By Claire. 

In its opening weekend, Ocean's 8 surpassed Solo: A Star Wars Story. Star Wars, a franchise known to be dominated by nerdy white men (obviously, this is not accurate to the entire population of Star Wars fans, but these are the ones who are driving actresses like Kelly Marie Tran off of social media due to their domination of critique and harassment), has been surpassed by an all-female heist movie. Additionally, according to Entertainment Weekly, the latest addition to the Ocean’s franchise has the biggest opening weekend out of all of the Oceans movies (not accounting for inflation).

Snaps. For. That.

Directed by Gary Ross, Ocean’s 8 stars Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean, the sister of recently and mysteriously deceased Danny Ocean (George Clooney, only present as a photo in this film, but centres as the link between the Ocean’s franchise). Freshly released from prison, Debbie immediately organises a team of women to pull off a multi-million-dollar heist at the most exclusive event of the year, the Met Gala. This film has the cast of your dreams: Cate Blanchett, Rhianna, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkafina, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Anne Hathaway as the vapid Hollywood starlet Daphne Kluger, whom the Ocean team steal from. 

The film is a joy to watch. Despite John Mulaney’s predictions, the all-female team are supportive of one another. No one is catty or distracted or tearing another down. The characters are cunning and the best at what they do. I left the cinema thinking “I wish I was that smart.” Katie Duggan from Screen Queens had a similar reaction, and writes, “is this how badass men feel all the time? Is this why they feel like they can get away with anything?”





With a stellar line up in its cast and cool-as-heck plot, it’s easy to see why it has achieved such a big opening. This is something audiences have been waiting to see for far too long.

Despite this, the film has also received mixed reviews. Due to the attachment to the Ocean’s franchise name, some (i.e. men) can only see the film in relation to how it compares to the original (male dominated) films. This comes with the inability to critique the film on its own terms.

In the age of Twitter’s call for all female reboots, many (males) enter the cinema with the pre-determined bias of not liking reboots. Just the other day my sister told a guy on the dating app Bumble about how she was going to see Ocean's 8, and he immediately shot down the idea of ever having interest in the film because it would mess with the “unique style” of the original Ocean’s movies. Umm… what?

If people hate reboots, then how do we account for the recent return of Jurassic Park with Jurassic World? How do you account for any of the Star Wars movies made after George Lucas? I am still waiting for a sequel to Paul Fieg’s Ghostbusters, and I would love, but be very surprised, if Ocean’s 8 gets another movie. This cannot be due to the quality of the films. 2015’s Jurassic World received lukewarm reviews, with Variety calling it a “so-so return” and The Guardian declaring the film “has scales, but no soul.” Yet, this has not stopped the franchise, with its sequel also released this month.

Currently, reboots and remakes are a dime a dozen for big studio films. Logically, based on the success of certain films in the past, to replicate that format and story for a new audience seems like a safe bet and easy return. Looking at headlines from over the years, the reality is that this is not always as the case. Sometimes, the success of a film relies on the seamless combination of its ingenuity, the perfect cast and the right director. Jurassic World did not work because it could not replicate the complete unique-ness of the original Jurassic Park film. Nor could it compete with Steven Spielberg, who is one of the founders of the major studio blockbuster. And yet. 

Cate Blanchett and Sandra Bullock in Ocean's 8

Unlike Jurassic World, the likelihood for an Ocean's 8 sequel, even in these early stages, is minimal. A lot of this comes down to a lack of voices in film criticism which champion female-led films.

Over the past week, research by USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism which found most film critics are white, and male was published. The statistics, that 82% of reviews written on the top 100 films of 2017 were male, and of that number 78% were white, is not new information for female and POC critics. Unfortunately, it is the harsh reality.

Most calls for diversity in film criticism include that we need voices to champion female led movies or what are deemed “women’s films”. On the other hand, as Monica Castillo points out, not all women and POC think the same. Women don’t automatically love all films made by, or staring, women and women and POC don’t only want to review films aimed at them.

At the Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards last week, Brie Larson said “I don’t want to hear what a 40-year-old white man has to say about Wrinkle in Time. It wasn’t made for him.” Similarly, Ocean’s 8 star Sandra Bullock argued, “it would be nice if reviewers reflected who the film is for,” which, yes, sounds great, until she continues “like children should review children’s films, not a 60 year old man.”

While their hearts are in the right place, this line of thinking is reductive and restricts writer’s voices even more. Certainly, it would have been great to see more people of colour chosen to write on Black Panther, and less men writing on 2015’s Ghostbusters, but despite recent strides forward for women and diversity in film, there is still a low percentage of films out there which would qualify female and/or POC writers as the target audience.

Ocean's 8 isn’t perfect, but it shouldn’t have to be. The film is for women, and a lot of women love it. Some women don’t, but all find value in it. Unfortunately, to get to these critiques, one has to wade through all the reviews written by men. Like the guy on my sister’s Bumble, it is not uncommon for male critics, too, to be unable to see the film beyond the lens of a remake. To see the film beyond a group of women trying to replace the male characters they love so much. They miss the point.

Film critics have opinions on all films. As Hannah Woodhead wrote in a piece for Little White Lies, “[a]mazingly, women also have opinions about the Fast and Furious films, and POC writers like to talk about all your favourite white directors too.” So how do we balance this? Increase the number of voices heard in film criticism so that there is a more rounded opinion and discussion on films, from a variety of voices and perspectives. Not everyone will agree, but at least criticism can move away from collective crowd-think. Then, not only can girls see themselves in film, but maybe they can see themselves represented in film critique, too.

By Zoë and Marisa.

WARNING: Spoilers for Blade Runner 2049.

Blade Runner 2049, the long-awaited sequel to the cult classic Blade Runner (1982), has been praised by critics for its cinematography, special effects and bold philosophical concepts. However, during our viewing, its representation of women was cause for a large amount of eye-rolling. At risk of being feminist killjoys at the party of gushing praise for this film, we just couldn’t let this slide. 2049’s representation of women is tiresome, disappointing and unoriginal. The women of 2049 are solely defined in relation to men, written as tired stereotypes without any depth. This is evident not just through the limited character development of individual women, but also the broader representation of women in this film as objects for decoration and the male gaze.

Blade Runner 2049 (source)

Blade Runner 2049’s female characters are one-dimensional archetypes, and with a couple of exceptions (we’ll get to those later), 2049’s female characters perfectly express the limited thinking of the virgin-whore (or Madonna-whore) dichotomy. First coined by Sigmund Freud, the Madonna-whore dichotomy was a complex held by men who could not maintain sexual arousal in a loving relationship, although they could with mistresses. The problem, Freud determined, was that these men divided women into two categories: pure, virginal Madonnas and sexually voracious ‘whores’. Because the man views sex as something to do with devalued women, he can’t do it with a woman he loves. The virgin-whore dichotomy is still evident today in culture. And it is this way of thinking -- that women are either pure or slutty -- that permeates 2049. As Ruby Hamad writes, conceptualizing women this way negates “the idea of sex [as] simply something that a woman does, like eating a meal or wash her hair, rather it becomes the thing that defines her.” Crucially, it defines her in relation to men, and how her sexuality impacts them.

Let’s start with Mariette (Mackenzie Davis) the sex worker, a sort of dystopian Pretty Woman with shabby clothes, smudged eyeliner and flawless skin. She has sex with K (Ryan Gosling) after his girlfriend Joi recruits her, her blank face giving no hint of her desires as she undresses for him. The later reveal that she’s part of a replicant resistance movement had the potential to elevate her from a fetishized caricature to a truly interesting character. However, the film quickly moves on from this revelation in favor of giving more screen-time to Jared Leto’s scenery-chewing.

Mackenzie Davis and some of the women of Blade Runner 2049 (source)

On the flip side, we have Dr Ana Stelline (Carla Juri), pretty much the only woman in the film who doesn’t proposition, kiss, or engage sexually with K. She also has a complete lack of autonomy, having been trapped in a glass box since the age of eight because of an illness. Waif-like and dressed all in white, she cries silently, the very image of purity. She’s clearly brilliant and skilled, but the main focus is her connection to Deckard (Harrison Ford). Dr Ana, a woman who apparently managed to get a PhD while living inside a glass box, is reduced to what’s most important: her relation to a man.

Rachel (Sean Young), the lead female character from the original film, is a clear Madonna here: she conceives a baby miraculously, through the power of true love. (An eye-rolling cliché, and a surprise to many who watched Blade Runner. Sexual violence and lack of other options can turn into true love, girls!). Once she’s fulfilled her duty by giving birth, she’s no longer needed. The reappearance of Rachel in 2049 would have been thrilling. But why do that, when you could stuff her in a fridge off-screen to fuel Deckard’s emotional angst?

Finally, we have holographic Joi (Ana de Armas), the male-fantasy FitBit who serves (literally) as K’s girlfriend. Joi is sweet and demure, but she’s also sexy. But rather than being a three-dimensional character, she inhabits these traits at K’s whim: she’s literally his fantasy. She switches between forms of femininity depending on what he wants, inhabiting what feminist Robin Morgan calls “the unbeatable Madonna-whore combination”.^[1]  When she brings Mariette over for sex, she tells K she’s doing it because she feels bad that she can’t have sex with him. There’s no active sexual desire for him, just an expression of guilt. Whether she’s a 1950s-style housewife or dresses more revealingly, Joi remains passive.

Joi and K (source)

In fact, what all the above-mentioned characters have in common is their passivity. Not only are they constrained by social structures, glass boxes or software, they’re largely blank slates. We get no sense of what they want or feel. They want whatever K wants, whatever suits him. 2049 may sort its female characters into narrow categories based on their sexuality, but at least they all have something in common: whether virginal daughters, dead mothers or devoted girlfriends, their defining feature is how they relate to the men of the film.

While not all of the female characters in Blade Runner 2049 fit into these narrow categories, and not all of them are passive, the female characters who actually exhibit some agency aren’t necessarily more complex or better-written characters. The female characters that don’t fit into ‘virgin’, ‘whore’ or ‘Madonna’ still exist clearly in relation to men. Let’s start with Luv (whose name we had to Google as when we were writing this article we realized the female characters’ names just weren’t memorable). Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) is a classically masculine ideal of what a ‘strong’ female character should be, but her passion and determination to succeed in her task are only present because her boss, Wallace (Jared Leto), has deemed this mission to be vital. Her sole purpose is to fulfill the orders of Wallace, and she meets her end carrying out this mission. Her badass aura and get the job done attitude portrays her as practical and logical, stereotypically masculine traits. However, we must still be reminded of her womanhood, demonstrated through the shot of her controlling highly powerful weapons whilst simultaneously getting a manicure. Luv’s active and disciplined characteristics mask her submission to Wallace.

Hoeks as Luv (source)

In hope for some redemption of this film’s poor female representation, let’s move on to the head of the LAPD, who had the potential to be a fully autonomous female character. Lieutenant Joshi’s (Robin Wright) power in her role cannot be denied. She is the head of a whole police task force, which apart from her, is very male dominated. It is great to see a strong female character in an important role. However, one night she visits K in his apartment, and talking about work leads to her attempting to seduce him. This unnecessary pass at K undermines Joshi’s professionalism. Rather than having a sexuality of her own, Joshi’s sexuality exists only in relation to K. It feeds into a male fantasy that assumes almost every female character is interested in K sexually. Competition between the women in this film is a recurring theme and reiterates that a large part of their characterization is reliant on men. Both Luv and Joshi show a level of agency and authority, but it is only exemplified through participating in stereotypically masculine acts of violence and domination. Luv’s violent persona, and Joshi’s casual attitude towards killing anyone the LAPD needs dead, demonstrate again a level of one-dimensional character development that reinforces a misconception that if a woman does anything a man does, she is empowered. To be a woman in 2049 is to be either passive and docile, or active and violent, neither of which encapsulates the true potential of female empowerment.

The way that individual female characters are represented in 2049 is completely reflective of the attitudes towards women as a gender, and the film portrays them as sex objects for male benefit. Objectification of the female body is nothing new in Hollywood, and in this film we see it so blatantly time and time again. In the birth scene, while Wallace delivers a monologue detailing his drive to find a way for reproduction in replicants, a naked female body is hanging from the ceiling in the background. The camera pans around the room, often following Wallace, with the hanging body decorating the frame. It could be argued that this nakedness is being used to symbolize the natural process of birth. However, Wallace’s behavior sexualizes her naked state by kissing the woman, before slicing her stomach open. The camera lingers on her blood-covered thighs, further eroticizing her murder. The whole scene demonstrates a female body being used for dramatic effect and then discarded.

In the scene where K arrives in the deserted vast landscape, the frame is full of large, broken sections of female statues. Fragmented body parts, high heeled shoes, and sexualized open mouth poses are some of the formations of the statues, with no context given; another use of the sexualized female body as decoration in the mise-en-scene. Later, the scene of K looking at the advertisement for Joi, an enormous naked female body accompanied by the slogan “anything you want to hear”, demonstrates that more than just her nakedness is commodified. A product to be bought, in the form of a woman, that is interchangeable, submissive, and of course, sexualized. Then there’s the scene establishing a brothel, where exaggerated sex sounds are heard. The camera pans across a number of women, reduced to silhouettes and shadows, hands against the wall, all the same, while simultaneously highlighting the invisibility of the men. Repetition alludes to their lack of individuality; fragmenting body parts evokes an image of broken and fractured women. Objectification reduces the human body to an object. Feminists have long argued that once objectified, it is easier for violence to be carried out on that body^[2] and objectification in itself is a violent and dehumanizing act.^[3] The representation of the female body collectively in 2049 demonstrates how this fictional dystopian culture views women as subordinate, reflecting our own contemporary society.

An easy rebuttal to this analysis might be, “but it’s a dystopia”. In an overpopulated, impoverished world full of suffering, is it ridiculous to expect truly empowered female characters? Surely in a dystopia it makes more sense for the women to be downtrodden and oppressed?

While it’s true that the dystopian setting justifies the oppressed position of women, this doesn’t rationalize 2049’s lazy treatment of female characters. Perhaps you’ve heard of a show called The Handmaid’s Tale? Like 2049, it depicts a world steeped in misogyny, where women are valued only for how they can serve men. Unlike 2049, it shows us the women’s perspectives, allowing the audience to learn their motivations and desires. Even women who aren’t protagonists in The Handmaid’s Tale are given rich characterizations. The script presents them as more than mere objects, even though that’s how the show’s universe sees them. 2049 could have done the same, rather than the script reinforcing the women’s subordinate position. By showcasing trapped and constrained women, but not affording them motivations or wants that aren’t catering to men, the film reinforces sexism rather than condemning it. A scene of giant pornographic statues in the desert isn’t a condemnation of the objectification of women: when it’s presented without irony or commentary, it’s just objectification.

Blade Runner 2049 ultimately both reflects and reinforces sexist views of women. By presenting female characters who only exist in relation to men and playing into the tired stereotypes of virgin/whore/Madonna, the film shows no interest in the personhood of women. Furthermore, by showing women as only passive and vulnerable, or dominant and violent, the film suggests they can only become empowered by exerting control over others. In conjunction with the endless objectification of the female body, this portrayal of women is tiresome and disappointing. While it aims to show us what the future could look like, this film, through its script and mise-en-scene, inadvertently emphasizes the misogyny of our present.

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^[1] Carina Chocano, You Play The Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Princesses, Trainwrecks and Other Man-Made Men, (United States: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), 9.

^[2] Catharine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: discourses on life and law (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987), 138.

^[3] Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, (London: Women’s Press, 1981), 109