It infuriates me that Sucker Punch has been universally demonised in the mainstream press for being the one thing that it clearly isn't and anyone with a modicum of intelligence will appreciate that this is not a movie that sets out to further objectify or exploit women. Unfortunately such vehement negative press will undoubtedly put a lot of people off seeing it and drawing their own conclusions and this worrying trend in film criticism is tantamount to censorship in my opinion.
So why was Sucker Punch so reviled? I think the main reason is that people expect a Zack Snyder film to be a throw-away experience, they're not looking for anything other than escapist action and they certainly aren't expecting a frank and disturbing allegory on gender politics. Whilst there are plenty of fantasy battle sequences that can be watched purely as disposable fun there is an overarching subtext that deals with the rape, prostitution and psychological abuse of women that would be more at home in a David Lynch movie.
Despite its popcorn-friendly packaging Sucker Punch is full of unflinching feminist themes depicting the gamut of women's experience throughout the course of the 20th century that the average viewer didn't sign up for and were unprepared to take on-board in this context so they rail against the movie accusing its writer / director of the exploitation they're witnessing, rather than recognise they are part of the society ultimately responsible; Zack Snyder is merely holding a mirror up to it.
The film opens with a montage backed by a new recording of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) to set up the back story of Babydoll (Emily Browning) the film's protagonist. When her mother dies Babydoll and her younger sister become wards of their stepfather who's physical and sexual abuse escalates to the point where she tries to shoot him but misses accidentally killing her sister for which she is committed to an insane asylum. Sucker Punch takes place in a stylised version of the 1960s, a period where many women were institutionalised usually as the result of an unquestioned accusation of insanity from a significant male relation and, like Babydoll, were threatened with irreversible lobotomy as the final solution to their supposed mental illness.
The resident psychiatrist at Lennox House for the Mentally Insane is Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino) who practices the methods of Freud and Jung, encouraging her female patients to re-enact the circumstances of their abuse in order to confront their shadow selves. This focus on the subconscious allows the film's layered fantasy structure to emerge, Babydoll retreats into a dreamlike state where the austere asylum is replaced by the image of a louche bordello in which she and her inmates are transformed into dancers in the employ of the club's owner / pimp, Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) who in reality is the head orderly who accepted a large bribe from Babydoll's stepfather to forge Dr. Gorski signature to authorise her lobotomy.
In the brothel fantasy Vera Gorski is transformed into a choreographer-cum-madam figure that encourages the virginal, porcelain like Babydoll to muster up the courage to express herself through a highly personal erotic dance, this triggers the second layer of fantasy sequences in which she becomes a Warrior Princess who, under the guidance of the Wise Man (Scott Glenn), accepts a quest to retrieve 4 talismans that will lead her to understand the identity of the mysterious 5th object that will secure her freedom.
This mystical scavenger hunt enables Zack Snyder to film 4 equally incredible stylised battle scenes against many disparate foes such as giant Samurai, steam-powered Nazi zombies, a baby dragon and its protective mother, and a horde of killer glass robots. The individual sequences are stunningly rendered and impeccably executed with the precision of a frenetic modern ballet and with each battle the camaraderie between Babydoll and her cohorts, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), her sister Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung) grows and you get the impression of a genuine bond between the friends as they fight for their lives.
The central conceit of the film is that these women are forced to use their sexuality as the only weapon available to them in order to manipulate the men who control their miserable existences and that this "empowers" them, yet they spend the entire film scantily clad which gives rise to the charges of objectification. The theatrical cut of the film was given a 12 certificate but many critics claimed it ought to have been rated 18, why? There is no nudity, no sex scenes, little bad language, stylised violence and no bloodletting; what seems to upset the largely conservative critics is the implied rape and pervasive subtext which depicts the harsh reality of being a woman in a man's world.
The appalling thing about this attempt to censor Sucker Punch is the outright hypocrisy of it all, as if this film is the only current example of female exploitation and objectification, as if it isn't apparent in every music video shown throughout the day on MTV, as if it's not omnipresent in every reality TV show, not to mention that only recently we've seen the return of Burlesque as an acceptable form of mainstream entertainment. It would appear that the film's critics are saying we're absolutely fine with scantily clad, gun toting girls and we'll even buy into this myth of "empowerment" but don't then ruin it all by making us conscious of the fact that ultimately these women are the victims of deplorable acts of sexual violence.
As the west continues to fight a war against Islamic fundamentalism often in the name of freeing repressed women from the burqa or the yashmak, it seems ironic that the supposed free women on the western world are equally imprisoned behind their fetishized painted faces, parading in hot pants or micro skirts. This irony is not lost on Zack Snyder or the cast of Sucker Punch, the film doesn't degrade women or explicitly claim to be "empowering" them but, along with a recent spate of movies that acknowledge feminism's third wave (Black Swan, the remake of True Grit, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), it shines a light on a dark aspect of the human condition and is clearly one of the most original and challenging movies in recent memory; Babydoll will, in no doubt, eventually emerge as a cult figure in cinema history.
Steve Exeter is a passionate cinephile and screenwriter, he edits and regularly contributes to the Online-Inquirer blog site.
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