There are many movies that spur controversy, and some rightfully deserve it, but if you'll allow me, I'd like to have a little fun playing devil's advocate. Zack Snyder's 2011 film Sucker Punch was easily dismissed as a teenage boy's wet dream of flashy special effects and young girls running around doing impossibly awesome things. The film was not popular with, well . . . anyone (despite a cameo by Jon freakin' Hamm). It was attacked by critics, moviegoers, and feminist circles who didn't take too kindly to it because of said young girls being put on display. It came across as an orgy of everything wrong with pop culture.
While I'm not willing to argue and say such disgust isn't well founded (because it's not my right to tell you what you should and shouldn't be offended by) I've always thought the film was misunderstood. In fact, I would go as far as to say most people who dismissed it as chauvinistic schlock sorta missed the entire point.
I always thought the film could be the subject of a rather interesting essay, and since no one else has really done so, I've decided to take a deeper look at it myself. I don't want to give the impression that I'm staunchly defending it, however, or that I'm directly calling out people who took issue with it. Much like accusations of racism circling white-boy Tarantino's black-slave driven murder fest Django Unchained, I think it's worth discussing, so imagine me sitting humbly in a rocking chair, stroking my chin as you present your viewpoint, and then in a very civil and polite manner saying: "You raise a very interesting argument, but have you considered this . . ."
For those unfamiliar, Sucker Punch follows a young girl, Babydoll (Emily Browning) who is wrongfully sent to a mental institution thanks to her douchebag step-father over an inheritance dispute. While incarcerated, she befriends a number of other patients including Rocket (Jena Malone), Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Amber (Jamie Chung) and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens). As part of her step-father's dastardly plan, Babydoll is scheduled to be subjected to a visit from the "High Roller" (played by the aforementioned Jon "Massive Cock" Hamm) who will silence her for good. The poor girl plans an escape with her fellow patients under the nose of the equally awful warden, Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac).
The hook of the film is that the majority of the story takes place in Babydoll's imagination, or at least in her re-imagining of reality. It gets a bit Inception-y in it's fantasy-within-a-fantasy setting. It's hinted that the girls in the asylum are bought out by the warden as sex workers for whomever is willing to pay, and in order to make this reality not so horribly fucking bleak, Babydoll imagines everything around her happening in a nostalgic prohibition-era brothel. She imagines her and her fellow patients as dancers (hence their nicknames) who must perform for Blue Jones' clientele. Blue Jones wants them to dance because it is based on their performances that his clients "purchase" the girls, and Babydoll seems to have a natural affinity for it.
Furthermore, when Babydoll actually "dances," she's transported even further away from reality deeper into her imagination. As part of the girls' escape plan, they must collect a series of items such as a map, lighter, and knife, and Babydoll's dancing is used as a distraction to collect these items. When she dances, the viewer is treated to stylized action sequences where the girls fight killer samurai, dragons, Nazi-zombies, and robots.
That's quite a bit of context for the film, but it's important to set up just how inextricably detailed the plot is as it's presented to the viewer, at least for the purpose of this article.
The majority of criticisms hurled against the film are at face-value, claiming it's nothing but glorified violence with scantily-clad female protagonists designed to appeal to misogynistic teenage boys. The teenage boys (or whomever actually liked the film) meanwhile - many of whom have never been in possession of a vagina and thus have no fucking clue what they're talking about - defend it by saying it's "empowering" to women.
I would argue both parties are wrong.
Zack Snyder has said countless times that he doesn't frame any of the girls in a sexual way, and if you watch the film, he actually doesn't. Their outfits while in murder-porn fantasy mode aren't actually very revealing at all (refer to the movie poster for details) and there aren't any camera shots designed to present them as sexualized objects, except while the film is in brothel-mode, but more on that in a minute. Snyder quite cleverly claims that if you're viewing the girls in a sexualized way, you're doing it because that's what you personally - as a sick, sex-driven misogynist - are doing. He just presented you with some attractive girls performing a bunch of kick-ass stunts. If you get a boner because of it, then it's your own damn fault.
The film quite literally claims very early that there is nothing at all sexy about the girls' predicament. As the story transitions from reality to semi-reality (i.e. the brothel) Sweet Pea is on a stage initially partaking in a form of psychological therapy with Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) which transitions into the practice of a new dance routine where she pretends to be a helpless mental patient. Halfway through the performance she stands up, practically mortified, and proclaims that there's absolutely nothing sexy about framing a sex show around someone in such a vulnerable position.
It couldn't get more obvious if it came out and slapped you in the face.
This is where the biggest chunk of criticisms against the film can be undermined, because everyone focused on the crazy stylized action-violence portions of the film, but no one seemed to pay attention to the context surrounding those bits. The fanboys who tried to defend it by claiming it was "empowering" also missed the fact that in the reality of Babydoll's world, no matter how much she tries to rebel and fight, she ultimately fails. Of the five girls partaking in the escape plan, only one escapes. Three are killed and our protagonist is left lobotomized. It didn't matter how goddamn hard they all fought, the odds were always stacked against them. They fought for a mile and only gained an inch. The girl's struggle against their male oppressors is actually really fucking bleak and depressing.
It almost reads like a metaphor for rebellion against patriarchy.
Babydoll lives in a man's world, under the constant objectification and abuse of men. Her step-father imprisons her, Blue Jones abuses and tries to sell her, she's constantly ogled and demeaned by the audience and workers at the brothel, and the High Roller - although very regretful in the role he must play - ultimately does the most physical damage to her. Babydoll's only male ally is in the form of the Wise Man (Scott Glenn) who appears in her fighting fantasies and briefly at the end of the film during Sweet Pea's escape, which is arguably still a fantasy in Babydoll's mind, so of all the men in the film the only one who actually helps her is a figment of her imagination. Even Dr. Gorski, who is shown to be a woman of some authority in the hospital, is ultimately powerless to help the girls in their struggle against the oppression of Blue Jones and his entourage.
The big "meta" moment for me came when I was lamenting that we as an audience aren't privileged to watching Babydoll "dance," which is presented as some transcendental experience within the context of the film. Everyone she performs for is left hypnotized, and it is the main tool with which the girls distract their captors to steal the items needed for their escape. And then it hit me, and it was so goddamn obvious that it makes me mad that I didn't realize it when I first watched the film.
We as the audience do get to see her dance, we're just presented with it in a different fashion. We play right into Zack Snyder's hand to prove his point that the only sexualization that happens is that which we imprint ourselves. In the film, Babydoll "dances" for Blue Jones and his clientele on a stage. Then the transition happens to the stylized action sequences, and we as the film audience become the clientele, watching her on the stage of the movie screen. We are hypnotized and distracted from the horrible reality these girls are living in, just as much as the men Babydoll is performing for within the film's plot. Snyder turns the table on us, essentially equating the people in the audience with the horrible people watching the girls in the film's world. The girls don't enjoy dancing/fighting; they're doing it as a means to escape from abuse, but those sequences are exactly what we as an audience are paying to see.
The film may seem like porn to teenage boys who are obsessed with young girls and who overdose regularly on violence and carnage, but it's not condoning that sort of entertainment, it's actively condemning it. Snyder is the real Blue Jones, parading these girls in front of us as an audience and saying, "This is what you sick fucks wanted, right? Well, here you go!" The problem the film faced upon release is that people only saw the first half of that equation and not the second half. They saw the smorgasbord of young women and immediately labelled it as misogynistic without taking into context the rest of the plot or the overall message of the film.
You could easily argue that it was a fault on Snyder's part for not making his point more obvious. After all, it's the responsibility of the filmmaker to make sure whatever message they're trying to convey is communicated properly. And there's so much being said about the nature of reality, fantasy, and escapism in the movie that it can all seem overwhelmingly complicated. As I said before, I'm not necessarily trying to defend the film, but just trying to present all the evidence so that you can make a more informed decision about whether you truly hate it or not.
And that's my two-cents. I thought the film was entertaining enough when I first saw it, but it wasn't until I had a long hard think about it that I started to understand the tapestry Snyder was trying to weave, and which failed to connect with an audience. At this point in cinema history, the film seems to have been dismissed into the abyss, to be forgotten and ignored. I haven't read too many other analysis of it that break it down the way I just tried, but I definitely think it's worth a second viewing if you were quick to label it as shlock on your first go.
But that's just my opinion. I won't stop you if you want to call me something horrible.
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