sucker punch

This post discusses abuse in asylums, including sexual assault. It discusses the history of lobotomies and describes (briefly) the procedure. It also contains spoilers for the movie Sucker Punch.

I went to see Sucker Punch expecting a light piece of fluff that involved conventionally attractive young women with swords fighting a dragon. It's a movie where one of the lines highlighted in the trailer is "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." I was prepared for a light popcorn-type film and showed up for a midnight screening with one of my friends, two martinis to the wind.

I was really not expecting a film that laid out how abusive asylums and long-term care centers can be—and often are. I was not expecting a film that laid out how asylums could be used to silence uppity women. And I was really not prepared for a film that showed bluntly and horrifyingly what lobotomies involved and how they completely destroyed people's personalities.

You know, I would really like to enjoy Snyder's films. Because they look nice. And also, I enjoy going to the theatre, turning my brain off, and being dazzled. But he keeps on having to throw these wrenches in my brainless enjoyment...

...My heart just cannot take any more films or TV shows (or books or whatever) that try to turn into entertainment our culture's (and many other cultures) long history of locking up people with psychiatric disabilities and subjecting them to horrendous and unimaginable and inhuman conditions, sometimes for their entire lives.

And let's not even get into the fact that Snyder's main character (characters?) is meant to arouse our sympathies simply by being that distillation of all that needs to be protected and cherished: the perfectly petite, panty-wearing blonde virgin. This is a formula that objectifies white women and erases all others, and it's just not going to fly much longer.