Film Review: Why films like Charlie’s Angels (2019) are doing nothing for feminism

 

Warning: some mild spoilers ahead.

One of my favourite childhood memories is watching Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu kick ass in McG’s Charlie’s Angels (2000). The film is based off the eponymous TV series from the 1970s starring Kate Jackson, Farah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith. I am not afraid to admit that I have watched the film multiple times, and the mix of humour, action and mystery never fails to amuse me. Charlie’s Angels was one of my first entries into female-centred films, where women were not damsels in distress, but rather three empowered spies. The film follows the trio serving as mercenaries and investigators for an unseen boss named Charlie (voiced by John Forsyth). The three characters, Natalie (Diaz), Dylan (Barrymore), and Alex (Liu), are tasked to find and protect a software engineer Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell) from rival Roger Corwin (Tim Curry), who runs a satellite-communications company and has interests in stealing the software.

The film shows the three being blown from buildings, beating, getting beaten, being double-crossed, and falling in and out of love. Throughout, the characters maintain a close friendship despite nearly constant adversities. The appeal of the film is not its realism – in fact, the fighting is completely unrealistic, the use of disguises laughable and most of the dialogue borderline cheesy.

Still of Dylan, Natalie and Alex in lederhosen, Charlies Angels (2000), Columbia Pictures.

Rather, the appeal lies in its uncomplexity, its reliance on star power and its refusal to be anything but what it appears to be. It is also important to note that the film is not unproblematic. Charlie’s angels often rely on their sexuality to manoeuvre situations. The trio dress sexily to create distractions in high-risk situations, they flutter their eyelashes and flick their hair to gain attention. The male characters seem powerless to their feminine charms and are sometimes treated as one-dimensional and sex obsessed.

Much of the film centres on the fact that the three main actresses are exceptionally attractive, despite having superhuman martial-arts abilities, possessing expert investigative skills, knowing multiple languages, and using specialist knowledge to analyse situations. Despite their extensive skillset, their youth and beauty seem to be their go-to tools in most circumstances. There is an argument that could be raised here that female sexuality, in many ways, is empowering. But equipped with the knowledge that the director and writers of the film are male, the use of skin-tight outfits and focus on the character’s bodies feel more male gazey than an argument for female agency.

Nonetheless, the film accomplishes what it intends to do which is to be mindlessly entertaining. With fondness for the original film, I had high expectations for Elizabeth Bank’s rendition of Charlie’s Angels (2019).

Still of Sabina Wilson in opening scene, Charlies Angels (2019), Sony Pictures.

The film opens with a close-up of Sabina Wilson (Kirsten Stewart), disguised in a blond wig and glittery pink dress, smiling, and simpering the line, “I think women can do anything,” before engaging in a too-long back and forth with ‘bad guy with a vague backstory’, Jonny Smith (Chris Pang). The conversation shows that Jonny has vaguely sexist views which Sabina counters while giggling and coming onto him.  

Eventually, the flirtation turns into violence with Sabina stating: “Did you know that it takes men an additional 7-seconds to perceive women as a threat compared to a man…”, before choking him with her thighs. She then gets into another physical altercation with him before telling the audience that he stole money from women, children, and refugees. The casting director obviously told introverted Stewart that her character is a quirky extrovert which makes many of her lines come off as loud and jilting as she is forced to shout a stream of girl-power quotes.

The introduction sequence ends with her and her crime-fighting partner Jane Kano (Ella Balinska) beating up the entire room of henchmen and then inexplicably moves into a montage of stock footage of young girls engaging in sports and classroom activities.

I am not going to go into the entire plot of the film because I do not think it is necessary to recap for the purpose of my argument, but to summarise: there is much beating up of bad guys; the main characters try hard to look very bad-ass; the film is littered with one-liners about how women rule the world, and there is some comedy-relief provided by Naomi Scott (playing Elena Houghlin, who the film likes to remind us is smart). With Banks as the director, the film creates an entirely forgettable plot, produces one of the most predictable plot twists in cinema history, and despite casting herself as the side-character Bosley, succeeds in making the film mostly about herself.

Instead of harping on about where the film falls short, I would like to focus on where these so-called feminist films can improve. Although there have been many ill-thought out women-centric ventures by Hollywood, I think they have been important steps forward in terms of female representation in media. Many blockbusters (especially in the past, things are changing) have treated their female characters as accessories to an end. The characters are there to woo, titillate or distract the male protagonist/male audience and they do not serve much purpose outside of looking good on screen.

The new brand of women-aimed films actively works against the tropes women have played in previous cinematic roles. In many of these films, instead of the character being believable, the characters tend to turn into other intense stereotypes. The trope of the overly-capable feminist has now overtaken many films because of lazy writing and an inability to pin down what a real female personality looks like. Thus, instead of playing the damsel in distress, the female protagonist evolves into an extremely capable mercenary-figure who is overwhelmingly powerful (Captain Marvel 2019, for example).

Instead of playing someone dumb and buxom, the female character is a prolific scientist who is terribly socially awkward or a 20-year-old programmer who can hack into the FBI’s security system at record speed (Claire, from Jurassic World 2015). Where directors attempt to create ‘interesting’ or quirky female characters, they tend to fall into the manic pixie girl fantasy where the character’s so-called quirky personality trait is that they dare have interests outside of their relationship with the male protagonist (Polly, in Along Came Polly 2004).

There is nothing inherently wrong with having bad-ass, intelligent, strong, quirky yet also sexy female protagonists or side-characters. The issue is more so that the overly-capable feminist can do no wrong, make no mistakes and her defining point always appears to be her unwavering feminism.  The overly-capable feminist is incapable of just being physically strong. She has to be so powerful that no one else can measure up to her. Her vulnerabilities are not vulnerabilities at all, but mere setbacks to her immense overwhelming girl power. So, when Captain Marvel fights the aliens in her film, they seem to be no match for her until the film is pointless to watch.

Claire directing the dinosaurs, Jurassic World (2015), Amblin Entertainment.

Claire from Jurassic World is so incredibly intelligent that she seems to have no real-world sense. She is a genius, but she somehow needs to rely on Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) for any practical matter until the very end of the film. At the same time, the film constantly emphasises that she is worlds smarter than him and everyone else, so the fact that she does not possess practical knowledge makes no difference to her personality.

The manic pixie dream girl does not fall into the overly-capable feminist category, and they are rarely the stars of their own films. Polly’s personality is a means to derail and upset Ben Stiller’s character so that he can learn to be less boring. She is a means to challenge his reality without truly threatening it. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the menacing feminist who tortures and kills male rapists, molesters, and misogynists. The menacing feminist is taking vengeance for the issues that women face in real life, potentially providing catharsis for those who have gone through trauma.

There is a question of who these characters actually appeal to and which specific ideologies they address. In Charlie’s Angels (2019) many of the male personalities are lazily presented as stereotypes of misogynistic men so that the female characters can respond to their ignorance. In one of the first few scenes, the CEO of the company where Elena works talks over her in a meeting, demands a coffee from his female secretary and dismisses Elena’s expertise on a project that she headed. Alternatively, the male characters take on typically feminine roles such as Saint (Luis Gerardo Méndez) who is both a weapon’s expert but also a type of masseuse, herbalist and self-care expert. There is also Noah Centineo who plays a scientist but who is relegated to the meaningless role of Balinska’s love-interest without any real explanation of why they are attracted to one another. The males appear to be feminised so that the female protagonists can come off tougher or more impressive.

It is important to state that the overly-capable feminist trope does not apply to every female protagonist. There are a few balanced cinematic heroines that are complexly written and interesting to watch (Ellen Ripley, Paikea Apirana, Clarice Starling, to name a few). The problem is that balanced female characters are still few and far between. The overly-capable feminist trope is an attempt to tackle real issues that many women face in their daily lives, such as being physically weaker than men, as targets of sexual harassment and being overlooked in professional settings (these examples are not to minimise unique issues faced by transwomen and female people of colour which is beyond the scope of this essay).

The goal of creating these female characters seems to be a half-cooked appeal to an audience of women who are starved of genuine representation and who lack a voice to talk about the problems that they routinely face. The overly-capable feminist trope is not intentionally malicious, but rather, the result of women suffering silently through years of not being able to represent themselves at a full-spectrum.

The end-goals of female characters should not always be getting back at misogynistic men, or fulfilling rapist castration fantasies or to wield guns, grenades, and rocket launchers just as well as men. The well-balanced female character, in fact, does not need to answer to the lack that society imposes on her. The balanced female character’s gender is not the forefront of her personality, but that does not mean that her gender does not shift her experience. The balanced female character acknowledges her weaknesses and her flaws but can still succeed and prosper despite them. The balanced female character does not need to take on masculine characteristics in order to be strong (though, having masculine characteristics should not be read as a bad thing), they should use unique skills to overcome the situation.  

Contributing to the lack of believability of these characters is that the overly-capable feminist characters usually lack explanation of how they got their skillsets. The fact that they were in the air-force, or went to Harvard, or were trained in an adoption-house-cum-dojo is meant to satisfy the audience. Instead of attempts at relatability in their personalities, or even explanations of why they are so spectacular or, indeed, anything that makes them definable from one another, the brand of watered-down feminism becomes the forefront of their personalities. The result is that the protagonists come off as self-righteous, wooden and unrelatable to everyone. They have no room for character development; they simply bang and smash their way through the plot while uttering empty lines about female empowerment to mostly empty cinema theatres.