I’m not a professional movie critic, but I find it worthwhile to talk about movies that are connected to wider conversations in the culture. It’s for that reason I took my pen and notebook to the theater this weekend to watch ‘Birds Of Prey: And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn.’ Yeesh. What a title. I had been following social media chatter around this film being a woke feminist empowerment film. Being branded as a “woke feminist empowerment film” isn’t exactly the greatest marketing strategy but it does do the job of making the film a cultural lightning rod for angry Twitter rants and politicized film critiques. I made the daring trek through ice and snow to watch 2 hours of Hollywood’s latest woke sermon so you don’t have to. You’re welcome, I think.
Birds of Prey is DC’s follow up to Suicide Squad and is directed by Cathy Yan, who is proudly billed as the first Asian female director of an American comic book movie. (representation for the win!) It follows the story of fan-favorite psycho/clown Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) as she deals with her devastating breakup with her lover and partner in crime, The Joker. She deals with this breakup as any proud feminist or psycho clown would, namely, by breaking things and killing a lot of people. Ok, maybe I’m kidding about the feminist part. Along the way, she makes friends with some other female reprobates: Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Cassandra (Ella Jay Basco), Shallow (Sara Montez), and The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The story is nothing to write home about. It’s an extended McGuffin chase as the gang hunts down a diamond for the filthy misogynist villain, Black Mask (Ewan MacGregor). The movie is competently made, and the action, (with help from John Wick director Chad Stahelski) is well done. Margot Robbie is a great actress and gives this character her all.
The film is mildly entertaining and predictably vile. That’s not saying much, since the word ‘vile’ can be easily used to describe 90% of what Hollywood produces these days. But this film is particularly gleeful in its perverse violence and backward in its morality. Much has already been made in the Twitterverse about how every male character in this film is an irredeemable bastard deserving of the violence inflicted on him. We get to see Harley Quinn single-handedly bludgeon scores of cops, prisoners, and mercenaries with nothing more than a baseball bat. In the beginning, she murders a creepy guy who hits on her and then feeds him to a hyena. The main villain is an inhuman, woman-hating monster, for some reason. It’s never really explained why. In one on-the-nose moment, it’s also hinted that he is a conservative who hates Bernie Sanders voters. Keep in mind this is a film set in fictional Gotham, so I’m not sure where Bernie factors in, but I digress.
This is a movie seething with rage. For women growing up in the well-documented rape culture of Hollywood, I’m sure a lot of this rage is justified. It’s the kind of rage that makes paternal patriarchs like me want to say “Good grief, what did they do to you in LA? Please, move back to Ohio where you’ll be safe! Have some kids with a nice young man!” If you are a woman who spent her 20’s and 30’s frequenting Planned Parenthood after barely-consensual sex with dudes on Tinder, you may find cathartic release in watching misogynists’ bones being crunched in Birds of Prey. This movie is packed with rage against a hook-up, throw away culture and the wayward men who propagate it. So the movie hates men. A lot. Whatever. Not a huge shock. Maybe there’s a good reason for the female creators of this film to hate the men who populate the film scene in LA.
What’s not being talked about, however, is that this movie, apparently made by women and for women, also hates women. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen a film with a lower opinion of women. Violence, proud “slut culture,” and unhinged chaos are all sold as female empowerment. The gleeful treatment of Harley Quinn’s self-destructive tendencies and sadistic streak is disturbing to watch.
It’s like watching a girl laugh about having an abortion.
I often get criticized for overthinking movies like this. They are just throwaway entertainment, after all. But I think this sort of entertainment says something important about where our culture is right now. What we are witnessing is the smoldering wreckage of a culture that has rejected God’s loving guardrails and design for men and women. A beautiful design that started with Adam and Eve, meant to bring joy and comfort has been deconstructed. A relationship meant to point to Christ has been reduced to power, manipulation, and animal instincts. Men have abandoned masculinity for laziness, selfishness, and porn addiction. Women have abandoned femininity to occupy the vacant position left by the men. It doesn’t work. The resulting nihilistic chaos is actually well represented by the film Birds of Prey.
What is the answer? Where is the hope? Well, the answer to all this is boring, old fashioned, and uncool. It looks a lot like a traditional marriage between a loving man and a committed woman.
It looks like abstinence and restraint before marriage. Lame.
It looks like humility and reconciliation and submission. Too hard.
It looks like sacrificial love for children. Ew.
The prescription for male/female relationships spelled out in the Bible looks too much like slavery to some, but in seeking the apparent freedom and autonomy the world offers, they become slaves of their own corruption. Ironically, there is a glimmer of this truth in Birds of Prey. At the end of the story, Harley Quinn finds some redemption in becoming a mother figure to an orphan kid. Make no mistake- this wasn’t meant to be a message in the film. It was merely a plot device to make the story work. No matter how “woke” you are, you can’t tell a good story without a redemptive arc that tells the truth about humanity. In Birds of Prey, a feminist empowerment film, the main character finds redemption in motherhood. Imagine that.
There is another story arc in the film. It revolves around Harley Quinn’s quest to eat her favorite egg sandwich. It’s given more attention and time than her motherhood arc, and it more aptly demonstrates the nihilistic materialism of the filmmakers here.
As the credits rolled to a song that begins with the lyrics “It’s my party, my body, my business,” the lights went up to reveal an empty theater. Empty, as in I was the only one there. For a DC Superhero movie. On opening weekend. I took that as a comforting sign. There don’t seem to be as many women connecting with this film as our culture would have you think.
Maybe goodness is winning for now. I’ll take it.
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