers, is Fox. The lore pales in comparison to the way Fox used the white-hot heat of her sexuality to sear herself into the public consciousness.
Yet, like so many stone-cold foxes, Fox is more than her looks. For if all she was merely a pretty face, she would not still be around. Indeed, Bay’s quintessential flaw, was that he was so busy objectifying Fox, he couldn’t see the movie star right in front of him. A lesson he learned the hard way when he tried to replace her with a blonde clone and discovered that you can’t replicate Megan Fox. She is singular, a rarity in the business, the genuine article.
I’d argue that what made Fox such a cultural touchstone of babe-hood was that she refused to let herself be merely objectified. At least not in the sense so many women are. For Megan Fox, the gaze was a two-way street.
The infamous scene from the first Transformers movie is a perfect example. The scene where Bay and his cameraman, Mitchell Amundsen, frame Fox as fantasy incarnate. Bay and Amundsen activated an entire generation of young men and women. Everything about the scene is a textbook example of what arguments about objectification often overlook: the subject. For if you were to put any other actor in that scene would simply be Bay leering. To an extent, that’s fine, part of cinema is looking.
But with Fox, and the thing that sets her apart from the clones Bay would attempt to replace her with in the later films, it isn’t simply being looked at. It’s that, in a way, she’s looking back. Megan Fox is comfortable with being gazed at, but she does so with a coy smirk and a twinkle in her eye. She’s not the object; she’s a partner in the gaze.
In other words, she’s far from passive. Fox’s sly embrace of the gaze is what keeps the scene of her bending over the car hood from being simple objectification. It certainly was Bay’s attempt, but Fox’s sheer force of personality refuses to submit to Bay’s camera.
If you saw the scene in theaters, sitting there in the dark, looking up at a larger-than-life Megan Fox, her lean body glimmering with a sheen of sweat, backlit by the golden hues of the magic hour, you felt something stir. But the stirring wasn’t simply because she seems built by the Gods themselves, but because there is a moment where she looks at the camera, and for a brief moment, everyone in the audience experienced what Pygmalion the sculptor must have felt when his ivory sculpture came to life. You felt awe.
Unlike an ivory sculpture, Fox never feels cold and distant. Au contraire, Fox is a red-hot dame, all soft flesh and hot-blooded. The reason why Bay could never replace Fox was that Fox was, to use an oft-overused phrase, a generational hottie. Unlike so many actors, she rarely appears flat on the screen. Instead, Fox often feels like a 3D effect, popping off the screen, standing toe-to-toe with Bay-splosions and sauntering out of the flames, ready for more.
The best special effect in all of the Transformers movies is Megan Fox.
Megan Fox is the epitome of BTE. Granted, now she actually has big tits, which in a just society would make her the biggest star in Hollywood. Alas, Hollywood is filled with cowards who have trouble picturing women bigger than a C-cup as anything other than set dressing. I’m a little nonplussed by how so many people, mostly men, seem to think her younger self represents her prime.
Much of this is partly due to typical agism, but a lot of it is also due to the way we treat women who choose plastic surgery. It’s as if the culture suffers from a glorified Madonna/Whore complex where all natural women are pure, and women with implants, lip fillers, and other surgical enhancements are beneath contempt.
Except, Fox is even hotter now! You wouldn’t think you could improve upon perfection, but boy-howdy, Megan Fox found a way. Yet, everything that makes Fox a simmering bombshell is still there, if a little magnified. But the essence is still the same. Except, now she has a hefty set of milkers, thank God. But Megan Fox hasn’t changed. The innate Fox-ness of Megan Fox has only grown stronger.
Mercurial, inquisitive, and a little bit deranged, Megan Fox cannot be toned down. What’s more, she refuses any attempt to dilute her bimbo-nature. By bimbo, I mean, of course, her predilection to expressing her femininity, with explosive ferocity. Many would say she exemplifies the heterosexual ideal, yet many a young girl also fostered a feverish crush on Fox.
Look, I'm not a lesbian; I just think that all humans are born with the ability to be attracted to both sexes. I mean, I could see myself in a relationship with a girl. Olivia Wilde is so sexy, she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands. She's mesmerizing.
She’s not the male ideal; she is the uber-femme, turned up to eleven, and yet it never feels like anything other than her honest expression. It feels as if Megan is simply being herself. An act for which she is criticized and mocked online by men and women who mention crystals in their Twitter bios.
Megan Fox is an unapologetic bimbo. Unchained by pedestrian heteronormativity, Fox wallows in a tactile sensuality that emboldens her characters rather than shackles them. Fox uses her body as a tool to ply her craft both as an actor and when she models. Something Bay only gleamed, yet others like Karen Kusama were able to not only unearth but give Fox the runway to show the world that she is one of her generation’s premier talents.
At the same time, she refuses to be defined merely by her body. A published poet, Fox is unafraid of being vulnerable and brutally honest. Fox shows that being a bimbo is one defining trait, not THE defining trait.
Megan Fox. The woman who went to her surgeon and said, “Give me 90s stripper titties” and didn’t care what it meant to her career. Nor did she do it for anyone but herself. Megan Fox. She can play a succubus, a malfunctioning robot, a badass, and just a girl having to play falling for Shia LaBeouf. Megan Fox. Talk about talent!
Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures
