I think Zack Snyder is a generally underestimated and too quickly dismissed creator. To be fair, I haven’t seen 300 or that owl movie, but I kind of appreciate his audacity in taking movies that “can’t” be made because omg sacrilege — a Dawn of the Dead remake, Watchmen — and serving up something quite wry and self-aware and cheesy and fun.
But wow that is way off the point and I won’t ramble about it right now. My actual point is that (and again I haven’t seen 300, which I’m pretty sure would totally nix this argument from what I know of it, alas) just because Snyder makes movies where terrible things happen to women doesn’t automatically put him in the Christopher Nolan basket. Most of the women in Dawn of the Dead are way more fleshed out than the men.
And appalling things happen to women in Sucker Punch but that’s exactly how the viewer feels about it — appalled. There are a lot of sexy things in that movie but the horrible things are HORRIBLE, they’re not part of the candy.
I don’t know, you can have an opinion like that, but I think this woman’s opinion is just as valid. She saw the movie too, and I’m pretty tired of seeing guys *deconstruct* sexism by catering to it. They get to do that because they’re guys, and WB wouldn’t have accepted this movie if it wasn’t about sexy ladies catering to adolescent fantasy on the outside, let’s be real. I haven’t seen it, but I don’t really want to. I don’t want to see a movie about grown ladies in pigtails and schoolgirl outfits having gross stuff happen to them even if it is in the name of deconstruction. I don’t want to see dollhouse for the same reasons. And so. If she came out of the movie and decided it didn’t do a good job of deconstructing, that is was basically just masquerading as empowerment, I think that’s her prerogative.
I also appreciate her mentioning WB’s whitewashing.
That’s really a big part of what I mean when I say she missed the point, though. I mean even besides the ‘no cohesive plot’ thing, which is about as true as ‘Inception was difficult to understand’, it’s not meant to be an empowering story. The whole point of the story is that this group of young women are being victimised by people in the context of a deeply misogynistic system. They take what power they can, but it’s a fucked situation and so too is every one of their options. At the heart of it, it’s not about empowering the victims, it’s about shining a light on those who are complicit in the systems that victimise them.
As someone who has lived through a whole lot of “gross stuff”, this movie reached out and took my hand in a way that no other media has, and it did so effortlessly. And as such, I found her comments about “women not being that stupid”, and that it was meaningless and without nuance, to be entirely offensive. Like, wow, thanks! Way to shit on me for getting something meaningful out of it just because you didn’t :’)
So no, I don’t think her criticism is equally valid; if she was criticising its actual goals and finding it wanting, that would be one thing. But she found it wanting of something it was never trying to do.
eta i should also take the time to mention that while WB’s whitewashing of Akira is creepy and racist and fucking disgusting on every possible level, it’s also has virtually nothing to do with Sucker Punch, so I didn’t see any point in mentioning it in the body of the post. But I don’t want people passing over this conversation to be wondering why I didn’t address the white washing comment, so. That’s the context.
Ah, I understand. That was a poorly worded and careless comment of her to make, and her review could have been more nuanced. I agree that perhaps she could have made a better point, even if that was what she felt from the movie. And Akira is a bit unrelated, but I think she was trying to say this studio is likely behind this movie because it enjoys the “adolescent fantasy” aspect, look at their other work which is problematic in multiple ways, but she wasn’t being very clear. Your experience is valid and she should have realized she was being casually demeaning of it.
(Source: , via pluckyminna)
