My Misogynistic Movie Night

A couple of Fridays ago, I was absolutely ready to blow off steam at the end of the week, and I hadn’t seen a new sci-fi in a while. The boyfriend suggested we go see the new Vin Diesel movie with his friends – Riddick. For those of you who follow the series, you’ll know that this third installment follows Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick – tales of a bald, goggled bad ass.

Now, I’m all for an ass-kicking, gun-shooting, dying planet romp every once in a while. But I honestly have to say that when the movie was over, I was pissed. There was plenty of ass-kicking and monster slaying, but the only thing I could see was the unbelievable amount of gender bias that characterized any scene that included a female. The first shot that included women wasn’t focusing on them as people at all – all FOUR of them were hanging out in Riddick’s bed, basically wearing nothing at all. While they were lovely women to look at, it would have been so great if we could have gotten at least fifteen minutes into the film without being slapped in the face with such a highly sexualized scene.

Did I mention that none of those women had names? Neither did the next woman we see, nearly a half hour later. At this point, Riddick is chilling on a fairly desolate planet after being betrayed and dropped off there by some guy with a bunch of guns. He has tripped a distress beacon at a merc (mercenary) outpost, hoping it will bring someone down to the planet so he can steal their ship. The beacon reads his face, and broadcasts that a known murderer, traitor, etc., is down on the planet, so a couple of bounty hunter ships show up. The first to arrive is headed by a guy named Santana, who we assume is “not a nice guy”. We’re so right, because within a few minutes, we’re hit with the first scene that made me sick to my stomach. A woman is knocked out with some kind of IV drug, chained to a chair within Santana’s ship. She has obviously been there for a while. When Santana orders her to be woken up, she starts shrieking – essentially, “get away from me”. Santana releases her in order to make room for Riddick, she runs off, and he shoots her in the back, right in front of Riddick who is hiding behind some rocks. He looks (somewhat) pissed.

Wow. So now we know that this poor woman who has no name has been chained within Santana’s ship, having men force themselves upon her for an unknown amount of time. And what is the point of showing us this? It’s a foil for Riddick’s character. That’s it. Rape as a foil?! I believe it’s extremely important to raise awareness about rape and sexual assault, but I don’t think the Riddick movie was trying to do that. It’s just thrown in there, like its natural. I found it unbelievably problematic that up until this point in the movie, the female characters were seen ONLY as sex objects – whether they wanted it or not, as was the case with this woman.

There’s more. We are then introduced to Dahl (pronounced as ‘Doll’, oh haha I get it) who is the only female bounty hunter in both groups, and is, frankly, a gorgeous bad ass. She is also a lesbian. Santana tries to do the same to Dahl as he did to his unnamed prisoner from earlier. While she beats the heck out of him, and he doesn’t succeed, this is the second rape reference we have seen thus far in the film. Just like that, as if it were normal. She stoically endures multiple sexist remarks by Santana, the other bounty hunters, and Riddick himself throughout the film.

The grand finale of this  misogynistic ride comes when the hunters finally capture Riddick. Riddick knows that there are a bunch of serpent monsters coming, and of course the bounty hunters won’t be able to kill them all without his own bad-assery, so he threatens them. He tells them that they need to take off his chains, or he will kill them one at a time, and then “go balls deep in Dahl, but only because she asks me to, sweet-like,” or something to that effect. My response at this point was…really, that’s disgusting? But apparently Dahl was cool with it, because at the end of the movie when she rescues him from the monsters via ship, coast guard style, he grabs her ass and smiles and she says, “Let me ask you something, sweet-like.” Wow. So you mean to tell me that Dahl decided that she was indeed, not a lesbian, because Riddick rudely propositioned her? That is truly a disgusting trope – the right man can convert a lesbian – and frankly, I was so offended that I jumped out of my seat with alacrity when the movie came to its end.

Before anyone tries to argue – I heard “hey, it’s a guy movie, don’t go next time” from the boyfriend and his friends – I ask you this: what message is this sending Riddick’s target audience? If we are assuming that this movie is, in fact, a “guy’s movie”…shouldn’t we be worried about what it is implying to young men? Apparently, according to Riddick, rape and sexual assault is a frequent and natural occurrence, sexist jokes and remarks are commonplace and funny, and lesbians can be converted back to heterosexuality if the right penis comes along. This is obviously and absolutely wrong. I can’t get my eleven dollars back, or the two hours of my life I spent suffering in the movie theater…but that message can’t be taken back either once it’s been said. And that’s what worries me.