I have always been an introvert and a media nut. Give me a good book, movie, song, and I am a happy camper. Something about using allegory and metaphor to give you a feeling not just tell you about it. Giving you a beautiful cinematic shot to represent an emotion, telling a story through vision and symbolism. There’s nothing better, in my mind. As a child I was grounded for every little infraction caused by myself or my siblings. It was a prison sometimes, my dad, someone who raised his boys already, was a single dad in his 50’s when I was a teen, naturally he was a strict man. If my sisters fought, as they so often did, I was grounded from leaving but not from my books or the television. If I took a walk or talked back, grounded again the same punishment. Joke is on him, I liked it that way. Sometimes I acted out so that I didn’t have to go to my mom’s place and deal with her insanity, his absence was better, I know where to get ahold of him if there was an emergency, local bar.

As you can imagine, I got to keep my books, meaning I was off on every adventure I could get my hands on at the time, when they set up the new local library a mile away from my house, close to my brother’s place, I was thrilled and my dad couldn’t keep me away for very long. At least I wasn’t off kissing boys! That came a couple years later.

I know, I know, why am I telling you all this? Because, my dear reader, I saw Sucker Punch in theaters when it premiered, and I felt no one around me appreciated it at the time, to find out later that it became a cult classic and I just needed to meet people outside of my small town. I was the weird alternative girl in a place where money was prevalent and pretty was power. Highly abused, a loner who bounced clicks with none of my own to call home, I related to people like Baby Doll and Sweet Pea more than Regina George or Cady Heron. Anyone else?

One of my favorite comfort movies, I decided to throw on Sucker Punch while I was working on some healing journals and writing like Alexander Hamilton always running out of time. Yes, I’m full of dad jokes like this one, stay tuned! As a slightly obsessed Alice in Wonderland fan, I love anything that twists the story on it’s head. A score that feels like my inner punk come to life, layers of metaphor so thick Shrek’s onion would be jealous, and cinematography to send the chills racing themselves down my spine, it’s easy to see why I continue to come back. The writing is wonderful and I respect the work they put into bringing this world to life.

If you haven’t given Sucker Punch a try, I suggest it. I know it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, this movie is however my double shot of whiskey. My tastes can be a bit grim dark, just like my life! Anyway, the movie opens up with a narrator discussing heroes and how they come in different forms to Emily Browning, the main character, singing her rendition of The Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”, a slowed haunting version that is beautifully done for this opening. While two girls are hiding from their drunken step father who is in a drunken rage and ready to off them both for their inheritance, an accident occurs and Baby Doll’s sister is killed when the gun goes off.

I assume that he killed their mom too, but I am not sure. I also want to note real quick that I’m not going to dissect the dreams she has in her dance sequences or I will be here forever, I might break those down in another set of posts if enough people ask me to, this is more the main story and substory, not sub sub stories of the battles. The step father then gets Baby into a mental asylum and pays off an orderly to get her lobotomized so she can’t share the secrets of her sister’s murder. This man wants it all and will take it at any cost.

As Baby is about to get the needle to the eye, we cut to Sweet Pea preforming on stage in the Baby wig, the lobotomy a bit for the stage. The asylum transitioning into a brothel, all the patients turned into ladies of the night and strippers preforming for their clients who I imagine are the employees and people who pay to sneak in. There is now a high roller, a daddy money bags if you will, who is going to take her away in 3 days.

The only non patient female character is Dr. Vera Gorski, their therapist in reality, in the brothel she is their dance instructor, giving Baby Doll the tools to let loose and dance the way she does, holding the room hostage with her mating call. Instead of seeing the dances, the audience gets hit with intense battle scenes in different arenas like zombies in Nazi Germany getting gunned down by the Baby and her team or a dragon and it’s minions Rocket and Blondie distract while Amber drives the helicopter and Baby gets the fire.

There are 5 items that Baby needs when she enlists the help of the others, a map, key, knife, and fire. The 5th ends up being Baby Doll’s sacrifice for Sweet Pea to be the ONLY SURVIVER. Shocked the fuck out of me when I first watched the movie. You find out that the orderly in the beginning Lou has been treating the asylum as his own personal brothel behind Dr. Gorski’s back, and the girls who planned to escape get killed, or maybe put back on meds in the asylum real world but died in the brothel reality, allowing for Sweet Pea to escape at the cost of Baby Doll’s trouble maker self getting the lobotomy in the end. Where you hear her voice over and find she was the main character all along, the innocent hidden in the shadows, only in the asylum to protect her sister Rocket.

Ugh, amazing. The sacrifice, the layers. The Wise Man’s lines were my favorite, “Don’t write a check with your mouth you can’t cash with your ass” and “If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything” are sayings I still live by and I saw the movie for the first time as senior in high school. Taking some real world history and turning it into an Alice in Wonderland update was pretty cool to see on screen then and now. Fantasy worlds in the mind of a mental patient who ends up a victim of abuse and later loses her mind all together, funny that this came out the same year as Alice: Madness Returns, they have a lot in common, might need to do a comparatives post of them later on. >

The whore house analogy works well for Lou pimping the ladies out and doing anything he can to keep them quiet. Dr. Gorski finds out about the forging of her signature on the lobotomy form and Lou gets his in the end. Beautiful. There are shit employee’s and abusive people everywhere, making you feel unsafe in a place that is supposed to proved safety and support to the mentally unstable. Those people are catnip to abusers of course one would find his way into their inner sanctum.

An orderly turned pimp and a lobotomy turned high roller to signify these women losing their bodily and mental autonomy. When you view women like property, you are willing to do unholy things to them, you own them don’t you? Baby Doll sparks a rebellion, she and her band of misfits fighting back, trying to escape. In a way, it almost mirrors the sneaky things a victim is willing to do to escape their captor. I’ve hidden money, snuck away with a sitter mid day to reach out to lawyers, even safe houses to escape my tormenters in the past. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve done what it takes to survive.

Funny, I didn’t even relate escaping the asylum turned brothel to leaving an abusive romantic relationship until now, I’ve seen this movie at least a thousand times easy since it’s release in 2011, escaped 2 dangerous relationships and had the sneaky behaviors of a survivor planning her escape, and yet, it wasn’t until one of the abusers came sliding into my DMs after some time that made the connection. Media mirroring reality, how about that. What are your thoughts on Sucker Punch? What do you relate to in media?