Black Snake Moan: Seriously one of the worst movies I've seen in a really long time. The sad thing is, it also had one of the coolest, bad-ass title-screen moments I've seen in a long time. But it was all downhill after that.
What made me want to claw people's eyes out and scream without ever ever ever stopping was what a ball of confused, misogynistic bullshit this movie was. Its confusion (and I say "confusion" while still holding it culpable for its misogyny, as its confusion is moreso just sloppy than accidental) seemed to be best captured in one glaringly idiotic illogicality in this movie:
For those of you who haven't seen it, the premise is that Christina Ricci is a sex-obsessed nympho (she is consumed by the "black snake moan" which is her "dark sexuality") who gets the shit beaten out of her and is found on the side of the road by Samuel L. Jackson. He takes her under his wing, and when he realizes she is "possessed" by this insatiable hunger for sex, he chains her up to a heater to "cure her of her sinful ways." Fine and good. Herein lies the problem though--this man who professes to want to cure her of her "sinful ways" somehow doesn't think to clothe her in something other than a crop top and panties for the first half of the movie, despite his intention being to desexualize her. He never offers her a nice baggy shirt of his to cover her up, so instead, we get to conveniently watch her run through his backyard, a chain riding low and writhing about sensually on her perfectly flat stomach as her tits jiggle in her bra-less crop-top while Samuel L. rants about being "a man of God who aims to cure her of her wickedness."
How convenient that, while she is intended as a message about the sinfulness of women's sexuality, she is conveniently kept traipsing around in a scantily clad outfit for at least 45 minutes of the movie.
And that's the problem with this movie: it is a bundle of mixed messages. Ultimately, Ricci's sexuality in the movie is treated as an aberration and something that she needs to be punished for and cured of. And yet and yet and yet, a half-naked Ricci is intended to draw in viewers. "Woman as sexual object" is precisely the marketing ploy and draw of this movie. She spends half the movie half-naked so as to entice and keep the (presumably male) viewers entertained.
Case in point:
And yet, the "message" of the movie seems to be intended as one of redemption: the redemption of Samuel L. Jackson from a dark pool of despair to one where his music can ring clear again, and the redemption of Ricci from her wicked ways to one of marriage and monogamy.
It encourages and excuses the "
male gaze" while condemning the female for "placing" herself in front of it.
Also deeply problematic is the fact that her "black snake moan" is depicted as possessing her, not her as possessing it--in other words, she does not *own* it. And it is also depicted as being a result of her sexual-abuse as a child. Now, this I wouldn't've had so much problems with if a) it had been dealt with in a movie that wasn't so adamantly exploiting a woman while at the same time patting her head and saying, "You poor sexually-abused little thing," and b) if it didn't *again* dispossess her of ownership of her sexuality, making it something that is *not* under her control but is a result of a male and how she was treated.
She never *owns* her sexuality throughout the entire movie--it owns her, and when it's not owning her, it's owned by the males around her, whether it be those who chain her up to curtail her behavior to those who beat the shit out of her for being who she is to those who threaten others with a gun because they believe *they* own her sex to those who control her sexuality as a child.
The funny thing is, I *knew* this movie was gonna ring of the 1960s exploitation-films. It's obvious from the previews, and I was actually looking forward to that fact, because I had thought that it would do so cleverly, that in invoking the exploitation of women in these particular films from the 60's and 70's, it would do so smartly and in a way that would bring to light the misogyny and exploitativeness of these movies, in a way that would comment on the way women were perceived and treated in these films. But instead, it just reexploited. And in a movie 40 years the youth of these types of movies, that is just fucking sad.
This film unintentionally reflects the problem with the way women are treated in our culture: we are supposed to function as an object for the male gaze, to act as sexual objects for them to enjoy, and yet, if we *own* this sexuality, if we work it, if we wear it, if we don't allow it to fall under others' control, if we are unashamed of it, if we possess it rather than allowing it to possess us, we are whores.
And while
Black Snake Moan accidentally captures this fact in ways that are horrendously accurate, I don't think that was ever its intent. And for that, I give it two thumbs way the hell down.
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