Suicide Squad: You Don’t Own Me.

Warning: Spoilers.

I was excited to watch Suicide Squad for a very long time; after reading the comics & loving them and loving that it was going to include characters like Harley Quinn and Katana I went to the cinema and waited to be entertained. Now here is usually where reviews of this film veer off because they weren’t expecting anything, they perhaps didn’t know the characters and instead were wanting to watch a more Marvel like film and got disappointed when it wasn’t; which is weird because I’m pretty sure there are more than 13 Marvel films they could watch instead. I’ve listened to criticisms of the film and I get some of them: it’s start was trying to explain the characters because many don’t know who they are but I enjoyed it and thought it wasn’t half as clunky exposition wise as say Avengers: Age of Ultron; I get some criticisms of Enchantress not being the best villain but as pretty much every Marvel film can attest to when you want to focus on the main characters you don’t get as much time to show off your villain and the resolution can be a bit easy. But I really loved it, I thought it was hilarious, and it did really well at the box office, so it was weird to go online and see people, such as Digital Spy, talking about it like we’d all gathered round and agreed that it was a disaster that Warner Brothers would need help getting over.

In terms of talking about it being sexist there is definitely a fair amount to choose from but I wasn’t exactly expecting feminism from a film about a bunch of serial killers. Now I’m a big advocate for everything eventually being feminist because sexism, especially in films, serves no real purpose except to alienate your female audience and pat the sexist men on the back. But when we get to comics that are almost always written by men, drawn by men, and aimed at men and then we translate those to film it becomes very tricky. For Suicide Squad it was using characters who were drawn by men for men and it’s why we got Harley in hot pants and Enchantress in a bikini. It’s also why we got Black Widow photo shopped for Captain America 2 and why Marvel CU should be glad they haven’t brought Spider Woman to life yet considering the way men draw her character.

There were various moments in the film that were there to show that the members of Task Force X are the lowest of the low, and that those they come into contact with are the same, heck even the guards at Belle Reve were sexist dickbags – it’s not like male prison guards turn off their sexism at work. So I expected plenty of sexism here and there and I got it, and I was uncomfortable in return. The interactions of men with Harley reminded me of animated, and comic, versions of Wonder Woman where she faces sexist comments so she can rebuff them with a look, a word, and sometimes even a punch. Some time ago in the DC offices it was kind of agreed that they should move away from making comics for children and make them for adults instead and they did and unfortunately that meant bringing the sexism and other crap with them; not that Marvel are much better people just seem not to care as much (looking at you 8 years of films with only male leads, particularly white guys called Chris).

But amongst all of this criticism about the sexism and objectification in this film there was a weird bit in an article that criticised Harley’s perfect idea of life: being normal, married to the man she loves, and having kids. Now don’t get me wrong feminism is pretty big on the whole criticism of the institution of marriage, the ideal of heterosexuality, and women’s goal in life being kids but to criticise Harley for this, to me, fundamentally misunderstands her character and her relationship with the Joker. It should be painfully obvious to everyone that Harley is stuck in an abusive relationship with the Joker; he literally manipulates her, abuses her, and despite him coming to rescue her in the film it’s largely to get back the thing he feels he owns. That Margot Robbie had to point this out shows how films, and other mediums, are terrible at getting abuse across to people; though I would have thought that literally leaving Harley to die half out of a car window at the bottom of a river would have made it abundantly obvious.

So for Harley to want normal, unpainted and dyed Joker and a family makes perfect sense. She just wants to be, to not have to fight, to dress up and pretend that she lives for madness and violence. Even in Mad Love, the episode in the animated series that shows Harley’s relationship with the Joker, we see Harley choosing to kill Batman so the Joker will calm down and just be with her; in that we also see him hitting her, hating that she’s smarter than him, her being manipulated by his lies, and even after having been pushed out of a window by him saying that it is all her fault. Then in its final moments when she seems to have realised his true self and motivations she falls straight back into his affections with a measly flower and note; this too is common in abusive relationships as it makes the abused think that maybe he is good after all and that the only reason he abuses is because of her words and actions, and not the reality that it’s his choice.

It was painful for me to watch Harley and the Joker, as it would be watching any depiction of an abusive relationship. It was disappointing too that in the end he is alive and breaks her out of prison again; I understand that any origin story for Harley has to include the Joker as she was created, by Paul Dini, to be his girlfriend but my hope would be that the DCU gets that Harley is better without him, and that we eventually get a solo film where she breaks free for good and sets out on her own. Though maybe stay away from other abusive relationships she gets stuck in, like with Poison Ivy. It’s a shame for me too that Harley’s intelligence often gets misunderstood, such as the climax working because even Enchantress just sees a quirky, flirty, scantily clad woman instead of a seriously smart and brave woman. Even Margot Robbie misunderstood that her intelligence doesn’t mean she can keep herself out of abusive relationships; the Joker is an immensely skilled manipulator – just ask Batman -  and considering the violence Harley has no doubt committed in his name, against others and herself, it wouldn’t surprise me that she has to work to justify her actions by staying with the man who forced her to ruin her life.

Suicide Squad was a joy for me to watch as well just because it was refreshing to watch women be unapologetically horrible; I get the Gone Girl argument that showing women being hideous isn’t the feminist film future we want but it’s at least something to let women be things outside of the few roles they’re shoved into – even half naked Harley was given depth, a key role, and had her character and smarts acknowledged. It was amazing to see Amanda Waller finally done justice in person too, Davis gave a phenomenal performance; the less said about her character in Arrow get shot in the head & never mentioned again the better. Plus, just having basic diversity of having women and men of colour in key roles can’t be talked about enough; to mention Marvel again who so far have had one Asian woman and they shot her and in this we got to see Katana, despite sadly not getting enough screen time (Katana film anyone?), being badass and actually speak Japanese.

As a whole I think moving towards more films like this with amazing women in lead roles, being all sorts of things (though let’s move away from this whole saving the girlfriend thing yeah, whether she’s taken over by an ancient witch or not) is a step in the right direction. I’ll grit my teeth through another Batman, and Superman film if it means we get a chance to see some of DC’s incredible female characters on the big screen. I’ll keep on enjoying superhero films that have bite, that get the catch 22s of trying to save the world (I actually liked Iron Man 3 guys), and if one more person tells DC films to lighten up I might just have to sit them down and explain to them that it would be super boring if we just kept making superhero films that were identical to one another, shout out to Marvel CU there. Now I think I’m going to go crack out my Gotham Sirens graphic novels.