#tangent but i love chris pine's outfits

[fun-family]

These feminist films of 2020 are actually the most disempowering.

After I watched the film “Promising Young Woman” I spent days in an internal tangent over what I did not like about the film. I realized that this internal tangent was very similar to the one I’d had after watching “Wonder Woman 1984″. I’ve concluded that it’s because both of these films were marketed as feminist films centering on powerful female protagonists and neither delivered.

(SPOILERS & LONG REVIEW AHEAD)

First, let’s look at Wonder Woman 1984. In the first film, Diana was curious, naive, and playful. We watched her learn about the world. We felt her heartbreak when people weren’t as good as she believed them to be. We saw her eyes opened a little bit more. 

While the sequel may have taken place decades later, there seemed to be nothing of Diana left. The 1980′s were an iconic time in America and Diana had little interaction with any of it. She was in a mall, okay, but her style was unchanged. Her home decor was bland. Her hobbies nonexistent. Why has Diana stopped engaging in the world?

The film seemed to want us to believe that Diana was stuck on Steve, that she had been pining (more like Chris Pining....sorry) over him for actual DECADES. He was the first man she’d ever been with and there’s nothing to suggest he isn’t the ONLY man. Diana is a GOD. She is an Amazonian princess. Why does she have to be a saint? If you’re going to make a female superhero virginal, at least give me a reason for it aside from “Her heart is broken.”

You know what would have been better? If another Amazon joined Diana in the city and she was the fish-out-of-water, not Steve. Diana could have shown her everything she loved about the 1980′s. We could have learned more about Diana’s life. Every other superhero gets to have a life outside of being a hero. This movie deprived Diana of that.

Now, let’s talk about Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig). Why is it that in film when a woman is becoming “more attractive” she loses her glasses and starts wearing heavy eyeliner? WHY? Give me a break. And the film wouldn’t even let us have Barbara as a true villain, she had to be “losing her soul”. Her evilness was out of her control. Why did Barbara have to be a victim? Why do women have to be the victim so often? Why are women only allowed to be strong if they have superhero strength in this universe? Barbara was deprived the chance to be a formidable opponent for Diana. Are we really so afraid to have two women battle in a film that we must turn one into a big cat? In the first film Diana didn’t want to save Ares, she wanted to kill him. If you don’t want Diana to kill a human, give her another God to kill. This sequel seemed to forget that Diana was once called the God Killer.

Finally, the elephant in the WW84 room is that Steve is in another man’s body, a man who is not conscious of what is happening and is not able to consent to what is done to said body. This isn’t okay, and if this was the movie “Promising Young Woman”, the character Cassie would give Diana a stern talking to and then walk away.

And yes, with that I am going to transition to “Promising Young Woman.”

The trailers for “Promising Young Woman” gave me the impression that, while the film was going to be a bit “on the nose” I was going to watch a bunch of shitty dudes get murdered. Or at the very least, I thought they would get a nice big tattoo like Lisbeth gave her rapist guardian in “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

I imagine the suggested violence and then the lack of it was intentional. The character Cassie almost never breaks the law. She is always in the “right”. The men are in the wrong and we live in a culture that has allowed men to sexually  assault women without consequence. That message was loud and clear.

But in this film the assaulters still don’t have any consequences. Are we supposed to believe that Cassie’s intimidation is making a difference and that her death makes a difference? It seems likely the men she confronted will keep assaulting women and just find ways to make sure their date is truly unconscious. The men who were arrested at the end would probably get away with it because they’re rich, white, and, if none of them confess, it would be hard to prove which person in the group killed her.

The biggest question the film left me asking was: Why do women always have to sacrifice themselves for men?

Aside from that very big issue, I also felt the character of Cassie was all style and no substance. Her outfits, her environments were so manicured. Her final outfit felt designed specifically to become a Halloween costume; the nurse costume and the wig are probably coming to a Spirit Halloween near you. It’s like they portrayed this very real problem in our society in a very unrealistic way.

I know everyone is raving about Carey Mulligan’s performance, but she’s played far more dynamic characters in her career. For example her roles in “Wildlife”, “Mudbound”, “Shame”, and “Never Let Me Go”.

I suppose this role was more subtle, but I got the sense that Cassie was supposed to be a stereotypical Manic Pixie Dream Girl. And I understand that what happened to Cassie’s friend and the response by the school and the authorities has left her traumatized, depressed, and apathetic. But I find it hard to see how the men didn’t win in this film. Cassie lost her best friend, she lost her education and her career, she lost her social ties, and then she lost her life. Maybe I’m missing the moral of this story, or maybe I just don’t like it.

The final point I want to discuss with “Promising Young Woman” is one that bothers me in society in general. There are multiple points in the film when we’re told how smart Nina was, how she was the top of her class, and how they both would have been amazing doctors. And I actually yelled at my TV, “It shouldn’t matter how smart Nina was!” Even if she was failing her classes she didn’t deserve to be sexually assaulted. It’s a societal problem that we need victims of abuse to be promising in order to care that they were abused.

And if the character of Cassie is trying to be a defender of women, a martyr of sorts, why is she so dismissive of the teenage girl in the coffee shop? Her character sets out to punish men and in turn protect women from being assaulted, and yet she treats a teenage girl like garbage, like she doesn’t matter. I guess in this universe you only deserve respect if you’re a smart, successful female, not a teenage girl who dares to ask the barista for another coffee.

The protagonists of “Promising Young Woman” and “Wonder Woman 1984″ exemplify the very things they’re supposed to be fighting against and maybe that would work if it seemed at all intentional. Both of these films marketed themselves as the feminist films of 2020, but ultimately diminished the strength of the very female protagonists they had set out to empower.

There are far better films out there with strong female protagonists. Here are a few of my favorites: Winter’s Bone, Alien, Furie, First Wives Club, Okja, Mad Max: Fury Road, Girl’s Trip, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009), Mulan (1998), Sweetheart, Westward the Women, Waitress, Annihilation, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, A League of Their Own, Little Monsters (2019)