Riddickulous

[asterroc]

So I saw Riddick today, and I have quite a few thoughts. The first one, outside the cut, is that at a minimum you should re-read the Wikipedia pages on all the previous films before you go see it, as there are lots of references to them. I didn't. I should've.

I will now include spoilers and discussions of problematic gender issues. I'm assuming you've already seen it, or else can go and read a summary if you care. The bare-bones summary is that it's a rehash of Pitch Black, in that there's mercenaries and infighting, and Riddick kills a bunch of them, they kill a bunch of each other, a few survive, and he gets off the planet. What follows is a summary of the gender issues.

The only woman among the mercenaries, Dahl (pronounced "doll," no, no irony there at all), is played by Katee Sackhoff (aka Starbuck/Kara Thrace from BSG), and I was expecting great things from her. She was okay, but nothing special (which pretty much sums up my opinion of the movie over all). The mercenary world was portrayed as very hostile towards women, misogynistic, continually sexual slurs, etc. TBH, I actually prefer this to a SF mercenary movie with only male characters and the women are ignored. We're set up for this environment as soon as we meet the first batch of mercenaries, as they have a woman bounty, and it's made very clear that she's suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the captain of that mercenary group.

Dahl is the second in command and sniper of the more-professional mercenary group, and it's clear they respect her, but the captain of the rag-tag mercenary group is continually propositioning her. She's continually bashing in his face and otherwise beating him up as a response, which is an appropriate response in that environment. She also says she doesn't fuck guys, and it's kinda nice seeing a strong woman lesbian character, as well as a significant woman character who's set up from the start as not being a romantic interest, but it's also a bit of a cop-out at the same time as they're saying "well, the only way a woman could survive in such an environment is if she's gay."

She never does a damsel in distress - I mean even Kara Thrace had her damsel-in-distress moment when she was held by the Cylon, but Dahl never does it, which again is nice. But then as we approach the climax of the film and Riddick is of course in chains and threatening them even as he tells them they're about to release him and tells them exactly what will happen when they do so, he of course looks at Dahl and says that after he saves the people worth saving she'll ask him sweetly to fuck her balls-deep. Now, I'm looking for the exact words he uses there, as I found it shocking that he'd say that - yeah sure he's bad, but a different sort of bad from that.

And then just a little bit before the end, she does say something along the lines of "Now, I'm going to ask you something sweetly," and doesn't elaborate on screen, and nearly Riddick's last words are asking another character to say something to Dahl for him and I couldn't make that out at all. I figure give it a week or two and Wikipedia will have more detail, or other wikis will (but I'm not in the mood to look right now). I find it problematic that even a butch lesbian character would go and fuck the male protagonist to reward him for killing the baddies and saving the few survivors. It's less a case of situational heterosexuality, and more a case of "well, the guy's always gotta get the girl, who case if she's a lesbo." (Word chosen b/c they used it in the film.)

So yeah, there's a bunch of problematic gender stuff, but in a way it's on par with the violence, in that you don't want either of those happening in real life, but they seem to have some amount of a purpose and context. But of course sexism and heterosexism in film really does affect real life, so...

*shrug* Going to think on it more. Anyone else seen it and have thoughts?

Originally posted on Dreamwidth. comments there. Comment here or there.

Comments

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

That part shocked me too...as well as when he said that her nail polished matched her nipples. That just seemed so odd.

I know I heard the line you didn't, but I can't remember it :-P I just remembered that he tells John to keep a soft spot. The part about the ending that distracted me at that point was the it seemed flat out corny to have the two ships hovering so they could see each other. At least Dahl didn't end up running off with Riddick. That end point was so out of place too, especially since the relationship between Dahl and Riddick was lacking, unlike in the first movie where Carolyn's death upset him.

I just realized that in the previous two films, Riddick's saving depends on a female character (he would have died if Carolyn hadn't gone back for him, Kyra helps him at the end of the second one and Dahl rescues him at the end). It seems they tried to shoehorn this in for the third movie :S

IMdB to the rescue - according to the one person, Riddick tells Johns to keep a solid spine, and for Dahl to "keep it warm for him".

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

My phone is going to mess an edit up :D What he says to Dahl while chained up is "Then when it's all over, I'm gonna go balls-deep in Dahl there. But only cause she asks me too...sweet like."

Heh, I only heard the balls deep part ;-)