Body heat: the physicality of Channing Tatum

Channing Tatum – or is it Tatum Channing? He looks like either. Unless he has a side parting, as in Hail, Caesar!, his face is precisely symmetrical, his brow and eye-lines horizontal. A geometric face with a mid-distance look.

But that’s the thing about movie stars. Their faces should be enigmatic. When those close-ups come – and they seldom do for Tatum – too much expression makes them noisy. A close-up should be quiet. What shouldn’t be quiet is the body. Chaplin’s wasn’t, nor was Cyd Charisse’s or Rita Hayworth’s, Louise Brooks’s or Marlon Brando’s. Nor is Tatum’s. In 21 Jump Street, he’s a cop who wants car chases but only gets to rescue Frisbees.

He’s a crap jock cop who has to go undercover as someone – so the police captain tells him – “really stupid, so you should blend right in”. His body’s ahead of his head, like a teenager’s, and he plays it beautifully, this boy-man who’s frustrated or humiliated. Which brings in the politics. Tatum comes from a working-class background. He went from roofer to stripper. He’s great at anti-Michael Bay men who aren’t pumped by their own ego. Class, poverty and gentleness have stopped them getting to that hyper-masculine place that Hollywood seems – just – to believe in, despite the collateral damage it causes.

In Magic Mike (2012), which is based on some of his own experiences, his character knows where his power lies, and where it doesn’t. He has a body and moves, and makes the best of both, as they won’t last forever, and he knows it. So he shines for as long as he can shine, but isn’t Icarus, isn’t one of those Tennessee Williams characters who suddenly find themselves alone because they thought they had it all and didn’t look ahead. If you’re working class and pretty and bright, you know the clock is ticking and that when the looks go the tide will go out and you’ll be left where you started.

If we didn’t know where to fit Tatum into movie history, Hail, Caesar! showed us. His dance scene was like an out-take from On the Town (1949), but it’s the Gene Kelly of Singin’ in the Rain (1951) or even It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) that seemed to come alive in that Coens number. Kelly’s face was identikit, too, but his body polyglot, like Tatum’s: put it on a movie screen and you’ve got life.

Think of other aspects of 50s cinema and we can refine who Channing Tatum is. Is he a king actor like John Wayne or Orson Welles? No way. In Foxcatcher (2014) he was a supplicant. But nor is he much of a detective driven by scepticism in a world where the law is dead. He’s a pawn, moved around by others – social forces, or rich women – and he’s not enraged by that. Far from it. His characters might vote Bernie (or even Trump) because they’re on the bottom of the heap, and so outside politics, but they know how to enjoy things now.

Anxious 50s actors like Montgomery Clift or James Dean always wanted to escape the moment, the agony, their own skin. Tatum is the opposite of that. There’s a short film, The Trap (2007), in which he has a simple scene. He’s at the top of a trapeze ladder; a woman climbs it. She’s terrified, and for more than three minutes he just reassures and comforts her. And enjoys it. Hyper-masculinity can’t stand being around women, but Tatum’s characters clearly love it – not to boss them, just because of the attraction, the feeling of being intimate, useful and entertaining. For the discourse.

In the scene in question, Tatum is topless, a state of undress to which he is not averse. You could say that this is the 50s thing too – think of Victor Mature and all those peplum films – but Tatum’s nakedness is more Ewan McGregor than Charlton Heston (another of those names that could be reversed). Back then, men seemed to display their bodies unconsciously. They didn’t get, or pretended they didn’t get, any pleasure from being looked at. Ewan McGregor was really clear: yes, I love getting my ass out, and love you looking at it. Tatum is equally cool on this. It’s not polished, like metrosexual is polished; it’s more euphoric, and far less controlled.

To say this makes me realise who Channing Tatum really resembles. Don’t laugh: Jane Russell. I knew her a bit and she was un-neurotic, funny and up for a laugh. If Tatum is a woman’s man, Russell was a man’s woman – she had loads of brothers and behaved like a cowgirl. Despite being religious, you can see in her movies what unfettered pleasure she took in her own body. If you haven’t seen her ‘Lookin’ for Trouble’ number in The French Line (1953), look it up online. It’s sexy, outré, complicit and probably censorable. She’s as comfortable in her body, in its sexuality, and the humour of that, as Tatum, and the scene reminds me of one of the Magic Mike routines.

As some critics raved about Magic Mike XXL (2015) I saw it and regretted it. I was bored. But Channing Tatum was once again Jane Russell and Ewan McGregor.