Cannes Review: “Dollhouse” is a faux-feminist wet dream
I shouldn’t be surprised that we’re still here. I shouldn’t be surprised that the next piece being lauded in the festival circuit as an audaciously feminist narrative is another movie full of redundancies and stereotypes masquerading as some kind of exposé on systemic misogyny. And yet, when I learned after my viewing that Dollhouse won the narrative jury prize at Slamdance in 2019, my initial reaction was surprise and shame. But I come from the generation that decided Legally Blonde and Mean Girls were feminist classics despite their exclusive focus on straight, white, thin, traditionally feminine women and larger dismissal of any woman who falls into a different category. I’ve been guilty of it as well, and both of those examples are perfectly enjoyable comedies. But they also have very surface-level theses on feminism and empowerment, and they came out two decades ago. Dollhouse is an extremely different film from them in terms of style and tone, but it shares the same shallow ideas of what misogyny and womanhood entail until they become exponentially worse.
The movie’s crude visual style at times has a unique sort of appeal given the subject matter. The premise of a Britney-esque child star turned sex symbol before she even fully develops physically or mentally is still a disturbingly relevant one, and the number of people who have to be involved to fully exploit children in this position is staggering. The story is a Hollywood tragedy presented as a Behind the Music kind of documentary about Junie Spoons, a young girl put through physical, emotional, and sexual trauma in the public eye. Among a slew of other horrible events, we see her abused by her mother, raped by a twenty-something pop star at fourteen and shamed when the footage is leaked, and driven to addiction. If it kept going on the route of examining the double standards applied to famous women, this might have been an interesting, unique film about the ways abuse can manifest and the ways it affects its victims. Instead it shifts focus and becomes far more insidious under the guise of a call for female liberation, and from that point on the visuals seem a lot less charming.
The absolute most bizarre thing that happens in this mockumentary starring visually unappealing puppets flailing around on strings is the sudden turn it takes around the halfway point. In an instant, it goes from a movie about general misogyny in the entertainment industry to a bitter straw man diatribe against trans women, presenting them as delusional men who want to appropriate womanhood and absolutely never face misogyny or discrimination. They win every court case and bask in constant praise from an adoring public. They look like grotesque monsters of science and certainly don’t get assaulted and murdered at a horrifyingly high rate.
If this subplot was just another scene in the strange, sad life of Junie Spoons, the transphobia would be an uncomfortable implication as it is in a lot of media, and might not completely ruin the experience. But it takes up almost the entire second half of the film and feels like an attempt to convince the audience that the mere existence of trans women is somehow the worst thing cis women face. It also muddies the waters of what else in the movie is a genuine belief of Nicole Brending (who performed almost all of the major roles in production) as opposed to full-on satire. The butch lesbian who breaks up with Junie for not being feminine enough now seems to be more aligned with the abusive men in Junie’s life, because butch women are apparently the same as straight men. The black man demanding sexual favors from white women as some kind of reparation might be a satire of the narrative of a man of color jeopardizing white womanhood while white men are excused from abuse and assault, but then again, maybe not.
For a movie set on dispelling cultural double standards, Dollhouse falls into a great number of them. Women shouldn’t be seen as walking vaginas, but a vagina is also the most important part of female identity. Traditional femininity is constraining, but if you don’t practice it, you’re no better than a misogynistic man. Addiction and depression are mental illnesses that should be taken seriously, but delusions should be vilified, and being trans is a delusion. There are some uncomfortably raw scenes of actual abuse endured by Junie, but beyond that it has nothing of value to say. It uses “misogyny is bad” as a jumping off point and rarely delves any deeper into it except to throw other marginalized groups under the bus. It tries to pass itself off as a voice for rational and intelligent women, but is in reality a conduit for false equivalences and mind-boggling comparisons of oppression with no room for intersection or nuance.
Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity from American Popular Culture will be released on digital platforms August 11.
An MFA student at Hollins University whose penchant for Disney led into a love for all things film. Film critic/essayist and screenwriter. View all posts by Mary McKeon
Originally published at http://miseensense.wordpress.com on August 6, 2020.
