FUTURE TEXTS SUBVERSIVE PERFORMANCE AND FEMINIST BODIES: Ch 10 Sucker Punch and the Aesthetics of Denial: Future Perfect Tense (original) (raw)

This essay explores the ways in which the protagonist of the 2011 film, Sucker Punch is simultaneously victimized and liberated vis-à-vis the intrusion of game sequences at key moments. The game world is also turned on its misogynist ear, as it becomes the instantiation of lead character Babydoll’s imagination, while simultaneously raising and dashing the voyeuristic promise of her objectification. Forced to “dance for her dinner,” Babydoll’s material body complies, but only as she mentally transports herself to a fantastic world of quests, a world in which she and her sisters prevail in the face of incredible odds. This double simultaneous action not only defiles the narrative structure of the film, it subverts the first person position of a game mechanic, denying the player rewards on both fronts. At first glance, the storyline of Sucker Punch feels like the same old misogynistic film. A mother dies leaving her two daughters in the hands of an abusive, disinherited stepfather who terrorizes them: the younger one is killed, the older one, Babydoll, is consigned to a mental institution where she retreats to an alternate reality and envisions her escape. Scantily dressed girls populate this world, and their time is spent either doing household chores or in dance rehearsals with their dance mistress cum madam. However, by breaking the narrative structure of the film at key moments, Sucker Punch becomes a craftily feminist text, one which is all the more potent in that it attracts the very audience for a misogynist film.