Lucy – Bitch Flicks

The Superman Exists and She is American: Scarlett Johansson in ‘Lucy’

First off, busting the industry perception that men will never flock out to see a movie about a woman, Lucy’s audience was split evenly between the sexes. Moreover, it’s a female led action flick without a romantic subplot or scenes that unnecessarily exploit the lead actress’s sex appeal.
It’s a great showcase for Johansson, as she runs through Europe showing off her action chops and her steely determined expression, and an entertaining delivery system for a mix of pseudo-science and scraps of intriguing philosophy, but feminist game changer it is not.

Posters for Lucy showed only Scarlett Johansson — Posters for *Lucy* showed only Scarlett Johansson

Lucy’s release is a bit of a David and Goliath story.

In one corner, you have a traditional action-adventure based on an age-old legend with universal familiarity and a male lead, who’s proven himself by carrying several films, while in the other, is a female led action film, with a completely original story and pretensions towards high art. Add to that a lead who’s never carried a blockbuster, an R-rating and European provenance and Luc Besson’s film, Lucy seems risky.

While both films were successes, with Lucy earning a cool $44 million its opening weekend and Hercules, $29 million, the big story on their release was the industry’s surprise that the great hero, Hercules, was beaten by “a girl.” Headlines posed it as a physical fight: Lucy alternately beat-up, slayed, pummeled, over muscled, and overpowered Hercules, and that was something to gawk at.

Of course, Hercules couldn’t be defeated by a mere “girl.” She has to be a super-powered engine.

Way back in April, when the film’s first trailer was released, Lucy went viral. The story of an American party girl transformed by a drug that lets her access 100 percent of her brain, it looked like a crazy, brutal ride with Scarlett Johansson morphing into a merciless and unstoppable god-like killer; like Bradley Cooper’s well-received Limitless, but with a woman holding a gun. Even the mind-expanding drug at the centre of the story is gendered feminine, a synthetic form of CPH4, a hormone produced by pregnant women.

It all sounds rather wondrous. A female led-action film is always something to take notice of (they’re as rare as unicorns), especially when it’s successful. Sure, every time a film with a female lead dominates at the box office, feminist critics have to cheer it on a bit regardless of its quality, because of its potential as a game changer (though I’m not sure how many times we need a success before it will actually change the game), but Lucy has a lot going for it.

First off, busting the industry perception that men will never flock out to see a movie about a woman, Lucy’s audience was split evenly between the sexes. Moreover, it’s a female led action flick without a romantic subplot or scenes that unnecessarily exploit the lead actress’s sex appeal.

It’s a great showcase for Johansson, as she runs through Europe showing off her action chops and her steely determined expression, and an entertaining delivery system for a mix of pseudo-science and scraps of intriguing philosophy, but feminist game changer it is not.

American party girl Lucy is manipulated by her boyfriend into becoming a drug mule

Lucy is set up like a rape revenge film, a controversial idea in of itself. Our heroine is manipulated into working as a drug mule by her new boyfriend, who forces her to deliver a briefcase by flirting with her and then handcuffing her to it. Next, she’s lifted off the ground and abducted from a hotel lobby by a group of mobsters who refuse to explain anything to her and promise to kill her and her family if she refuses to cooperate. After being knocked unconscious, she wakes up in a strange bedroom stripped to her underwear to find her body has been violated, except, instead of raping Lucy, her captors have cut her open and sewn a bag of drugs inside her body which she will have to deliver for them. Through all this, Lucy is helpless and relentlessly victimized; she has no idea how to save herself from these men who have claimed ownership of her body and her will.

Lucy wakes up in an unfamiliar room, in a scene reminiscent of a woman discovering she has been drugged and raped

Until one of her captors kicks her in the stomach, which causes the drugs to leak into her body, inadvertently unlocking her mind and eventually giving her superhuman abilities like telekinesis, telepathy, invulnerability to pain, mind control, and time travel as the area of her brain she is able to access rises. Along with this, comes a Greek god’s sense of morality, as she begins to see human beings as insignificant creatures that she can kill for simply being in her way.

And what is Lucy to do with her superpowers? Does she want to save herself from the effects of the drug, which promise to kill her within 24 hours? Does she want revenge or to stop others from being victimized as she was? No, she just wants all the CPH4 left so she can accumulate all human knowledge and build a supercomputer. Really, that’s the plot.

Lucy gains superhuman abilities and invulnerability

Though she does kill off the mobsters, it’s only incidental to her goal. In fact, she helps the police arrest the other drug mules, people who have been victimized just as she was, with no concern to the punishment they will face.

The problem with creating a god-like protagonist with no concern for humanity is that she has no concern for humanity. Lucy has no passion or anger about what has happened to her and after a few early scenes, there’s no reason to sympathize or identify with her. Because she no longer has human concerns, the stakes are no longer personal. Because she’s become so powerful, there’s also no struggle for her, no question of whether or not she will succeed. Lucy is an unstoppable force and her enemies are nothing more than bugs on a windshield. A good action film should have character development as well as fight scenes and explosions, and Lucy is sorely lacking in that department.

As an action heroine, Lucy wields a gun and kills without hesitation

Shortly after the drug leaks into her system, Lucy makes one final phone call to her parents, where she tearfully says goodbye and thanks them for raising her so well. This short scene is all we really get of Lucy’s past or of her humanity and once she hangs up the phone, she quickly loses any determination to stay alive or return to her old life. By the time she arrives at the apartment she shares with her friend, Caroline ( Analeigh Tipton), she is cold and impartial.

A film with an emotionless, inhuman god or robot figure only works when there is also a human character we are meant to connect and sympathize with–John and Sarah Connor to the unyielding Terminator. Here, Lucy tries to be both human and inhuman, giving us no real reason to care about her. Though she’s joined by a French police officer, Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked), playing the usual female role of grounding their superhuman partner, he is given no backstory and we are given no indication that we are meant to switch to identifying with him. His purpose in the story is unclear as, though she kisses him in one scene, saying she needs him to keep her connected to humanity, but we never see this actually happen and the kiss is very dry and perfunctory, indicating he is not meant to be a romantic interest.

Morgan Freeman explains Lucy’s actions as she becomes less and less human

Morgan Freeman is also along for the ride as a scientist whose lectures on the human brain are paired with scenes of Lucy’s transformation as if she is his object lesson. Though Lucy apparently has surpassed his knowledge by the time she speaks to him and knows enough to criticize his theories, he is still posed as an expert who she needs to help her on her quest. By the last segment of the film, Lucy has lost so much humanity that she becomes nothing more than a beautiful object, a Marilyn Monroe mannequin, moved around and explained by men. As she sits silently in a chair absorbing CPH4 and watching spectacular effects only she can see, Morgan Freeman narrates what is happening to her. While her body transforms, she becomes less human, less verbal and therefore less of a character. By the film’s end, her physical form and anything that was specifically the human woman named Lucy cease to exist. Instead, she becomes a force of knowledge that exists “everywhere” and a supercomputer that the male characters can use, a literal object that will somehow save them, though what she hopes they will do with it is never explained.

In addition, there’s definitely some racism at work in the film, which is set in Asia and filled with Asian villains who violate a “‘pure white woman.” There is no real reason the crime story has to to take place in Taiwan aside from vague cultural perceptions that Asia is full of drugs and crime. In one scene, Lucy kills three men after they tell her they don’t speak English, suggesting that they deserved to die for not speaking her language, though she’s the one in a foreign country.

Set in Taiwan, the film shows Asian men preying on a white woman

The filmmakers appeared to take for granted that they would be viewed as progressive for using a female lead, but instead, merely transform the standard white savior from male to female without paying attention to the problematic idea of the white savior itself. Viewers who praise the film as feminist ignore the idea the idea that feminism does not only include white women.

Like any successful female led film, Lucy should also be looked at for its potential to change the media landscape. Scarlett Johansson definitely gives it her all and shows her potential as an action star, capable of helming a film even without her fellow Avengers. Perhaps Lucy’s success will lead to a solo film for her popular Black Widow character or to films for some of our other favorite superheroines.

On its own, Lucy is a cheesy and entertaining ride if you don’t think too much about it. It casts a woman in a superhuman role that women rarely get to play and never plays it as a surprise or irony that the person tasked with advancing the human race is female. That much is admirable.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

“I Choose Gru!”: on ‘Despicable Me 2’ and Lucy Wilde

I only recently discovered the ‘Despicable Me’ movies, and I’m overjoyed that I have an excuse to review the second one and to explicate its feminist elements, especially since so many women have primary roles in the ever-changing life of villain-turned-hero Gru (Steve Carell). In fact, I love these films so much, I enjoyed a Despicable-themed birthday cake earlier this week. It’s no mistake that the second movie concludes while Cinco de Mayo festivities ensue–my birthday!

Written by Jenny Lapekas.

I only recently discovered the Despicable Me movies, and I’m overjoyed that I have an excuse to review the second one and to explicate its feminist elements, especially since so many women have primary roles in the ever-changing life of villain-turned-hero Gru (Steve Carell). In fact, I love these films so much, I enjoyed a Despicable-themed birthday cake earlier this week. It’s no mistake that the second movie concludes while Cinco de Mayo festivities ensue–my birthday!

Gru returns to us in Despicable Me 2 (Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaid, 2013) as a nurturing father to three wonderful little girls–Agnes, Edith, and Margo–and we find that he’s able to merge his fatherhood duties with his exciting lifestyle. In the first film, Gru’s main priority is to become the most evil villain in the world, and he competes with the nerdy yet skilled Vector (Jason Segel) for the title. While Gru’s evil deeds range from cutting in line for coffee to encouraging his ugly dog to poop on his neighbor’s flowers, he literally gives up the moon for his girls, which now includes his new wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), sent from the Anti-Villain League to request his help in pursuing a new villain. Because Lucy completes the image the girls maintain of the exemplary family before they were adopted, and she finds a way into Gru’s heart as well, I would like to focus primarily on her in this post.

Gru is slow to recognize that Lucy's antics complement his nicely. — Gru is slow to recognize that Lucy’s antics complement his nicely.

The various roles Lucy plays in this movie are pivotal to the plot and character development we see throughout as we come to understand her as a professional, a cunning and intelligent woman, and an undeniably feminist hero. That isn’t to say that Gru is not a feminist character as well–indeed, he is very much so. Lucy becomes Gru’s work partner as the two get themselves into trouble, only to come to each other’s rescue. She then becomes the temporarily unattainable love interest, then the damsel in distress, and finally Gru’s bride and a mother to the precocious girls, who find their new mom pretty amazing. As Gru is busy uncovering clues for the Anti-Villain League and combating Margo’s (Miranda Cosgrove) newfound interest in boys, he can’t help but fall for the poise and quirky charm that Lucy emanates.

At Agnes’s birthday party, an unnamed woman is persistent in setting Gru up on a blind date. Why the push to find someone to love and marry? This buzzing in Gru’s ear is symptomatic of the heteronormative agenda Gru is struggling to resist. Gru rejects the woman’s invitations both intellectually and socially by not-so-politely declining, and bodily by spraying her with a garden hose. His comical proclamation “I did not see you there…or there,” as he knocks her off her feet, signifies the ex-villain’s outright refusal to acknowledge his own “aloneness” (not to be confused with “loneliness”) that others may see when they look at a single (and new) father. Quite simply, Gru feels perfectly fulfilled by his daughters and his rather eccentric life fighting villains and manufacturing delicious jams and jellies.

However, I think it’s important for us to notice this dynamic as a downtrodden Gru admits to “liking” Lucy to his youngest daughter Agnes (Elsie Fisher), trusting her with this intimate and sensitive knowledge. Although Gru inevitably gives in to the social contract that we should all marry, especially when we have children, he does so on his own terms and in the name of true love.

Dressed as a fairy princess for the birthday party, Gru is excitedly told, “I know someone whose husband just died!”

Lucy arrives quite unannounced and throws Gru in the trunk of her car after assaulting him with her “lipstick taser,” a handy tool that helps her to take advantage of her femininity while fighting crime. After Gru proves his strength and cunning in the first movie, it’s a bit of a surprise to watch an unknown character take him down so quickly. However, it’s only fitting that the pair then fall in love and marry; Gru has met his match in more ways than one. Lucy is kind yet assertive, and possibly most important, she knows how to balance these qualities to embody the type of woman that Gru’s daughters can hope to become someday. We love her even as Gru’s minions are chasing her car to save their boss, and we continue to adore her even as she embarks on her journey to Australia to take a new job far away from Gru and the girls, only to jump out of the plane and claim Gru as hers.

As we'll see, the violence in the film is naturalized as a source of comedy. — As we’ll see, the violence in the film is naturalized as a source of comedy.

When Gru is forced to go on a date with the insufferable caricature Shannon (Kristen Schaal), Lucy takes the initiative to end the date prematurely because she sees that Gru is being demeaned by the shallow woman, specifically for wearing a hair piece in order to hide the fact that he’s bald. In perhaps one of the darker scenes in the film (along with Gru indirectly threatening to kill his neighbor’s dog in the first movie), Lucy shoots Shannon with a tranquilizer dart, and the two load Shannon’s inanimate body on the roof of Lucy’s car, reasoning to bystanders that she has drunk a bit too much wine with her meal, and they proceed to dump her body at her doorstep as if she’s dead. If we look carefully later on, we see that Shannon is actually a guest at the couple’s wedding.

Gru is thankful to Lucy for rescuing him.

In the final action scene, I think it’s important to refrain from classifying Lucy as purely a “damsel in distress,” although this is how I reference her above–because this is, after all, what she is when she’s strapped to a rocket–along with a comically large shark–that’s set to launch into a volcano. However, from the moment we meet Lucy, we know she’s self-sufficient and more than anything, smart; after all, her decision to love Gru is smart as he’s likely the only person capable of defeating El Macho. In fact, every decision Lucy makes throughout Despicable Me 2 is for the betterment of Gru and his growing family. He doesn’t rescue Lucy–just as he rescued Edith, Agnes, and Margo in the first movie–because these characters are helpless females; rather, this conclusion confirms his placement as a hero rather than a villain. On the contrary, the women found in the Despicable movies are quite capable of protecting themselves and those they care about.

As Gru attempts to deactivate the rocket, Lucy offers her expertise: “Is there a red one? It’s usually the red one.”

In the wedding scene, which of course involves some skillful dancing, Agnes recites a monologue that she struggles with earlier in the film: an homage to her mother. The meaning of this recitation has now shifted since she’s gained a mother. Earlier, we also enjoy a private moment when Agnes first meets Lucy at the mall and she’s simply dazzled by her presence, a nice precursor to the girls coming to know her as their own mother and celebrating their status as a complete and unique family.

Agnes recites, “She kisses my boo-boos, she braids my hair, we love you mothers, everywhere, and my new mom Lucy, is beyond compare.”

Because of Lucy and the girls, Gru comes to understand that he’s not merely a villain in a perpetually bad mood; he’s a caring father, a loving husband, and a boss who’s willing to give goodnight kisses to each and every one of his funny, yellow workers, who are, after all, part of his family as well. Both Despicable films can be read as feminist pieces as Gru is transformed by the feminine energy he finds pervading his life, influencing his decisions, and causing him to reevaluate his ideals as a villain and a single man. A concurrently responsible yet offbeat character, Gru represents the new family man in this second film. With the introduction of the delightful Lucy, Gru finds yet another reason to strive to be his best possible self by taking on the role of husband and learning that if he overcomes his fear of the unknown (and women!), he can attain true happiness.

A lovely wedding photo, complete with Gru's cranky mother and adorable minions. — A lovely wedding photo, complete with Gru’s cranky mother and adorable minions.

With the upcoming release of Despicable Me 3 (2017), we can expect more zaniness from the extraordinary family!

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Jenny has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.