Disclosure.
Disclosure is the first movie I remember questioning the monolithic “men are a bunch of b-stards†worldview which has been propagated by our media, our universities, and society as a whole since our institutions have been contaminated by the radicals of the 1960s. It also marked the first time that email was an intrinsic part of a storyline or that it was even used in film. Back in 1994, it must have appeared twice as cold and impersonal as it does today.
The story’s theme is foreshadowed by the words of a “surplused†or laid-off older worker in the very beginning. Michael Douglas knows him from their joint commutes upon a Seattle ferry. He warns that “we used to have fun with girls, now they want our jobs.†Soon after, we are introduced to Demi Moore’s character, whose desire is exactly that. She alludes to the future when she sees Douglas waiting for the elevator and asks, “Going down?†He certainly is.
The real landscape of Disclosure is not Seattle or the corporate world; the action takes place within society’s battle of the sexes, a battle that never should have never been faught at all. There is no reason why relations between the sexes has to be cut-throat or adversarial. We were made to be complementary to another and that is how our interactions should have remained, yet the western world allowed some of the worst arguments about human behavior ever blathered to be accepted as the truth.
Our courts, legislators, academics, and even Presidents have given recognition to bogus concepts like “the patriarchy†and that heterosexual intercourse demeans women. In fact, sex often achieves the exactly opposite result. It turns women into mothers who then perpetuate our species. The rise of womyns’ studies programs and the legitimacy given to the hysterical denunciation of 49 percent of the population illustrates well the old saying that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and that is precisely what the mass of men have done in regards to radical feminism. Instead of standing up for themselves and their brothers, they extended chivalry to those who were women in name only, and had no investment in the lives the majority of the earth’s women live. To supine before those who desire your destruction is suicide, and the exploitation of men like the one played by Michael Douglas here will occur again and again until the ominous hate-spewed cloud of radical feminism is blown from our shores.
God bless you, Michael Crichton and Barry Levinson for calling attention to this heinous state of affairs at such an early date.
