Fight scenes are a dime a dozen in the cinematic coming-of-age landscape, but these sorts of stories are almost exclusively tied to young men, and the closest thing women get tends to fall under the exploitation umbrella of revenge thrillers. Fortunately, “Bottoms” subverts all of those baked-in themes we associate with teen films, and gives women the chance to hit back. They terrorize the home of a football player and a girl bombs his car, they have multiple montages of punching each other in the face, and in the absolutely raucous climax, they not only fight football players twice their size, but a few of the girls actually kill some of these guys. It’s all played for comedic effect, but it’s a giant wad of phlegm spitting on the idea that “fighting is never the answer.”
Nah. Sometimes fighting is absolutely the answer, because to win, you’ve gotta enter the same playing field.
After Barbieland has been turned into a Kendom and the Barbies are stripped of their autonomy by the brainwashing influence of patriarchy, things feel helpless. It isn’t until they concoct a master plan to deprogram all of the Barbies, using emotional manipulation as a distraction method to keep the Kens busy, that they find hope. Women feign ignorance and helplessness and continue to stroke the egos of the Kens, knowing the guys will be too stupid to realize they’re being played. The Barbies eventually pit them against each other by picking at their insecurities, and instead of the Kens directly addressing their issues, they lash out at one another. The Barbies wash their perfectly manicured hands clean of the patriarchy and get busy reinstating the Barbieland constitution while the men are busy fighting. You don’t fight fire with fire, you fight with the tools you have that guarantee success.
My dad was right. Women are unpredictable. And that’s why the patriarchy is so scared of us.
On today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast, I spoke about these two films and the rest of my Top 10 movies of 2023, and you can listen to it below:
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