I used to like the young actress Christina Ricci. She struck me as being very smart and a little weird. One would hardly expect anything else from someone who began her acting career as a child playing Wednesday in the Addams Family. However, she has just unleashed a full-fledged Hollywood screed that has me questioning if she is either a little less smart and/or a whole lot more phony than I had previously imagined.
The objectification of women upsets Ricci. The thing particularly galling to her is a growing trend among women finding such an image desirable. She vented all this in a recent interview with Black Book magazine.
“It’s like the highest form of flattery for teenage girls . . . It used to be something that we were sort of ashamed of. You didn’t want to admit it to people if you were a stripper. But now, the hottest thing to say is, ‘I can work a pole!’.”
While I understand the concerns she raises, her diatribe reminded me about a movie that Ricci made in 2006, called Black Snake Moan. I never saw this movie, so I went and looked up several plot summaries and reviews for it and they confirmed what I remembered from the film’s rather lurid posters and trailers.
Black Snake Moan is the simple story of an unsuccessful blues musician turned unsuccessful farmer, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson’s character is having a bad day; his wife has just left him for his younger brother. Then he finds a badly battered young blond girl in the mud next to his driveway, wearing nothing but a cut-off T-shirt and panties. Ricci plays the girl. It turns out she was raped, beaten, and left for dead by a group of men she had met that evening after a fling of abandoned partying, booze, and alcohol.
Jackson’s character suddenly has a purpose in life again and he sets out to nurse the battered girl back to health. It seems that Ricci’s character is the town slut. Sexual abuse by her stepfather, verbal abuse from her mother, and hard treatment from everybody else has made her into a nymphomaniac. She thought she had finally found a man who could make her happy but he is a Marine just sent off on a tour of duty in Iraq. She suffers from bad dreams or repressed memories that cause her to seethe and writhe and from which she can obtain release only by abandoned but meaningless sex.
Jackson’s character is a decent but poor and uneducated fellow, more prone to picking up and reading the Bible than a copy of Psychology Today. Shocked by the girl’s “spells,” he decides she suffers from demonic possession. He decides to cure her and starts by keeping her safe from hurting herself and others. How does he do this? He uses a forty-foot iron chain to bind her to the radiator in the bedroom.
Yes, you read that right. He chains her up while she continues to writhe and moan. Ricci’s dissatisfaction with the desire for objectification by her fellow young women now becomes clearer. Why brag about your prowess “working a pole” when a radiator is available?
Lest you think the musician-turned-farmer is just secretly getting his jollies by acting out bondage fantasies, it seems he really does care about Ricci’s character and wants to help her. He gives her nutritious food, medical attention, and a clean dress to wear (eventually). He pulls out his old guitar and sings to her, as a way to get her mind off her more base desires. On one occasion, when she is feeling especially peckish, he thoughtfully washes her back to calm her.
Yes, you read that last part right, too.
Unbelievably, some respectable, mainstream critics actually liked this movie, partly for its “strong performances” and partly for the It’s a Wonderful Life ending it offers. Ricci’s character comes to like the man holding her captive because he is trying to help her. She stays with him even when he finally unchains her.
Her Marine boyfriend returns from Iraq, now suffering from PTSD. When he first discovers the little household created in his absence, he nearly kills Jackson’s character. However, after help from Jackson, he ends up marrying the girl and the two find the inner strength and self-respect to help each other with their respective problems. Jackson’s character also gets over his wife’s rejection and finds a new love.
Personally, I think I side with the critic who described Black Snake Moan as “nasty, sappy and (unintentionally) amusing . . . bad enough to make wolves howl and gums bleed.” So why the hell would Ricci make such a sexist, misogynistic piece of trash?
If interviews from the time are right, she actually thought she making a highly positive piece, celebrating feminist discovery and self-actualization. She told Ireland Online, “The whole reason I made that movie was to say: Oh yeah, that girl you called a slut probably went through this, so you might not want to use her and throw her away or judge her.”
Ricci explained to Entertainment Weekly that she remained in her scanty wardrobe even when not shooting. “Sam [Jackson] would be like, ‘Put some clothes on!’ I was like, ‘No, you don't understand. I'm doing something important’.”
Alas, Ricci was equally disgusted by her own objectification in the movie’s promotion. She just could not understand why a film about a woman achieving salvation while wearing cut-offs and chained to a radiator would feature a picture of her wearing cut-offs and chained to a radiator.
“All the [marketing bosses] cared about was young boys going to see it,” she sniffs. Of course, some of those young boys probably took along some young girls as friends or dates and I cannot help but wonder how many of those girls, seeing such a depiction with its upbeat ending, did not end up getting a little inspired towards the very standards Ricci so deplores. If she wants to know what kind of women would promote such a standard, maybe she ought to try looking in the mirror.
Ricci’s next film is a Hollywood remake of the old anime cartoon Speed Racer. She plays the girlfriend, Trixie. That sounds like its just about her speed.
