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Sep. 12th, 2011 08:11 am( Gaeilge )
Yeah, the squee over studying Irish is not going away anytime soon.
So, I was going to do a week-long series of essays over Sucker Punch, but what with a) spending most of the weekend collapsed and resting and/or tidying and b) the people on the 'women fandom hates' thing never getting back to me on if I could do all of Sucker Punch or not (I'm guessing they got swamped by bigger response than expected) I'm just going to blather on for five days or so about the movie, why I like it, maybe each character, something like that.
I wrote about Sucker Punch a while back, and why I thought it was empowering, and why I enjoyed it. To recap: I enjoyed it because it showed women taking control of their lives and kicking ass. The nature of that ass and that control varies depending on how much of it you think is a hallucination and how much you think is real. It would seem to be straightforward except for the couple of people who appeared in the hallucinations showing up at the end, in a setting extremely unlikely to .. well, it depends.
Baby Doll's decisions drive the plot. Her decision to go for the stepfather's gun in the first five minutes and defend her baby sister kicks off the whole movie. Her decision to escape opens up new decisions for the other girls. Blue is a part of the situation, but in a way he is almost a part of the scenery, providing the trap but never deviating from his course once he's introduced. He exists to be malevolent, and to threaten the girls. The situation they're in already is malevolent and threatening, he just puts a face on it. Sweet Pea makes a decision at the end of the movie, too, which continues it on. Blondie makes a decision which ups the stakes and changes the nature of the trap they're in, Rocket chooses who goes on to the next stage of the plan/film, but Blue, the stepfather, the High Roller are all there for the girls to react to them. Even Madame Gorsky makes her own decision that removes a threat, in the end. And the guys, from a certain point of view, are just scenery. The Wiseman provides the situation, and the girls deal with it.
I love the repeated phrase of this movie: you already have all the weapons that you need. Only once is anything ever given to any of the girls, and depending on how real you see it, that's something Baby Doll gives to herself. Everything else, they take. The choice and the consequence, their freedom, the tools to gain it. They take back control of their lives, their sexuality (because, yes, the movie sexualizes the girls, and they use that to get what they want, with no apology for doing so and no excuse, it's a tool they have and so they use it), and in the cases of the leading three, their eventual fate. Or four, as you could make an argument for Blondie.
And as a side effect, there's an interesting aspect to the sexualization of the girls. Specifically, that it is so classic and so old school. They're wearing more clothes than a lot of the bikini-clad women who make up the background on CSI: Miami and Burn Notice. The supposed ultimate expression of seduction and desire is never shown, it fades into the background behind a fantasy of setting sights on a target and achieving it. The point, then, is not that Baby Doll is an object of sexual fantasy, but that she is using that to her advantage and achieving a goal. She, and the girls who support her, are in control.
Maybe that's the ultimate fantasy, here. Taking control. I bet it's one a lot of people have.
And. And and. Slowly, very slowly, getting my inbox cleared of tags both personal and RP. Finally!
Yeah, the squee over studying Irish is not going away anytime soon.
So, I was going to do a week-long series of essays over Sucker Punch, but what with a) spending most of the weekend collapsed and resting and/or tidying and b) the people on the 'women fandom hates' thing never getting back to me on if I could do all of Sucker Punch or not (I'm guessing they got swamped by bigger response than expected) I'm just going to blather on for five days or so about the movie, why I like it, maybe each character, something like that.
I wrote about Sucker Punch a while back, and why I thought it was empowering, and why I enjoyed it. To recap: I enjoyed it because it showed women taking control of their lives and kicking ass. The nature of that ass and that control varies depending on how much of it you think is a hallucination and how much you think is real. It would seem to be straightforward except for the couple of people who appeared in the hallucinations showing up at the end, in a setting extremely unlikely to .. well, it depends.
Baby Doll's decisions drive the plot. Her decision to go for the stepfather's gun in the first five minutes and defend her baby sister kicks off the whole movie. Her decision to escape opens up new decisions for the other girls. Blue is a part of the situation, but in a way he is almost a part of the scenery, providing the trap but never deviating from his course once he's introduced. He exists to be malevolent, and to threaten the girls. The situation they're in already is malevolent and threatening, he just puts a face on it. Sweet Pea makes a decision at the end of the movie, too, which continues it on. Blondie makes a decision which ups the stakes and changes the nature of the trap they're in, Rocket chooses who goes on to the next stage of the plan/film, but Blue, the stepfather, the High Roller are all there for the girls to react to them. Even Madame Gorsky makes her own decision that removes a threat, in the end. And the guys, from a certain point of view, are just scenery. The Wiseman provides the situation, and the girls deal with it.
I love the repeated phrase of this movie: you already have all the weapons that you need. Only once is anything ever given to any of the girls, and depending on how real you see it, that's something Baby Doll gives to herself. Everything else, they take. The choice and the consequence, their freedom, the tools to gain it. They take back control of their lives, their sexuality (because, yes, the movie sexualizes the girls, and they use that to get what they want, with no apology for doing so and no excuse, it's a tool they have and so they use it), and in the cases of the leading three, their eventual fate. Or four, as you could make an argument for Blondie.
And as a side effect, there's an interesting aspect to the sexualization of the girls. Specifically, that it is so classic and so old school. They're wearing more clothes than a lot of the bikini-clad women who make up the background on CSI: Miami and Burn Notice. The supposed ultimate expression of seduction and desire is never shown, it fades into the background behind a fantasy of setting sights on a target and achieving it. The point, then, is not that Baby Doll is an object of sexual fantasy, but that she is using that to her advantage and achieving a goal. She, and the girls who support her, are in control.
Maybe that's the ultimate fantasy, here. Taking control. I bet it's one a lot of people have.
And. And and. Slowly, very slowly, getting my inbox cleared of tags both personal and RP. Finally!
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