Baby Driver (2017)
I'm going to be addressing a problematic and offensive aspect of the movie: the way the female characters are written.
What is Baby Driver about?
After being coerced into working for a crime boss, a young getaway driver finds himself taking part in a heist doomed to fail. (from IMDB)
My review of Baby Driver
Before I get to the point of this post, I just want to summarise my opinion on the rest of the film - which isn't all bad. It's actually an extremely original and fascinating story idea. The soundtrack is funky and stylish, and the choreography is expertly coordinated with the actors' movements. The action sequences are also terrific.
But the acting isn't brilliant, with the exception of Jamie Foxx. As for the characters, they're stereotypical and flat, and Baby and Debora's relationship gets no development. Then there's the plot. A plot that has little to show for itself, and can't decide where to work its humour and tragedy. And instead of Baby's lip singing and dancing coming across fun and catchy, it's embarrassing. I honestly just cringed. I'm not averse to musical content in films, but this one feels, I don't know, silly? I mean, is it a musical or not. Please decide.
However, the film has a problem bigger than all those little ones. And its problem is how it treats and portrays its women. This is 2018, after all, and I thought Hollywood would've learnt by now.
Obviously not.
There are two main women in the film, and I'm going to be analysing their roles and how they've been written.
Debora
Debora is the love interest. She's also a waitress, and apparently has no life outside of Baby. And as we all know, you can't go wrong writing a female character whose sole purpose in life is to serve her boyfriend and make him look like a hero...
Sigh.
Debora's character is a hot mess. We learn nothing about her life apart from the fact that she likes music, cars, and that her mother's dead. Her role in the story is first as Baby's love interest, and then his liability when the writers apparently need a damsel in distress to make things exciting.
Frankly, it’s just lazy, sexist writing. Her participation in the climatic fight - whacking the villain with a rod - is a nice touch, but it doesn't redeem her character. She puts her entire life (spoiler: she doesn't actually have one. She even admits to Baby that there's "nothing for me here". Which is convenient, I might add, because now she's free to be his devotional love interest) on hold so that she can run away with him when he says the word. To make it worse, Debora actually watches him murder people right in front of her eyes, and still doesn't doubt for a second he's worth following to the ends of the earth.
(And please note, they hardly even know each other, either). Even when Baby makes it obvious that his mysterious job is questionable, Debora doesn't doubt for a second that he's not to be feared. He's not the bad guy. Obviously not. She takes his word for it, throws caution - and common sense and any chance of character development - to the wind, and drives wherever and whenever he says go. Isn’t she the perfect girlfriend.
Darling / Monica Castello
Darling is one of the gangsters Baby drives for, and she's also the wife of one of them. As far as stereotypes go, she's a well known one. She's the badass, sexy chic. And I liked her - however flat and stereotypical her character was. She was fun.
And then she died.
Another dead woman.
Of all the women in this film, it's Darling whom I think suffers the most. She's the woman who's "In the Refrigerator", as the trope goes. The "Woman in Refrigerator " trope is when a woman is killed off to aid and give motivation to a man's story. Darling does this for her husband, who becomes the lead villain to avenge her and to give us an action-packed finale.
Come on, they had to get a villain from somewhere right? And what's Darling if not collateral damage.
She is violently shot down by the police and immediately Baby and Debora have themselves a villain who blames Baby for his wife's death. And naturally, that villain wants to kill Debora for poetic revenge (which is another way her character's simply used in this sexist movie).
So, as you can see, Darling is only in the film so that her death can give make her husband the villain and give him motivation.
It's sick.
Women are not figures to be abused and killed off to further the male characters' stories, and they are certainly not to be reduced to sexist stereotypes because the writers are either too lazy or too lost in a misogynistic mindset to pay them attention.