I Used to Think Strippers Who Drug & Rob Men Were Scum. Turns Out They Are 'Empowered Feminists'

RT
Sep. 16, 2019

You can enjoy 'Hustlers,' the new film starring Jennifer Lopez, on its own terms. But to celebrate its heroines – based on real-life scammers who victimized people – as feminist role models is twisted and morally bankrupt.

This is not another one of those on-trend critiques that rejects fiction unless it faithfully amplifies my real-life political views. I am also fully aware of the vicarious white-collar pleasures of watching sympathetic criminals do reprehensible things on-screen, as in, say, 'Goodfellas' or 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' the films that served as the self-conscious template for the competently made 'Hustlers.'

That’s not to say that, even as an aesthetic experience, the story of a crew of multiracial strippers conning white Wall Street bankers in post-2008-crash New York leaves a particularly wholesome aftertaste.

There is supreme cynicism in the way the gang justifies each action by glibly comparing America to a one big strip club – this is the final line in the film – in which everyone is out for themselves. Tell that to the building site worker finishing his 12-hour shift, the emergency department doctor, or the barmaid who doesn’t triple swipe the customer’s credit card.

Or the way the camera manipulatively exploits the strippers’ children as a human shield for their behavior. She just wanted a nanny for her straight-A student daughter! And the next scene wallows in naked materialism as its heroes gift each other Louboutins and chinchilla coats.

Or the contradictions in how the film co-opts the characters’ disadvantaged backgrounds for political underdog kudos, but lets them brag about earning more than a neurosurgeon (but evidently not enough to help them leave a life of crime).

How it dehumanizes the men, who are victim-blamed as deserving marks for having the gall to go and ask for a private dance, or make a lewd comment, or just be rich (one assumes that the perpetrators did a thorough audit to find out whether they had gained the money through virtuous methods). And whose bodies, often helpless from the administered drugs, are used as comedy props with a delighted cruelty.

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