This week in the Deep Hurting Project is The Smokers. I usually like to cycle between genres (by this point, comedy, horror, then youth.) This week is going to be different. The Smokers is nominally a comedy, but I originally hampered by the fact that it's not funny. It was originally categorised as a drama, but that didn't work because it was trying too hard to be a comedy, but I decided to consider it a comedy/drama/horror hybrid because the plot, well, let me put it this way: it involves three teenaged girls getting revenge on men who only have one night stands with them by raping and torturing them in a semen-filled barn. Sort of like The First Wives Club, except horrible, starring Lolita, Kim Kelly, and some other girl I only saw in a minor role in FDR: American Badass in place of Diane Keaton, Bette Midler, and Goldie Hawn, and directed by a woman who only did porn after this.
- Or when people think of boarding schools, they think of places where people with autism are given electric shocks for stimming.
- "Do you like being a modern woman?" Wow. That's some obvious theme writing.
- They called us The Smokers. Even though smoking barely figures into the plot.
- Wait, does lighting up next to a smoke alarm set it off? And what's even the point in a prank like that?
- Boys and oils? Is that really a thing? I mean, sure, I'm going to get a version of D&G's Light Blue that's been reformulated as a room spray specifically for Alison, but that's not really an oil at that point.
- I'm so sick of being a woman? Well, if you're saying you want to be trans, well, if that's what you want, okay, just be aware that trans folk have it even worse.
- The girls are playing Russian Roulette with a round in all but one chamber, and they're pointing it at each other what the fuck am I watching?
- Have these girls even read a version of Cinderella?
- Why do all these lyrics have such on the nose lyrics?
- So, this is basically a rape-revenge movie with the girls providing both? That's not how that genre's supposed to work! And, yes, I know that being objectified as a woman has to be extremely taxing. It's still nothing that justifies rape. Even actually getting raped probably wouldn't justified it.
- What the Christ even is that mask? A domino with a long yellow moustache where the eyes are supposed to be? Paired with Mickey Mouse ears?
- So, wait, if that note they passed in church is any indication, that guy knows who these girls are, so why are they wearing those fucking masks?
- So, tying men up at gunpoint and mocking them for not being erect at the prospect of being raped at gunpoint. That totally isn't going to help maintain a vicious cycle that'll perpetuate misogyny and make men actually feel afraid of women, possibly justifying the use of violence against women that goes beyond the shit you've spent the last half hour complaining about.
- A revolution? You raped a guy. And you're comparing yourself to Gandhi for it? Are you fucking kidding me?
- "Rape Me To"?
- And comparing the feeling of having a cock in your face (and nothing suggests this is non-consensual, by the way) to having a gun in your face, perpetuating the assumption that women are, by and large, not interested in sex, which kind of helps perpetuate rape culture by assuming that rape isn't that bad because, well, she'll never say yes voluntarily.
- How many times does a man get away with it? I know that rape is a hugely underreported crime, but, the thing is, in this film, you're the one attempting to rape men at gunpoint, and, halfway through the film, I have yet to see a man even try to do anything comparable.
- You don't know what it's like having a hole between your legs waiting for it to be filled. Or you could talk about going to a Catholic boys' school and doing whatever you could to avoid having your classmates fill the other hole between your legs against your will.
- Okay, so how to do something like this plot right: A few years ago, I wrote a short story about a girl who liked to fuck unconscious men. How do I get the readers to sympathise with her? Well, remember the scene from Cape Fear where DeNiro goes on a date with Illeana Douglas and then, after about six minutes of a relatively normal date, all of a sudden, he breaks her arm, takes a huge bite out of her face and rapes her? And then explains she won't testify against him because what the law does to her is still fucking horrible? She saw it on TV in the middle of the night when she was a kid, tuned in to the date scene without knowing what she was watching, and was traumatised by the brutality. There is none of that trauma in this film, and it might have actually helped make this film work. But the trauma of rape exists in this film (at least until the last quarter of the movie) only when the girls inflict it on some poor boys who just had a one-night stand with them.
- You buried the gun? why is When the next question and not where?
- Oh, look the sort of terror that comes with women getting raped finally appeared. You know when this would actually have been warranted? Before they actually decided it would be a good idea to rape these guys at gunpoint for revenge at what women have to deal with.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.