Men explain sexual liberation to me in ‘Poor Things’
by Jade Green
WARNING: Spoilers for ‘Poor Things’
Critics have been raving about Poor Things, a movie which follows in Barbie’s dainty footsteps by setting out to explain feminism in a sunny, easy-to-digest package. I watched the movie several days ago, yet I still have the feeling it gave me lurking somewhere in my belly, like I’ve eaten a bad sandwich. I was looking forward to this second collaboration from the creators of The Favourite, a movie I enjoyed. But as the story rambled through its bloated runtime, I noticed this gnawing discomfort growing inside me. I had an urge to leave the theatre but couldn’t figure out why.
Here’s the plot. In a skewed Victorian-era London, a pregnant woman (Emma Stone) jumps off Tower Bridge, and is fished out of the Thames by Willem Dafoe’s best Dr Frankenstein impression. He decides to reanimate her corpse, taking the brain from the infant child in her womb and placing it into the adult woman’s head. With me so far?
What follows is a traditional hero’s journey for our protagonist, Bella, whose child-brain seems to develop at an extraordinarily accelerated rate. Around the same time she learns the word ‘circumnavigate’, she discovers that she l o v e s t o f u c k. And it’s great! Mark Ruffalo arrives in the film to have lots of graphic sex with Bella! Woohoo! We love to see a woman enjoying sex shamelessly and unapologetically! Well done, male filmmakers! Why Bella is so hyper-sexual is unclear, but it seems to have something to do with her having an infant brain. The suggestion seems to be that a sexually liberated woman is a woman who has detached from any notion of her adulthood – that really, it’s just our pesky awareness that gets in the way of us having amazing, unproblematic sex lives and living the feminist dream (or, at least, the 1960s version of the feminist dream).
What is clear is that men love Bella’s free spirit and naivety. As we’ve seen from every movie that contains the Born Sexy Yesterday trope, it’s all men want: an infant-brained woman they can teach things to and easily control. And Bella has no trouble finding men to teach her about this new and exciting world, and help her explore her sexuality.
Luckily, though, the men in this movie all seem to understand consent (kind of?), and anyway because Bella wants sex ALL THE TIME, consent isn’t even really an issue. Or is it that her infant brain doesn’t understand that she can say no, if she wants? Or is it that a liberated woman doesn’t ever have a need to say no because we’re showing a woman enjoying sex shamelessly, goddammit, and who needs to think about sexual violence in this world where men own and control women? It’s a fantasy story! Shut up and look at these beautiful sets!
Bella fucks her way around Willy Wonka’s Europe, landing in Paris where she takes a job as a sex worker. I will give the filmmakers credit, here – they at least try to represent sex work with a crumb of nuance, as Bella admits that ‘it’s not always good’ when she has sex with clients, but that she is happy to take the job freely and semi-enthusiastically in order to fund her adventures. That’s progressiveness, folks.
When her previous adult-woman identity catches up with her, Bella returns to her old life and husband, a man who waves a gun around all the time and threatens to take away Bella’s whole identity by surgically removing her clitoris. He locks her inside their mansion, and says he will ‘plant his seed’ in her once the surgery is done, because women exist solely to make babies. For a few minutes it seems like the film is Saying Something.
But then it’s ok because Bella escapes the locked mansion and replaces the bad husband’s brain with a goat brain. Domestic abuse, solved!
Look, for starters, it takes a hell of a lot of gumption to sit down and write this story if you are a man. And this tired old ‘debate’ has already been debated every which way, to the point that I’m bored even typing the words: can men write about feminism? Can white people write about racism? Could I, as a cis, able-bodied woman, sit down to write a story about a disabled trans person’s life, and the specific oppressions they have faced?
The argument for ‘yes’ goes like this: we are all human beings with human emotions, so we should all be able to empathise with another human being and understand their internal journey even if the situations of our lives diverge. This empathy is the basis of storytelling, and character writing; the ‘external’ conditions of a person’s life are secondary.
Here’s another question: can a bunch of cis men make a responsible and meaningful movie about a woman’s struggle to liberate herself from the patriarchy? Can they ever really understand this, if they have not lived as women? If they forget (as this movie does) that women menstruate, or can get pregnant if they have unprotected sex, or have body hair (unless we are supposed to believe that Bella – an infant – is shaving her armpits and legs off-screen)?
For me, the answer is actually ‘yes’, but there are caveats. There are always going to be blind spots if you are writing a character who has faced oppressions you have not. There is no avoiding your own unconscious biases, as pure as your intentions may be. That is why it is essential to consult with people who have lived experience with what you are writing about, and if possible, bring them in to collaborate.
I have no idea how this movie was made or if any women had any say in the script or the novel on which the story is based. But if we have learned anything from Thelma & Louise, it’s that men and women can make incredible feminist movies if they work together! It’s just an idea, but maybe let some women read your script and remind you about menstruation and sexual violence if you are a man setting out to make a modern movie about feminist themes.
Or just ignore this stuff and give the excuse of ‘it’s a fantasy’ and win lots of Oscars (probably). I don’t care. I’m tired, and I wish I could go and watch a fun colourful movie about ‘smashing the patriarchy’ in the theatre without having to think about sexual violence, and without being left with this icky feeling in my belly. Maybe the movie is right: awareness is a fucking burden.
Jade Green (she/her) is the editor of oranges journal. You can find her on Instagram.