The movie, Sucker Punch, starts with the main character, 20-year-old “Babydoll”, sitting in her room with her hair in perfect blonde curled pigtails, makeup looks professionally done, false lashes, plump lips, porcelain skin; a fantasy woman for most straight men. This is only the beginning of the sexualization of all the female characters in this movie. Sucker Punch masks itself as a “feminist film” as it includes a group of strong female characters who support one another, while in reality it is a sexy action film produced by a man, for men.
Sucker Punch begins the story of Babydoll’s institutionalization with some background of how she got there. Her mother dies, leaving Babydoll and her younger sister in the care of their abusive stepfather. On the night of her mother’s death, her stepfather comes after her and her sister and Babydoll decides to fight back. She grabs her stepfathers gun, shoots, and misses him. This prompts him to contact the authorities and check Babydoll into a mental institution.
During the fight scene between Babydoll and her stepfather, he locks her in her room and corners her sister in a closet. In order for Babydoll to help her sister, she has to climb out of her second story window and scale the brick house to the ground level in the rain to get to where her sister is. This scene smudges her makeup. Cut to the scene where her stepfather is driving her to the mental institution and her hair and makeup are damn near perfect again, while her pajamas are covered in dirt.
All the women in the mental institution with babydoll are literal sex objects. The man in charge uses his patients in another one of his businesses: adult entertainment. He makes the female patients dance for men in his club and if the men like one of the women in particular, they are free to “rent” her for sex. Not only are the women in the movie sexualized by the other characters, but they are also being sexualized as the actual human beings playing these parts. “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned in two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium—” (Mulvey 33). While the perfect makeup, hair, and tantalizing outfits the women in the movie have may tie into the plot of the movie fairly well, as they are erotic dancers and have to look the part, it also serves a purpose for the viewers of the movie. Like I said before, this movie was made by a man for men. What do men want to see? Beautiful women in sexy outfits, even when it doesn’t necessarily make sense.
For example, the first time Babydoll dances, she is transported to a fantasy world. It is obviously very cold there because we see snow on the ground and it appears to be quite windy but she is wearing a tiny sailor girl outfit (short sleeved crop top and a mini skirt) and heels. In that same outfit, she has to battle 3 giant samurais with just a katana and a handgun. Again, some people may view this as a powerful female character who can fight three monsters to the death while also looking cute. I, on the other hand, think that the fantasy scenes could have been produced in a much different way. Babydoll could have had full-body armor on, she could have not looked like a Barbie doll, her hair and makeup could have gotten messed up during the fight scenes, she could’ve been wearing much more practical shoes than high heels.
Another example of the female characters in revealing outfits in a setting that doesn’t make sense is the second time babydoll dances. This time she is joined in her fantasy world by several of the other women in the mental institution. In this scene, they are in a battlefield, fighting in a war against undead soldiers wearing absolutely no body armor, not even so much as bullet-proof vests. But they look sexy and that’s what matters, right? It keeps the male gaze interested in the movie two fold. One, because violence, guns, explosions, death, and destruction. Two, because the women who are holding the guns and causing explosions, death, and destruction are wearing what is basically lingerie.
Once Babydoll stops dancing, she comes back to reality and realizes that her dancing has a lot of power. When she dances, she basically hypnotizes men. “The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of the story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (Mulvey 33). Babydoll stops the flow of action of reality as she dances and escapes to her fantasy world.
“As the spectator identified with the main male protagonist, he projects his look into that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence” (Mulvey 34). This quote by Mulvey brings us back to the aforementioned man in charge and what role he plays in keeping the male viewer’s attention. The man in charge controls the female characters’ every move. He calls the women he makes dance “my girls”, signaling possession of them as if they are property. Although the man in charge is supposed to be the villain in this movie, I can see where the male viewers of Sucker Punch could identify, or want to identify, with him. He’s a powerful, handsome, rich, businessman who has access to a group of beautiful women. The problem with his character is that he is evil. He uses his power to exploit his female mental patients, threatens, and even kills them when they disobey him.
In summary, at first glance Sucker Punch may appear to be a feminist film because of it’s numerous strong female leads and plot that is focused around sisterhood and teamwork in order to free themselves from the hellish mental institution, but it is really only a hyper-sexualized action movie targeted toward men. All of the female leads are drop-dead gorgeous with their permanently perfect hair and makeup and their sexy outfits, which doesn’t change even in the action scenes. The action scenes do nothing for the actual plot of the movie, they’re only there to draw the male viewer in even more. Sucker Punch, while it has an interesting story and was produced well, could have been executed in a different way that would actually make it a feminist film.
Feminist Film Studies Fall 2018 