On Conquering “Targets”
In the movie Top Gun (1986)— one of the most beloved blockbusters of the 80s — hot shot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) falls for one of his instructors — Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood (Kelly McGillis). The night when he first meets her, he walks into a bar in his navy uniform, surveys the premises, pulls up his pants, and turns to his friend Goose: “This is what I call a target rich environment.” One of the “targets” in the bar is Charlie.
But Charlie is not an “average” target. She is tall, blonde, attractive, and, crucially, smart. In fact, she has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, Top Secret clearance from the U.S. government, and works as an instructor at the top naval academy in the U.S. Be that as it may, Charlie’s authority is repeatedly undermined throughout the film. The most notable example, perhaps, is when Charlie rebukes Maverick — “What were you thinking?” — after the latter had made a series of reckless aerial maneuvers, only to be handed the “you don’t know what it’s like,” card: “You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead." The exchange wounds his ego and he storms off on his motorcycle with Charlie in pursuit to assure him that regardless of what she said in the room full of navy brass, she really believes that his flying is “genius.”
In her analysis of the film feminist scholar Tania Modleski writes:
Indeed, I argue that Charlie is raised so high (given an advanced degree in astrophysics) in order to make her conquest, her fall into the arms of Maverick, her admission that he is a “genius” at fiying so much greater.
I remembered Modleski’s words when I realized that I had been a conquest — an experience I have detailed in a separate Medium essay. When thinking back on why so much time and energy was expended to secure a conquest after I had made it clear that I did not want that, I realized that he saw me as not only physically attractive, but also smart, and that he wanted me as a conquest so that he could tell himself how smart he was. It was a narcissistic act of ego gratification; a game he staged for himself and in that game I was merely a prop. I got the sense that he thought I would not figure this out or, that if I did, I wouldn’t mind — that I would be a willing tribute on the alter of his ego. From my perspective, it was a dehumanizing experience.
“You were not just a conquest,” he offered when confronted about it. He seemed serious in believing that throwing a “not just” in there absolved him of responsibility for his behavior or of having to seriously think about it at all. His philosophy seemed to be: as long as I can put a “not just” in that sentence, I can go on treating women as targets to be conquered. Any consideration beyond this is overanalysis. Case closed.
I realized that he had not only behaved this way his entire life, but also — any changes in behavior that had resulted from run-ins with more “unruly” women had been cosmetic changes around the edges that preserved the core — treating women as conquests. This is also how at the age of 37 he ended up writing: “When it comes to women, my communication skills are piss poor, it’s something I’ve been trying to get better at since puberty.” To state what is likely obvious at this point: he hadn’t gotten better, because any “trying to get better” had been minimal, cosmetic changes around the edges, implemented with an eye on having more control while also avoiding the kind of deep-level transformation that would lead to relating to women as human beings rather than targets to be conquered. “Trying to get better” had meant superficial and hollow gestures like throwing a “not just” in the sentence: “You were not just a conquest.”
Yes, this is deeply manipulative and disingenuous, but part of the deception is him deceiving himself. If I were to guess, I’d venture that at least on some level he is aware that he is deceiving himself, but refuses to become conscious of it or address it because it all works out for him in the end. As long as he can tell the handful of women who protest having been treated as targets to be conquered that they were “not just” conquests, it is all legit. It works. For him.
Films like Top Gun resolve the tension of a man treating a woman as a conquest in a true Hollywood fashion: by having him fall in love in the end (Cruel Intentions (1999) is another example here). As in: It’s ok that he treated her like a target at the beginning, because he fell in love with her at the end. “True love” redeems him.
But what movies like Top Gun and Cruel Intentions leave out is: what happens when “love” doesn’t save the day? What if, Ryan Phillippe’s Sebastian Valmont had completed his plan to “conquer” Reese Witherspoon’s Annette Hargrove without falling for her, as he had presumably done many times before? Did those other women “deserve it,” because they were somehow not exceptional?
Herein is something that few movies will put front and center — and certainly none of those that become obscenely profitable blockbusters: that being made into a prop, a target, a conquest is a dehumanizing experience. Arguably, this would not be a “big deal” if sexual conquest was equally encoded as a signifier of success and prowess for all genders. But that’s not the world we live in. In the world we live in, sexual conquest — the treatment of a person as a target to be conquered — as a sign of success is still predominantly reserved for masculine identity and avidly safeguarded as such.
I know that Top Gun is a dearly-held film, occupying a prominent spot in the pantheon of American movie entertainment that is by now enshrined in a golden glow of nostalgia. But to the extent, to which you can also entertain a “what if” scenario, just think about it: WHAT IF Maverick hadn’t fallen in love with Charlie? What if she had remained another “target?”
