What a night ! Do you know that feeling you have when everything seems to be meaningful all of a sudden, like there are too many coincidences for you to keep seeing them as such? And you start thinking there must be some kind of power behind it all, making it all happen? Well, there was a bit of that tonight.
First, the movie. "Sucker Punch" starts with the story of a girl and her younger sister being abused by their father-in-law, probably after he killed their mom. The guy kills the sister and pays a guy at the local asylum to have the other girl lobotomized. That way he can get his wife's inheritance.
Change of scene. The girl is not in an asylum anymore, she's a new recruit in some kind of brothel/show-room, and she's brought there by a priest who looks exactly like the father-in-law in the other story, and probably acted the same way before he brought her there. She meets the other girls, saves one of them from the big fat cook who had trapped her in a corner in the kitchen, makes super-friends with her and friends with the rest. We also meet the owner of the place, and his gorilla-like men of arms. Then, there's the dance teacher, who is a woman but maintains order among the girls (sort of) so as to protect them from masculine violence.
When the heroine dances, she imagines fights against different entities. The first time she dances, she meets a Chinese master who looks a bit like a mix of Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford and John Malkovitch (maybe it was one of them?), and who tells her that in order to gain her freedom she'll need a map, some fire, a knife, a key and a sacrifice. Then, three big samurai-like monsters come in, and she kills them one by one, improving on the way she takes blows and on the way she avoids them as the fight continues. First message: guys will try to hurt you and it will hurt, but the more blows you receive, the less you'll feel them and in the end you'll be the one who kills them.
End of the dance, back to the cabaret-brothel-whatever. The girl explains the others that she wants to escape, and she tells them that they will need a map, fire, a knife and a key. Now, symbolically, I'd say the map stands for "knowing where you are". The fire is for "having a spark in you, a strong will". The knife is either the actual weapon or the scar given to you that will make you want to go till the end. The key is getting into action. The sacrifice is the idea that your action of resistance (to the masculine tyranny?) is worth more than yourself.
The super-friend's sister is reluctant, but she'll take part in the thing so as to be able to protect her sister. There's that nice line at one point: "so you decide to follow her, even though you've just met her, and you're leaving me behind after all I've done for you?" And because of that line, I don't think they were actually sisters. Unless they were "sisters" and in that case it all makes sense.
Anyway, back to the evil men. The owner of the place has a map, which they have to steal. To distract everyone, the new recruit starts dancing and imagines a second fight. Oh, before that, it's also quite significant I think that these oppressed girls are only called "Baby Doll", "Sweet Pea", "Blondie", "Amber" and "Rocket" all along. They've been labelled and these names have most likely been given to them by guys. Rocket is the super-friend, Baby Doll is the heroine, Sweet Pea is the sister. Blondie and Amber are the other two, less important on the whole (and the only dark-haired ones, strangely).
The second fight takes place during WW2, except that the Nazis are zombies and the girls have a big robot with a pink rabbit painted on it. Clint-Harrison-John speaks to them at the beginning, saying that they should not worry about killing the guys in front of them, because they're already dead inside. No redemption for men. He keeps calling the girls "ladies". It's interesting that the only guy who is not a jerk (or worse) in this movie is mostly part of a fantasy. He's the only one who does not have an equivalent in the cabaret-maison close thing, or in the asylum. Well, in short, they kill the zombies (who do not fight fair) and take the map.
Enters the Mayor, a big fat old man with a cigare who likes to have a half-dressed girl on his knees and another one on stage in front of him. Baby Doll goes on stage and distracts him while Amber tries to steal his lighter (fire!).
Third fight. Clint tells the ladies to remember never to sign up for anything as long they don't feel like they are ready (= forced wedding, forced relationship...) and describes the new mission. They have to get to the center of a sort of castle-volcano, find a baby dragon, slit its throat and get two stones from inside it, and that will give them back the greatest fire ever. They have to be careful not to wake the mom of the dragon. On the whole, the thing seems to describe an abortion. Get inside the warmest point of the volcano (which looked a lot like the place where Sam tells Frodo to drop the ring), kill the baby and get your life back. Outside, hords of anti-abortion orcs are demonstrating, and inside, a huge dragon-like mother-figure (conservative moms? motherly instincts?) tries to kill the girls, but is slain in the end, after collapsing into Hogwarts's bridge at one point.
Fourth fight: the knife. The girls try to distract the big fat cook to steal his knife (a Marxist point maybe: males have all the means of production and of escape -except imagination and stories, aka the power to make movies to tell people the truth). Baby Doll starts dancing, and Clint is back in her imagination. This time, he's in a helicopter and reminds the ladies that some things are worth fighting and dying for, and that if they don't do anything, they'll still be oppressed and nothing will change. Their mission will be to steal a bomb from a train before it reaches the city. This time, the enemies are faceless robots. So the fight will be against Society and Opinions, this time (city and impersonal things). Quite meaningful that the one who loses her life is the short-haired super-friend (society's intolerance of strong-willed women, and perhaps of lesbians, kills them: "the cook" doesn't have a name, he only has a social function, and he's the one who kills her in real life with his knife). Before she dies, she tells her sister to give her love to their mom. The dad is completely omitted, which leads me to think that he must have abused her as well.
Fifth fight: the owner of the place has found out everything about the plan of escape, and kills the two dark-haired girls and tries to rape Baby Doll, who takes a knife and injures him. She and Sweet Pea escape until they reach the gate. A dozen of guys are chatting in front of it. Time for a sacrifice: Baby Doll tells Sweet Pea that it is her story after all, that she fights so that people like her can go home and live normally. Baby Doll walks towards the men, who start asking where she thinks she's going. She kicks one in between his legs, and he punches her in the face.
Next scene, we're in the asylum and we see her getting lobotomized (which is a kind of brain-rape if you think about it, performed by a man who doesn't know what he's doing because he just follows the procedure he's been taught and the order he's been given = some men who uphold a society in which girls are metaphorically lobotomized just do so because they don't know what they are doing, which is a redeeming point). When the "doctor" realizes his orders were falsified by a guy in the asylum who abuses lobotomized girls (once again, very significant: if girls are taught to remain passive, guys will take advantage), he tells the director of the asylum, who is a woman and tells the cops to arrest the abuser.
Last scene: Sweet Pea tries to escape by bus, and is arrested by two mean-looking cops before getting in the bus. But the bus driver is Clint, and he saves her by telling the cops he knows her and she can't be the one they're looking for. The narrator (a feminine voice), then tells the audience about the power of stories, which is efficient only if we, the audience, react to it and fight for a cause.
So frankly, after going out of that movie, even I was looking suspiciously at the guys in the subway. I don't know if it was the right way to go about the problem. It's actually the same thing that troubled me with The L Word: guys are only portrayed as jerks (except for Clint, but he's more of a paternal figure). The message seems not to be to fight together for something, but just to fight against men. How do you want anyone to trust guys after that? Such shows tend to make me distrust myself and feel guilty for being a guy. It's good to warn people about such things, because they do exist, but not in a "us vs them" way, I think. Same for the abortion thing. I support that right, but don't show the girls killing a baby, even if it's a baby dragon. That's not what it is, and that wouldn't be efficient anyway. But maybe my interpretation is all wrong and it was just a dumb action movie...
What struck me on the way back was the music that my MP3 gave me to listen. One song was "All The Things She Said" by the band "Tatu", and the other one was "A Ma Place", by Axel Bauer and Zazie, with the line "Je Veux Bien Etre Reine, Mais Pas L'Ombre Du Roi". So yeah, gender studies-oriented evening. And when I get home, the TV declares that brothels and show-rooms in Spain and in the South of France are undergoing changes in the number (increasing) and gender (more women) of their clients. Weird night.
First, the movie. "Sucker Punch" starts with the story of a girl and her younger sister being abused by their father-in-law, probably after he killed their mom. The guy kills the sister and pays a guy at the local asylum to have the other girl lobotomized. That way he can get his wife's inheritance.
Change of scene. The girl is not in an asylum anymore, she's a new recruit in some kind of brothel/show-room, and she's brought there by a priest who looks exactly like the father-in-law in the other story, and probably acted the same way before he brought her there. She meets the other girls, saves one of them from the big fat cook who had trapped her in a corner in the kitchen, makes super-friends with her and friends with the rest. We also meet the owner of the place, and his gorilla-like men of arms. Then, there's the dance teacher, who is a woman but maintains order among the girls (sort of) so as to protect them from masculine violence.
When the heroine dances, she imagines fights against different entities. The first time she dances, she meets a Chinese master who looks a bit like a mix of Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford and John Malkovitch (maybe it was one of them?), and who tells her that in order to gain her freedom she'll need a map, some fire, a knife, a key and a sacrifice. Then, three big samurai-like monsters come in, and she kills them one by one, improving on the way she takes blows and on the way she avoids them as the fight continues. First message: guys will try to hurt you and it will hurt, but the more blows you receive, the less you'll feel them and in the end you'll be the one who kills them.
End of the dance, back to the cabaret-brothel-whatever. The girl explains the others that she wants to escape, and she tells them that they will need a map, fire, a knife and a key. Now, symbolically, I'd say the map stands for "knowing where you are". The fire is for "having a spark in you, a strong will". The knife is either the actual weapon or the scar given to you that will make you want to go till the end. The key is getting into action. The sacrifice is the idea that your action of resistance (to the masculine tyranny?) is worth more than yourself.
The super-friend's sister is reluctant, but she'll take part in the thing so as to be able to protect her sister. There's that nice line at one point: "so you decide to follow her, even though you've just met her, and you're leaving me behind after all I've done for you?" And because of that line, I don't think they were actually sisters. Unless they were "sisters" and in that case it all makes sense.
Anyway, back to the evil men. The owner of the place has a map, which they have to steal. To distract everyone, the new recruit starts dancing and imagines a second fight. Oh, before that, it's also quite significant I think that these oppressed girls are only called "Baby Doll", "Sweet Pea", "Blondie", "Amber" and "Rocket" all along. They've been labelled and these names have most likely been given to them by guys. Rocket is the super-friend, Baby Doll is the heroine, Sweet Pea is the sister. Blondie and Amber are the other two, less important on the whole (and the only dark-haired ones, strangely).
The second fight takes place during WW2, except that the Nazis are zombies and the girls have a big robot with a pink rabbit painted on it. Clint-Harrison-John speaks to them at the beginning, saying that they should not worry about killing the guys in front of them, because they're already dead inside. No redemption for men. He keeps calling the girls "ladies". It's interesting that the only guy who is not a jerk (or worse) in this movie is mostly part of a fantasy. He's the only one who does not have an equivalent in the cabaret-maison close thing, or in the asylum. Well, in short, they kill the zombies (who do not fight fair) and take the map.
Enters the Mayor, a big fat old man with a cigare who likes to have a half-dressed girl on his knees and another one on stage in front of him. Baby Doll goes on stage and distracts him while Amber tries to steal his lighter (fire!).
Third fight. Clint tells the ladies to remember never to sign up for anything as long they don't feel like they are ready (= forced wedding, forced relationship...) and describes the new mission. They have to get to the center of a sort of castle-volcano, find a baby dragon, slit its throat and get two stones from inside it, and that will give them back the greatest fire ever. They have to be careful not to wake the mom of the dragon. On the whole, the thing seems to describe an abortion. Get inside the warmest point of the volcano (which looked a lot like the place where Sam tells Frodo to drop the ring), kill the baby and get your life back. Outside, hords of anti-abortion orcs are demonstrating, and inside, a huge dragon-like mother-figure (conservative moms? motherly instincts?) tries to kill the girls, but is slain in the end, after collapsing into Hogwarts's bridge at one point.
Fourth fight: the knife. The girls try to distract the big fat cook to steal his knife (a Marxist point maybe: males have all the means of production and of escape -except imagination and stories, aka the power to make movies to tell people the truth). Baby Doll starts dancing, and Clint is back in her imagination. This time, he's in a helicopter and reminds the ladies that some things are worth fighting and dying for, and that if they don't do anything, they'll still be oppressed and nothing will change. Their mission will be to steal a bomb from a train before it reaches the city. This time, the enemies are faceless robots. So the fight will be against Society and Opinions, this time (city and impersonal things). Quite meaningful that the one who loses her life is the short-haired super-friend (society's intolerance of strong-willed women, and perhaps of lesbians, kills them: "the cook" doesn't have a name, he only has a social function, and he's the one who kills her in real life with his knife). Before she dies, she tells her sister to give her love to their mom. The dad is completely omitted, which leads me to think that he must have abused her as well.
Fifth fight: the owner of the place has found out everything about the plan of escape, and kills the two dark-haired girls and tries to rape Baby Doll, who takes a knife and injures him. She and Sweet Pea escape until they reach the gate. A dozen of guys are chatting in front of it. Time for a sacrifice: Baby Doll tells Sweet Pea that it is her story after all, that she fights so that people like her can go home and live normally. Baby Doll walks towards the men, who start asking where she thinks she's going. She kicks one in between his legs, and he punches her in the face.
Next scene, we're in the asylum and we see her getting lobotomized (which is a kind of brain-rape if you think about it, performed by a man who doesn't know what he's doing because he just follows the procedure he's been taught and the order he's been given = some men who uphold a society in which girls are metaphorically lobotomized just do so because they don't know what they are doing, which is a redeeming point). When the "doctor" realizes his orders were falsified by a guy in the asylum who abuses lobotomized girls (once again, very significant: if girls are taught to remain passive, guys will take advantage), he tells the director of the asylum, who is a woman and tells the cops to arrest the abuser.
Last scene: Sweet Pea tries to escape by bus, and is arrested by two mean-looking cops before getting in the bus. But the bus driver is Clint, and he saves her by telling the cops he knows her and she can't be the one they're looking for. The narrator (a feminine voice), then tells the audience about the power of stories, which is efficient only if we, the audience, react to it and fight for a cause.
So frankly, after going out of that movie, even I was looking suspiciously at the guys in the subway. I don't know if it was the right way to go about the problem. It's actually the same thing that troubled me with The L Word: guys are only portrayed as jerks (except for Clint, but he's more of a paternal figure). The message seems not to be to fight together for something, but just to fight against men. How do you want anyone to trust guys after that? Such shows tend to make me distrust myself and feel guilty for being a guy. It's good to warn people about such things, because they do exist, but not in a "us vs them" way, I think. Same for the abortion thing. I support that right, but don't show the girls killing a baby, even if it's a baby dragon. That's not what it is, and that wouldn't be efficient anyway. But maybe my interpretation is all wrong and it was just a dumb action movie...
What struck me on the way back was the music that my MP3 gave me to listen. One song was "All The Things She Said" by the band "Tatu", and the other one was "A Ma Place", by Axel Bauer and Zazie, with the line "Je Veux Bien Etre Reine, Mais Pas L'Ombre Du Roi". So yeah, gender studies-oriented evening. And when I get home, the TV declares that brothels and show-rooms in Spain and in the South of France are undergoing changes in the number (increasing) and gender (more women) of their clients. Weird night.
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