MOVIE REVIEW: Don Jon (2013)
The Brilliant (and Brutal) Way Don Jon Exposes
Patriarchy's Grip on Sex, Relationships, and Intimacy
It was the trailer below that got me to watch Don Jon for the first time a few years ago. I forget exactly how I came across it… it might have simply been because I’ve always rather enjoyed Joseph Gordon Levitt’s work over the years, dating back to 10 Things I Hate About You in 1999, so I might have been looking into what he’d been up to, and this so happens to be his directorial debut. I enjoyed it when I first watched it, and there was something about the way the character of Jon Martello was portrayed that kept it lurking in my mind as something to revisit. When I wanted to start exploring movies with interesting and thought-provoking portrayals of relationships, this was the first one I picked up.
WARNING: Plot spoilers for the entire film!
So, the setup for this movie is pretty simple on the whole: Jon is the big-shot alpha bro amongst his boys, who has life pretty well locked down at this point in his (presumably) 20s. He has a good job, a nice ride, a tidy apartment, loves his family, his church, and his friends, and has an active sex life. Oh, and he also watches an enormous amount of porn.
The Patriarchy Dream Boy
Jon is a textbook “patriarchy dream boy.” He rides around town road raging in his cool muscle car, he does all his Catholic father’s prayers and hail Marys while working out at the gym to upkeep the temple that is his bod, he goes to clubs with his bros where they rank women by hotness before selecting targets to prey on, and he has endless nights of such unsatisfying sex that it always results in him jerkin’ it to porn afterward. But what he’s performing isn’t just masculinity. It’s patriarchal masculinity.
So what’s the difference between masculinity and patriarchal masculinity, you might be asking? If so, I’m glad you did. I’ve switched over to the phrase “patriarchal masculinity” because “toxic masculinity” seems to be a confusing phrase for a lot of people, who mistake it as being anti-masculinity (it’s not, by the way), but they’re basically the same thing. Maleness, masculinity, and patriarchal masculinity are separated in this great article from Celeste Davis, who you can find here on Substack:
Maleness= being a male.
Masculinity= attributes, behaviors and roles regarded as characteristic of men or boys. Our current cultural iteration of masculinity includes strength, leadership, assertiveness, independence, courage.
Patriarchal Masculinity= the social pressure for men and boys to only perform behaviors, attitudes and roles considered masculine and to shun any behavior, attitude or role considered feminine. This pressure does not let up regardless of how many masculinity metrics you meet.
Note: I heavily recommend checking out the full article if you have a moment, because it’s one of the most clear-cut explanations of a serious issue our world is actively facing that I’ve ever seen. But I digress...
Jon’s friend group is also at the core of this patriarchal masculinity. The clearest example is in his relationship with a guy named Danny. Danny constantly challenges Jon’s status as the alpha male and it’s most often done in the form of “playful” ribbing, but whenever Danny steps too far or challenges Jon’s status too directly, the other guys shut him down by shadily reminding him about his height or other features that make him come across as “less” masculine or “naturally inferior” as a male. There is little expression of care for each other’s emotional state in general and none when they’re woman-hunting.
In fact, there is little to no emotional connection expressed anywhere in Jon’s life. His dad is an even more patriarchally stereotypical “New Jersey dad” who screams at the football matches on TV, ignores his wife half the time, and tells his son not to “upset his mother” to mollify her when her emotions become too distressing (for both of them to manage). Jon’s sister is completely ignored in every scene except one rather poignant one (I’ll get to that later).
So basically, Jon’s relationships are with a father who mostly reacts in high-frequency anger to everything, a mother who’s a generic hysterical stereotype of a patriarchal female, a sister he seems to have no interactions with, and his boys who spend 95% of the movie objectifying women with him (and watching sports).
Looking back, the only moment of genuine emotional connection shown in Jon’s life comes from another friend, Bobby, who actually notices when something is upsetting Jon and insists he talk about it, but even then, the conversation still defaults to the masculine performance game: Jon avoids his feelings, then admits them, but then immediately masks them by reducing their impact to a dismissive “fuck that bitch.” Any vulnerability is immediately shut down. It’s telling too, just how disconnected from emotions this sort of patriarchal masculinity makes guys.
Again, though, it’s important to distinguish the differences between it and maleness and regular masculinity. Celeste’s article continues…
There is nothing wrong with maleness. It should be celebrated and honored.
There is nothing wrong with masculinity and displaying masculine attributes like strength and courage.
There is something wrong with patriarchal masculinity.
A key difference between maleness and patriarchal masculinity is that maleness does not have to be earned or proven. It cannot be taken away. It is not fragile or precarious.
Patriarchal masculinity on the other hand must constantly be proven and earned. Even if you are the swollest MCC fighter on the yacht, even if you married your 4th model, have 13 kids, or are literally the richest men in the world, your patriarchal masculine status can be ripped from you with one feminine fashion choice, girly drink or effeminate body language. It’s so incredibly fragile. It requires constant effort to uphold.
This is shown so clearly in the movie in the way the boys judge one another via sharp jabs, constantly seeking an edge for dominance, always adding pressure wherever possible, endlessly locked in a precarious dance of always pushing without pushing too far. It seems exhausting, doesn't it?
Patriarchy’s Numbing Effect on Relationships
This superficial lifestyle of performing masculinity standards, as seen in the movie, also leads to extremely poor-quality relationships. As the movie goes on, it becomes pretty clear that Jon has never actually seen women as human beings, so how could he possibly have a deep or intimate relationship with one? Even his mother isn’t really “real” to him, she’s just a hysterical entity who provides meals on Sundays and puts too much pressure on him to get married and have a family — things, it is revealed as the movie goes on, that he doesn’t even want. And the women at the bars? They’re nothing but numbers on a hotness scale. He doesn’t ask them anything about themselves, doesn’t care about who they are or what their lives are like, he just wants to fuck gorgeous chicks… and yet somehow, actual sex is less satisfying than porn for him.
A lot of sex therapy centers around the attitudes we take toward intimacy and Jon hasn’t shown any degree of intimacy with anyone anywhere in his life. He’s bullied and told what to do by his parents and he’s too busy performing masculinity with the guys to ever talk about anything important. Where is genuine human connection in there?
The Brilliance of Barbara
The cycle of masculinity works well for Jon for a long time: he has the car, he has the bros, he has the job, he has the pad, he has the sex life, but… when the cycle of control, performance, and success keeps leading to dissatisfaction in his sex life, he assumes that the fault is with the women. Enter Barbara, the “dime,” the 10/10, the hottest girl at the bar that night and most nights. A girl so hot that surely, surely she must be the answer.
Barbara is a great character, incidentally. At first, she comes across as a feminist because she’s the one who doesn’t immediately fall for Jon’s charm. She puts him in his place, slows him down, tells him he isn’t going to get lucky until she says so… all that sorts of thing that made us cheer for Cher Horowitz in Clueless back in the ‘90s. It’s easy to see her as a hero at first because we recognize his pattern of bro-ness and she outright neuters it. However, in perfect foil manner, it turns out that Barbara suffers from patriarchal femininity.
I have to love Scarlet Johansson’s character because I don’t think we see such frank call-outs for this sort of toxic femininity often enough. Barbara consumes unrealistic (and generally patriarchally influenced) romance movies with the same enthusiasm and emotional attachment that Jon views pornography, and is equally misguided in her perceptions of what real romance is as Jon is with real sex. After leaving a film together, she’s seen swooning about how the characters were “meant to be,” all while failing to see that she is being equally misled by impossible standards.
So, Jon is able to lie his way out of the first time she catches him watching a dirty clip, but this was before the browser history trap was common knowledge and after catching him in the lie again, she leaves him for good.
Patriarchal femininity doesn’t get spoken about often, but that is what Barbara portrays. It agrees with patriarchy that women’s status should be attained by physical appearance alone and strict gender roles should be upheld, but with the added caveats that come from stereotypical romance movies. For example, toward the end of the film, Jon meets with Barbara to apologize for lying to her and she responds in obnoxious defiance that a man should be willing to do anything for true love. There’s no sense of self-awareness or self-reflection, which isn’t something she needs to do, because she’s pretty. “Pretty girls get what they want” is a textbook trait of patriarchal femininity. But when it comes to equality, her views on intimacy were just as unrealistic as Jon’s were on sex.
Barbara is brilliant for having subverted the patriarchy to her benefit. She’s steered into the stereotypes surrounding both men and women and manipulated them so that she gets to be in control and have whatever she wants. And only a “dime” gets away with that, because no man under the patriarchy would question a guy who’s with a dime, right? Well…
Enter Esther
Julienne Moore is a treasure in this film, just sayin’. While under Barbara’s spell, Jon agrees to take a night class and Esther just so happens to be going through her own life in a way that interferes with his (crying in the doorway and making it “weird” with her emotions). Knowing that some guys don’t know how to deal with women having emotions very well, she tries to apologize to him for the uncomfortable encounter and, in the process, notices the porn on his phone. This results in her later offering him a porno with a healthier depiction of sex. Jon is completely offended and defensive about this, acting painfully uncomfortable discussing the subject, especially for a guy who watches porn multiple times per day. The mere idea of a woman discussing sexual content with him is too much to handle. He is so awkward and uncomfortable interacting with this older woman from whom he’s not trying to get anything.
Yet Esther, who happens to be a good 10 years older than Jon, sees through all his youthful bullshit. It starts with a cute moment where she says almost offhand, “That stuff’s not real” [about his porn] and Jon looks genuinely shocked and responds with a defensive, “Yes it is!” and she laughs at him in an, “Oh, honey” sort of way.
There’s a great moment when Esther is copying his class notes and asks who’s making him attend the class, his parents or his girlfriend, thus implying that he isn’t in charge of his own life (a patriarchal masculinity requirement) and that he is submissive to someone (definitely not allowed in patriarchal masculinity). His reaction is an outburst of testosterone as he demands his notes back and leaves in a huff. She chuckles as he leaves, so he guns it even harder in his car when he peels away. It’s all sorts of performative masculinity.
That’s the same night he gets busted for his porn history and Barbara leaves him. At this point, when he should be processing the emotional backlash of his relationship — the parts that he’s grieving and the parts he regrets, etc. — he blocks it out with… you guessed it! More porn, more hypermasculine performance, and more aggression, even going so far as to punch through someone’s window while road raging.
The next time he sees Esther after class, they immediately sleep together. Afterward, Esther continues to make casual observations about Jon, like how he was tense during sex. Jon gets defensive (sexual prowess is a symbol of patriarchal masculinity, so cannot be challenged) but is notably less reactive and even agrees — after his initial “fuck that bitch” — to open up about what happened with Barbara and why he’s so upset about it. It surely helps that he already knows that it’s safe to mention porn around Esther without being judged for it. She asks if he got busted watching just once and when he doesn’t answer, she calls out exactly what happened: he got busted once, which is why he had it on his phone in class (because he was hiding it) and then got busted again. It seems like her way of seeing and understanding the situation without him having to say it disarms him and he stops denying the obvious.
The fun part about Esther is that she’s not challenging Jon in the way the rest of his life does. She’s not threatening his status like the boys, nor is she trying to fulfill herself through him like his parents, nor is she trying to manipulate him to get what she wants like Barbara. Rather, Esther does something way more unusual: she listens and asks questions. Though it’s patriarchal masculinity that translates her questions into personal challenges for him, it’s still the questions that he feels compelled to answer that get him to finally examine himself and his life.
The conversation culminates with her asking him why he prefers porn to sex and he — wistfully and with deep longing (props to Joe’s acting in this moment, seriously) — expresses the way he loses himself in porn the way he doesn’t with women. Esther doesn’t judge or shame him; when Jon says he wishes he did get that same feeling of losing himself in real life, Esther just responds with a, “Don’t we all.” Her final question isn’t a challenge though, it’s still a curiosity: “Do you ever jerk off without porn?” He’s practically confused by the question. This leads to an extremely entertaining scene where he begins to question whether he’s a porn junkie (he’s not… right? Right!?).
The next time they meet, he’s all over her, groping, kissing, full force, max speed. He wants sex, yes, but when she questions his intensity, he says he really wants to talk to her… it’s like he doesn’t know how to be around women without sex, but he has something he wants to say and she is the only person he has (ever?) talked to about his emotions. It seems almost like he’s trying to get sex out of the way so he can talk with her, and is surprised when she is okay with talking first.
He admits, really vulnerably, that he couldn’t jerk off without porn, but he reverts to making out after the admittance (masculine performance, yet again). She insists that she wants to hear the end of the story (thus halting the sexual nature of the interaction) and she explains to him that the porn he watches has nothing to do with real sex, which results in yet another defensive response, where he assures her that he enjoys sex just fine. She reminds him though, that he couldn’t get off without porn and he concedes. She explains to him that the problem is that his sex is completely one-sided (not that she minds), but if he wants to lose himself in it, he must lose himself in the other person (and she in him) and that’s what will create the same feeling he gets from porn. She suggests that they have a bath together to create some intimacy but she fails to join him when a memory triggers her grief, leading to her admitting that her husband and son died a little over a year ago. Her emotional vulnerability next to his is then what leads to a moment of deeply intimate, passionate sex.
Yes, folks, we have it: breaking through patriarchal masculinity with intimacy is what leads to the most satisfying sex of Jon’s life!
How Does This Affect His Life?
The cut to the next scene is one of the best moments in the movie: Jon is driving down the street singing loudly to “Good Vibrations” on his way to church. It’s such a stark contrast to literally every other road rage scene in his car that it’s comedic.
The viewer feels good for Jon in this moment, knowing that he’s experienced something powerful, where he didn’t need to prove anything or be anyone. It’s pretty hard to go back to the script of endless pointless expectations after that, eh?
From here on out, the patriarchy’s betrayal begins to unravel when it becomes blatantly clear how little it cares about the individual male under its umbrella. Jon begins to notice how uninterested the church is in answering his questions and is further disappointed when things he perceives as positive growth result in the same number of Hail Marys. He also admits to his parents that he and Barbara broke up and that he might not want to get married or have children, freeing himself of the gender role that they bestowed upon him.
The scene with his family is important as well because his sister finally gets to speak, de-escalating the parents’ disappointment by saying that she’s glad that Jon and Barbara broke up because Barbara didn’t care about Jon at all and was just looking for someone she could control. After she expresses herself in a way that suggests that she knew what was going on the whole time, it seems like Jon develops a bit of understanding of (and appreciation for) who his sister is too.
In other final scenes, we see Jon participating in community basketball instead of pumping iron by himself in the weight room, and find him out eating pizza with his friends instead of going home with a babe after a night at the club. Danny comments that “the streak [of sexual conquests] is over” but Jon doesn’t care anymore, he says that it’s more important to spend time with his friends. Jon even admits he doesn’t want to sleep with a woman he can’t talk to, but he doesn’t feel the need to justify it. It’s just his truth, no performance necessary.
The final scenes are all dedicated to what Jon has learned about intimacy during his time with Esther and how the two of them can genuinely see one another, even going so far as to admit that he doesn’t like it when women look him in the eye but he can’t help but stare back when Esther gazes into him. He emphasizes the ease of being together when she knows what he’s thinking and vice versa.
My favorite part of the movie is when he says that he loves it, with “it” being the feeling of being with Esther. He goes on to say that it’s not the generic, “Oh I love her I wanna marry her” love and he recognizes that their relationship is not like that and it couldn’t be because Esther is still deeply grieving, openly recognizing her emotional state and how it relates to his own, but that there’s still nothing better than the two of them getting lost together in one another.
It’s a beautiful ending that, in itself, doesn’t feel performative. It feels earned.
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PS: the movie also puts 0% stank on Jon for ending up with an older woman, and vice versa
